In the most extraordinary journey Ann Rule has ever undertaken, America's master of true crime has spent more than two decades researching the story of the Green River Killer, who murdered more than forty-nine young women. For twenty-one years, the Green River Killer carried out his self-described "career" as a killing machine, ridding the world of women he considered evil. His eerie ability to lure his victims to their deaths and hide their bodies...

The shocking tale from true crime queen Ann Rule. Who is Brad Cunningham? How could five beautiful, intelligent, and successful women believe he was their dream come true? Ask any women who ever longed for "the perfect man." Loni Ann, Cynthia, Lauren, Cheryl, and Sara seemed to have it all -- beauty, wealth, children, and a husband who they believed to be this perfect man -- Brad Cunningham. He was handsome, charismatic, and mysterious -- they adored...

When beautiful, blond Sheila married the charming, andsome Blackthorne, she was convinced she had found her perfect soul mate, and helped him attain the privileged life of the country club set. But behind Allen's smooth facade, she discovered a violent, controlling sociopath -- a liar, a scam artist, a sexual deviant. When she finally fled with their two young daughters, she was skeletally thin, bruised, and beaten. Although Sheila recovered and remarried,...

Barb Thompson never for one moment believed her daughter committed suicide. Neither did Detective Jerry Berry or ballistics expert Marty Hayes or attorney Royce Ferguson or dozens of Ronda's friends. For eleven grueling years, through the ups and downs of the legal system and its endless delays, these people and others helped Barb Thompson fight to strike that painful word from her daughter's death certificate. "From true-crime legend Ann Rule comes...

On July 3, 1974, Patricia Allanson's "husband, Tom Allanson, was arrested after a cellar shoot-out in . . . {Atlanta} that left his parents dead. . . . {The author argues that} his wife had set up the entire incident. . . . Ms. Allanson is now in a Georgia jail, convicted of aggravated assault, impersonating a registered nurse, illegal possession of Halcion and robbing her elderly patients. It is her second prison sentence; in 1976 she was convicted...

"Randall Woodfield had it all. He was an award-winning student and star athlete. He was drafted by the Green Bay Packer to play in the NFL and was chosen by Playgirl as a centerfold candidate. Working in the swinging West Coast bar scene, he had his pick of willing sexual prospects. But Randall Woodfield wanted more than just sex. An appetite for unspeakable violent acts led him to cruise the I-5 highway through California, Oregon, and Washington,...

After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death-using want ads to lure his young female victims. And time after time, justice was thwarted by a killer whose twisted legal genius was matched only by his sick savagery. Here, complete with the testimony of women who suffered his unspeakable sexual abuses and barely escaped with their lives, and of the police who...

Ann Rule deepens her unrelenting exploration of the evil that lies behind the perfect facades of heartless killers...

A compilation of real-life crime stories includes the tales of a counterfeit priest, a serial rapist, a victim burned beyond recognition, and a con artist whose activities lead to murder.