Winner of the American Mystery Award for Best True Crime, from two-time Edgar Award winner Jack Olsen, known as "the dean of true crime."For more than a decade, a serial rapist moved through the suburbs of Seattle. He was outwardly ordinary: steady job, regular churchgoer, polite and unremarkable to everyone around him. He would eventually confess to more than fifty rapes. Police departments, working in isolation, never connected the pattern. Every attack was treated as a standalon...

Winner of the Edgar Award. A New York Times Bestseller.Between 1978 and 1981, a rapist prowled the South Hill neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. He targeted women jogging alone, waiting for buses, walking home after dark. His signature was unmistakable and terrifying: a gloved fist rammed into his victim's mouth to silence her screams. By the time police made an arrest, more than forty women had been attacked.The suspect was clean-cut, conservative, and c...

Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. With a new introduction by bestselling true-crime author Ron Franscell.For twenty-five years, Dr. John Story was the most trusted man in Lovell, Wyoming. He was the town's family doctor, a pillar of the community, a man who delivered babies, treated children, and cared for generations of the same families. He was also systematically raping his patients.His victims were mostly Mormon women, raised in a faith that emphasized subm...

From New York Times bestselling author Jack Olsen, known as "the dean of true crime," comes a shattering account of a killer the system created, enabled, and then set loose to kill again.Little Artie Shawcross bullied classmates, started fires, tortured animals, and roamed the woods of upstate New York talking to imaginary friends. He also scored top grades, excelled in sports, and shared his toys with the children who ridiculed him. From second grade on, psychiatrists examined him...

On January 5, 1981, Idaho game wardens Bill Pogue and Conley Elms rode into the remote Owyhee Desert to check a report of poaching at Claude Dallas's trapping camp. They never rode out.Dallas shot both men. When one fell wounded, he retrieved a .22 rifle and finished the job with a bullet to the head. Then he turned to the witness who had seen everything and said: "This is Murder One for me." He buried the bodies and disappeared into the wilderness.Claude Dallas styled hims...

"Jack Olsen's particular gift is his ability to illuminate the souls of his characters." Jonathan KellermanJoe Gere said he died on the afternoon his twelve-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared.In September 1985, Brenda Gere vanished from her family's home in Clearview, Washington. From the first moments of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing bodybuilder with a history of violence. But there was no proof, no body, and no answers. Tips p...

On the night of July 18, 1969, a black Oldsmobile plunged off a narrow one-lane bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. By morning, the car had been found submerged. Inside was the body of Mary Jo Kopechne, twenty-eight years old, a former campaign worker for Robert Kennedy. The next morning, Senator Ted Kennedy walked into the Edgartown police station and identified himself as the driver.What happened in those hours has never been fully explained. Kennedy himself said his ...

A Harrowing True Story of Survival on the Eiger's Deadly North FaceThe Germans call it the Mordwand. The Murder Wall. The north face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps is a vertical mile of unstable limestone, perpetual avalanches, and weather that can turn lethal without warning. Eighteen climbers had already died attempting it. In August 1957, four more went up.They started as two separate teams. Claudio Corti and Stefano Longhi were Italians from Lecco, rely...

For fifty-seven years, the grizzly bears of Glacier National Park had never killed a human being.That ended on the night of August 12, 1967.In the dark hours before dawn, in two separate locations miles apart, two grizzly bears attacked two young women sleeping at backcountry campsites. Julie Helgeson, nineteen, a seasonal park employee from Minnesota, was dragged from her sleeping bag near Granite Park Chalet and mauled while her companion survived. Michele Koons, also nin...

Charmer: The True Story of a Ladies' Man and His Victims is a masterwork of true crime journalism from acclaimed author Jack Olsen, delivering a chilling portrait of a killer who weaponized charisma.George Russell Jr. had a gift. He could walk into any room, any bar, any party, any crowd, and within minutes everyone knew his name. Women were drawn to him. Men wanted to be around him. He was handsome, magnetic, and unfailingly entertaining. He knew how to make people feel seen, spec...

Every city has a Sweet Street. You know it when you see it: the neon signs, the strip clubs, the honky-tonk bars, the sidewalks that come alive after midnight. Most people hurry past. Jack Olsen went in.In the early 1970s, Olsen embedded himself in the bars and strip clubs of San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, spending months among the hustlers, pimps, strippers, waitresses, bartenders, bouncers, junkies, cops, and club owners who inhabited this shadow economy. He listened t...

The prize-winning, bestselling journalist provides a fascinating glimpse into the mind of "The Happy Face Killer" in the serial murderer's own words . . .In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of Taunja Bennet, a troubled twenty-three-year-old barfly who had a mild intellectual disability since birth. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people.And the real killer wasn't abou...