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Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers - Softcover

Rule, Ann

 
9780743448673: Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0743448677 ISBN 13: 9780743448673
Verlag: Pocket Books, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

In an update to one of the most astonishing crimes of the Case Files volumes, Ann Rule profiles the criminals that kill without conscience and shatters their crimes without pity.

In eight stunning Case Files volumes, from A Rose for Her Grave to the #1 blockbuster Last Dance, Last Chance, Ann Rule reigns as "America's best true-crime writer" (Kirkus Reviews). Now, she updates the most astonishing cases from that acclaimed series—and presents shocking, all-new true-crime accounts—in one riveting anthology.

In every explosive chapter of Without Pity, Ann Rule deepens her unrelenting exploration of the evil that lies behind the perfect facades of heartless killers...and the deadly compulsions of greed and power that shatter their outward trappings of material success.

They are the admired, trusted neighbor; the affable family man; the sexy, charismatic lover; the high-achieving professional. Perhaps most frightening of all is that they are heroes in their own minds. But when someone gets in the way of their deluded dreams, they are capable of deadly acts of violence with no remorse.

Analyzing the true nature of the sociopathic mind in chilling detail, Ann Rule traces the murderous crimes of seemingly ordinary men—killers who drew their unsuspecting victims into their twisted worlds with devastating consequences.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ann Rule (1931–2015) wrote thirty-five New York Times bestsellers, all of them still in print. Her first bestseller was The Stranger Beside Me, about her personal relationship with infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. A former Seattle police officer, she used her firsthand expertise in all her books. For more than three decades, she was a powerful advocate for victims of violent crime.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

At last, a paperback anthology of the best cases from the eight volumes of Ann Rule's Crime Files: stories of women who kill.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One: The Tumbledown Shack

After writing more than a thousand articles about homicide cases, I suppose it's natural that some of them blur slightly in my memory. However, there are those that I recall vividly, and I even remember my own life at the time I first researched their tragic details. The story that follows brings back gloomy recollections of four days when I was trapped by a blizzard in Wenatchee, Washington. The sheriff of adjoining Okanogan County had given me a ride from Seattle over the Cascade Mountains on November 16, 1978, and I planned to take the bus back after I'd talked to Chelan County homicide detectives. But a huge snowstorm clogged the mountain passes and no car, bus, train, or plane could get through. That meant I couldn't get home until the road thawed.

All the sidewalks in Wenatchee were covered with four or five inches of ice that weekend and many stores had closed. Stuck in a little motel, all I had to read was the police file of this horrifying case. I found no diversion from horror when I turned on the television set. The news had just broken that Reverend Jim Jones, the cult leader of the Peoples' Temple from San Francisco, had forced his hapless congregation to drink poisoned Kool-Aid at "Jonestown," in Guyana. Of his 1,100 followers, 973 were dead, and so were California state representative Leo J. Ryan and most of the staff and film crew who had gone with him to Guyana to investigate Jones. There was nothing for me to watch beyond blanket coverage of that story on every channel and a screen filled with a sea of bodies.

I spent those days completely alone in the dead of winter only thirty-five miles from where the case I was studying had happened in the blazing summer heat. By the time the ice thawed, I knew this story of two vulnerable young women by heart and it stays in my mind to this day.

Like those who died in Jonestown, the Chelan County victims had been lulled into the false belief that they were safe, and they too trusted enough that they failed to see the evil behind a pleasant facade.

It would seem that a double homicide that happened almost thirty years ago would have been solved by now. It has certainly not been forgotten. I still meet people who were closely connected to the victims, people for whom time has no meaning. Technically, it is an open case. Yet, over and over again, one man confessed to the murders of two beautiful young women. Was he telling the truth, or was he only throwing up a smokescreen that clouded the investigation so that the real killer was never caught?

You be the judge.

Chelan County, Washington, is only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Seattle, but it lies on the other side of the mountains in eastern Washington, in a climate where the landscape is completely different. The weather, the vegetation, and the topography of Chelan County might as well be three or four states away. Chelan County is fruit-growing country, particularly Delicious apples, and vacation country, a place far away from the congestion of the increasingly industrial west sides of Oregon and Washington, where Portland and Seattle traffic rivals that of L.A. and New York City, and where new housing developments cover fertile valleys with cement streets and perfectly landscaped yards.

The town of Chelan is forty miles north of Wenatchee, and it exists mostly because of expansive Lake Chelan, the second largest inland lake in America. Tourists flock to Lake Chelan, where deep blue water cuts through dry hills for a hundred miles or more, ending at the isolated hamlet of Stehekin, accessible only by boat or seaplane. Visitors board the Lady of the Lake in Chelan for a four-hour leisurely cruise to another world. Vacationers and those attending conferences fill the myriad resorts curving along Lake Chelan.

The road between Wenatchee and Chelan winds through quite beautiful country. To the east, poplar trees stand like sentries and as windbreaks for the apple orchards close to the mighty Columbia River. Close to the town of Entiat, roadside stands sell fresh produce, honey, candy, pickles, and flowers. The water thundering from Rocky Reach Dam is awe inspiring, and its grounds thrill little kids; every thatch of spreading junipers provides shelter for rabbits and other little creatures, the descendants of Easter bunnies and abandoned pets released there decades before. Park rangers feed and watch over them.

It all feels very safe and benign.

But farther north, the land becomes much more rugged. In high summer and early autumn, rolling hills burn brown, and tumbleweeds, wild daisies, and sagebrush are the only plants that grow. Too often, forest fires erupt and the land burns black as the wind carries flames from tree to tree and across roads. Animals -- and humans too -- can be trapped with no way out. Many come to Chelan County for reasons other than vacationing. When harvest time comes, migrant workers and young people with the stamina to work hard for several weeks head up U.S. Highway 97 to find jobs bringing in the crops.

In the mid-seventies, nobody gave a second glance to the strangers and teenagers who stood beside the roads with their thumbs out. They were such a familiar sight that they became part of the environment. It was past the time of peace, love, and hippie beads, but many young people still clung to those beliefs, and they continued to hitchhike.

At various spots, the road north to Chelan suddenly disappears into black tunnels cut into the rock cliffs, only to emerge into blinding sunlight. There are well-maintained homes along the road to Chelan, but there are also gray pioneer shacks, long deserted and leaning toward the ground. In September and October, the fruit pickers arrive, followed in late fall by hunters stalking deer and elk.

Chelan County deputies expect extra work in autumn because so many transients swell the population. Sometimes the officers are called out for homicides, but the vast majority of calls are the result of drunken fights, over a bottle of "Mad Dog" or "Night Train" wine, among the nameless drifters who follow the crops.

It was 2:35 on Tuesday afternoon, September 30, 1975, when Deputy D. B. Mayo received a call from the radio operator at the Chelan Police Department. Someone had gone to the farm-labor office in town wanting to report a "possible rape." The attack had apparently occurred somewhere out in the county.

Mayo contacted Bill Myer, who was staying in a pickers' cabin at the Hesperian Orchards. Myer appeared agitated as he tried to explain what he'd seen.

"Me and my friend Hal Oxley were out hiking in the hills behind the orchards when we found a couple of chicks in a shed....I think they've been raped," he said hurriedly.

Myer said he had been spooked by what he'd seen and didn't stay around long enough to check to see if the victims were alive or dead. If they were dead, Myer and his friend would become the first suspects, but Mayo didn't mention that. He simply studied the excited young man.

"But I'm afraid they might be dead," Myer said. "I can lead you back there where I saw them if you want."

Deputy Mayo urged the young picker to hop into his patrol car. They picked up Oxley, and the deputy sped to the area the witnesses pointed out. They directed him to Old Downey Road, which leads off U.S. 97, and headed up that road for a little over a mile, passing some weathered ranch buildings. The man who owned the ranch verified that there was, indeed, an old shed about two miles further on.

Since Oxley and Myer said they had stumbled upon the shack while they were walking in the rugged hills, they were a little disoriented and had trouble figuring out how to get back to the spot where they'd seen the girls.

Mayo drove along the increasingly rutted dirt road and was...

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Verlag
Pocket Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0743448677
ISBN 13 
9780743448673
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
448
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande