First published 2007
Television news journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell investigates the hidden motivations behind notorious crimes that shocked America. Drawing from her experience covering high-profile cases for CNN, Fox News, Court TV, and MSNBC, she examines twenty-one separate criminal cases to reveal how deception and double lives explode into violence. Velez-Mitchell analyzes killers like Scott Peterson and Andrea Yates alongside cases involving desperate Hollywood personalities and Bible Belt mothers who murdered their children. She explores the murders connected to Dan Horowitz, the prominent lawyer whose wife was killed by a teenage neighbor, and Neil Entwistle, the British husband who ran out of money maintaining an expensive American lifestyle. The book includes insights from investigators, psychologists, and the friends and families of both victims and perpetrators. Velez-Mitchell argues that ordinary people share the same trusting nature as victims and harbor similar secrets as criminals, whether debt, infidelity, or hidden fetishes. She demonstrates how thin the line separates normal lives from sociopathic behavior while offering guidance on avoiding dangerous situations.
Genres: crime, non-fiction, journalism, true-crime
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
320 pages · Kindle Edition · Touchstone
Content warnings: murder, violence