Acknowledgments

I first crossed paths with a serial killer twenty years ago.

I was sitting idle at my desk in the city room of the Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times one sunny afternoon in May 1972 when a small group of children suddenly appeared in front of me. They had a story to tell. It was about a man named Arthur Shawcross. Shawcross, they said in unison, had taken Jack Blake, a playmate of theirs. They had witnessed it. In fact, the ten-year-old boy was missing. But local authorities did not leap at this new lead. Instead, all summer long they steadfastly refused to believe the children’s version of events. It wasn’t until September, when Shawcross was arrested for the murder of a second child, an eight-year-old girl whose strangled and raped body was found under a downtown bridge, that the children were finally heard.

Karen Ann Hill would be twenty-eight years old today if local authorities had been willing to believe the children’s story. Shawcross, who at the time was an Attica parolee, was convicted of manslaughter in the girl’s death. He went back to prison, where he served fifteen years of a twenty-five-year sentence before he was paroled in 1987—to kill again. In the first week of 1990, as a pilot of a New York state police helicopter hovered over a park west of Rochester, searching for a missing woman, a presumed victim of that city’s serial murderer, he spotted a car below. Arthur Shawcross was behind the wheel. Almost immediately, the parolee was linked to more than ten murders. Years before, he had confessed to killing Jack Blake. Now, again he would confess. A deputy police chief would admit that it was only by chance that the pilot even noticed the car. “The hand of God was also at the controls,” he said.

We cannot always rely on an earnest child to step forward, or wait for divine intervention to show the way, to inform us that a murderous sociopath is in our midst. Our eyes and ears are capable of seeing and hearing, but as the story of Wayne Nance shows, the mind isn’t always ready to believe.

This book is not about Arthur Shawcross, but it was my experience with this specimen of that most elusive breed, the serial murderer, that drove me to write this story. I am grateful to many people who shared their close encounters, who despite what they saw and heard were unable to interpret the hidden, diabolical meaning. Principal among these witnesses are: Douglas and Kristen Wells, Sheila Claxton, Julie Slocum, Joni DelComte, Cindy Bertsch, Joyce Halverson, Vern Willen, Dory Modey and Ruth Ann Rancourt. I especially also thank Ronald MacDonald, William K. Van Canagan, Greg and Mary Lakes, Robert and Georgia Shook, Rick and Laura Davis, Harry Northey, Martin Spring, Darlene Smith, Don Harbaugh, Marge Frame, Hal Woods and the Ruana Knife Works, Inc., and Kim Briggeman and Michael Moore, both of the Missoulian. I also express gratitude to the friendly people of Missoula, Montana, who helped me with this project.

I am deeply indebted to Missoula County Undersheriff Larry Weatherman, County Attorney William L. “Dusty” Deschamps, Sheriff’s Deputy Stanley Fullerton and to Dale Dye of Hamilton. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Robert W. Balch at the University of Montana, and to Robert R. Hazelwood, a supervisory special agent at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit.

I am grateful to my agent, Jane Dystel, who channeled my inspiration. I especially thank my editor, Michaela Hamilton, for showing me the way. I also thank Stephen Michaud, a friend and fellow journalist, for his invaluable expertise.

And above all, I thank my wife, Bridget, the careful reader who has supported me one hundred percent.