From #1 New York Times bestselling author and true crime icon Ann Rule, the cases in this collection grapple with murder, false identity, and much more. In some murder cases, the truth behind the most tragic of crimes crystallizes with relative ease. Not so with these fascinating accounts drawn from the personal files of Ann Rule, America’s #1 bestselling true crime writer. What happens when the case itself becomes an intractable puzzle, when clues are shrouded in smoke and mirrors, and when criminals skillfully evade law enforcement in a maddening cat-and-mouse chase? Even the most devoted true crime fan won’t predict the outcome of these truly confounding cases until the conclusions are revealed in Rule’s marvelously insightful narrative: - A “picture perfect” family is targeted for death by the least likely enemy, who plotted their demise from behind bars. - A sexual predator hides behind multiple fake identities, eluding police for years while his past victims live in fear that he will hunt them down. - A modest preacher’s wife confesses to shooting her husband after an argument—but there’s more to her shattering story than meets the eye. These and other true cases are analyzed with stunning clarity in a page-turning collection you won't be able to put down. 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. One Happy Ever After? Sue Harris and her sister, Carol, who was seven years older, grew up in an upper-middle-class home in Lake Hills, the most popular subdivision in Bellevue, an eastern suburb of Seattle, in the 1950s. Bellevue was like Levittown or a thousand other towns that sprang up after World War II, fulfilling the demand for new homes for young families. Initially it seemed a long way from Seattle, but it really wasn't, and when the first floating bridge across Lake Washington was built, Bellevue seemed only a hop, skip, and a jump away for the dads who continued to work every day. The moms mostly stayed home, waxed their floors once a week, and cooked meals from scratch, and if they had a career, it was probably selling Avon or Mary Kay products part-time. In many ways the 1950s were an easier time, or maybe it just seemed that way. Couples got married intending to stay together, and the divorce epidemic that lay ahead was only a distant threat. Along with most of the other fathers in the neighborhood, Sue and Carol's father, Hermann, was an engineer for the Boeing Airplane Company. Sue was born in December 1955, and despite the difference in their ages, she and her sister were uncommonly close as children, and that would continue as they grew to adulthood. If they expected life to be happy ever after, so did other little girls in Bellevue. It was the era of Barbie and Ken and playing dolls while mothers lingered over coffee in somebody's kitchen. In Lake Hills, the fifties were a halcyon time. In the early sixties, though, couples with young children came close to panic when the Cuban missile crisis loomed. World War II had been fought far away, across oceans, but the Cuban crisis threatened to bring war to America itself. With that menace and the simultaneous anxiety it provoked, a small army of salesmen swarmed over Bellevue offering bomb shelters on the installment plan. A model home in Lake Hills offered the latest upgrade in housing: a bomb shelter in the basement. And Rod Serling's Twilight Zone featured a memorable episode about neighbors fighting one another to crowd into such a shelter. It was the end of a time when everyone felt safe. Most home owners opted to move forward without shelters, realizing that their consciences wouldn't allow them to survive happily when most of their neighbors had perished. And then John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and America changed forever. Hermann Harris had clipped articles on bomb shelters, but his daughters weren't aware of that until after he died -- much too young, at fifty-two -- of a sudden heart attack. Their mother, Lorraine, was only forty-two when she was left to raise her two daughters: Sue was ten and Carol was eighteen. Fortunately, Hermann Harris had been wise in his investments and he left his family well provided for, and there were veteran's benefits from his service in World War II that would pay for his two girls to go to college. Sue and Carol had seen a happy marriage, and although they missed their father a lot, their mother stepped up to take the reins of responsibility. She was a loving and brave woman and her girls adored her. When Sue was in the third grade, her parents had bought a house in Newport Hills, a new community where