Unmasked : my life solving America's cold cases
Edition
First U.S. edition.
Publication Information
New York, NY : Celadon Books, 2022.
Physical Description
viii, 272 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cm
Summary
"From the detective who found The Golden State Killer, a memoir of investigating America's toughest cold cases and the rewards--and toll--of a life solving crime. I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don't even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. I'm drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can't shake. Crime-solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me, for better or worse, to the point of obsession. People always ask how I am able to detach from the horrors of my work. Part of it is an innate capacity to compartmentalize; the rest is experience and exposure, and I've had plenty of both. But I had always taken pride in the fact that I can keep my feelings locked up to get the job done. It's only been recently that it feels like all that suppressed darkness is beginning to seep out. When I look back at my long career, there is a lot I am proud of. I have caught some of the most notorious killers of the twenty-first century and brought justice and closure for their victims and families. I want to tell you about a lifetime solving these cold cases, from Laci Peterson to Jaycee Dugard to the Pittsburgh homicides to, yes, my twenty-year-long hunt for the Golden State Killer. But a deeper question eats at me as I ask myself, at what cost? I have sacrificed relationships, joy-even fatherhood-because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? It's something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice. 'I don't know if I can solve your case,' I whisper. 'But I promise I will do my best.' It is a promise I know I can keep"--
Contents
- Prologue
- The end of the road
- Last act
- Beginnings
- Lab rat
- Moving up
- EAR
- CSI
- Abernathy
- Connecting the dots
- The end of a marriage
- Antioch
- Conaty and Giacomelli
- Bodfish
- Serial killers
- EAR breakthrough
- Postmortem
- Changes
- Small victories
- Hurricane holes
- EAR revisited
- Him
- Roller coaster
- Michelle
- The murders
- Joseph James DeAngelo
- Operation Golden State Killer
- It it him?
- A sense of purpose.