John E. Douglas

Mark Olshaker

Violent. Provocative. Shocking. Call them what you will...but don't call them open and shut. Did Lizzie Borden murder her own father and stepmother? Was Jack the Ripper actually the Duke of Clarence? Who killed JonBenet Ramsey? America's foremost expert on criminal profiling and twenty-five-year FBI veteran John Douglas, along with author and filmmaker Mark Olshaker, explores those tantalizing questions and more in this mesmerizing work of detection. With uniquely gripping analysis, the authors reexamine and reinterpret the accepted facts, evidence, and victimology of the most notorious murder cases in the history of crime, including the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the Zodiac Killer, and the Whitechapel murders. Utilizing techniques developed by Douglas himself, they give detailed profiles and reveal chief suspects in pursuit of what really happened in each case. The Cases That Haunt Us not only offers convincing and controversial conclusions, it deconstructs the evidence and widely held beliefs surrounding each case and rebuilds them -- with fascinating, surprising, and haunting results.

The Cases That Haunt Us

rumbledethumps

Some of the cases were interesting, but the sheer bombast of the author was really off-putting. Especially in light of recent studies that have shown profiling, and particularly homology (the idea that similar people will commit similar crimes), is unreliable and not an effective law enforcement tool.

I wanted to rate this book higher, but he really lost his steam with the JonBenet Ramsey murder. I'll start with the good chapters first.

Jack the Ripper was a great chapter, giving exactly what I was hoping for, which was a profile of an unsolved crime years after the fact. Lizzy Borden was much the same, though he obviously took more time talking about how crazy it would have been if it was committed by someone other than Lizzy. The turning point, for me, was the Lindbergh kidnapping case. The book lost its steam and we got muddled in the minute details of the case, which really put a damper on my progress. I was so happy when we were done with that case. The Zodiac chapter wasn't horrible either, and actually had a bit of dry humor in there so that made up for the terrible Lindbergh chapter. We then went onto a chapter with three crimes, starting with the Black Dahlia. It was a decent section and I liked the detail he went into about it, though unfortunately he didn't have much in the way of suspects. The one that I had no clue about and didn't care for was the Lawrencia Bembenek case, which was a bit dry and really could have been put together more clearly. He finishes with the Boston Strangler, which was an interesting case, but he middles through older cases and I ended up skimming a bit.

But the worst chapter and case, by far, was the JonBenet Ramsey chapter. It read less like a profiling chapter and more like a character defense of himself. Others mentioned how arrogant he sounded, but I feel like he was trying to cut his professional ties to the case and have a closed forum to deny any claims of perceived wrongdoing, much as Henrik I been wrote a play in response to haters of a play that came before it. Frankly, I knew nothing about the case prior to this book, having been a child myself when it happened, so it has no emotional attachment for me, but it's obvious Douglas needed to edit this chapter out until he could write it as well as he wrote Jack the Ripper. He was far too enmeshed in the case to be able to write it good, so he apparently decided to do a piece on the public instead. I thinks he makes some great points, but they're muddled with shots at peers and police departments and lawyers.

Overall it's an unbalanced book. Definitely worth a read if you want more information on the cases I listed without necessarily having an opinion shoved down your throat. I've noticed other books, those focused on a single case, tend to be very biased and skew evidence to fit that bias, which can be confusing or tiresome in a way that this book mainly is not.

Bowie 

John & Olshaker Douglas (Mark)

Ashley Lock

Heather 

Armin Sh

Karen Scarlet 

tiff

Carissa 

Elizabeth Dobson

Lisa Merriam

F Bowman

Allison Francis

Jonah K

The nation's most successful "profiler" of the criminal mind analyzes some of the most vexing cases in criminal history, from Jack the Ripper's unsolved murder spree to the ongoing JonBenet Ramsey drama. 100,000 first printing.

From Jack the Ripper to JonBenet Ramsey, the FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Sheds New Light on the Mysteries that Won't Go Away

The Cases That Haunt Us

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