The Cases That Haunt Us: From Jack the Ripper to Jonbenet Ramsey, the FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Unravels the Mysteries That Won't Go Away
John Douglas. Scribner Book Company, $25 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-684-84600-2
FBI veteran Douglas is best known as the inventor of criminal profiling as an investigative tool, and in this superbly written and narratively taut new work, he teams up again with Olshaker, his coauthor on the bestselling Mindhunter, to look at eight murder cases that have transfixed the popular imagination. By systematically applying the most advanced techniques of criminology to the information available, he provides new insights and suppositions, even into cases as well trod as that of Jack the Ripper, in some cases identifying who the murderer is, in other cases only who it is not. The cases involve Lizzie Borden, the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr., the Zodiac killer (who went on a murder rampage throughout the San Francisco Bay area about 30 years ago), the Black Dahlia Murder, Bambi Bembenek, the Boston Strangler, and the still unresolved murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey on Christmas 1996 (Douglas has served as a consultant and an expert witness for the grand jury in this case). In the Ramsey case, although he cannot identify the killer of JonBenet, Douglas is adamant that the parents, John and Patricia Ramsey, did not commit the crime. He profiles the killer as a young man or teen with a personal and specific grudge against John Ramsey. Agent, Jay Acton.
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Reviewed on: 10/30/2000
Genre: Nonfiction