Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling

Mindhunter crossed with American Gothic. This chilling story has the ghostly unease of a nightmare.--Michael Cannell, author of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling

The pulse-pounding account of the first time in history that the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit created a psychological profile to catch a serial killer

On June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana campground where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of their tent and snatched her from under their noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished into thin air, plucked by a shadow.

The largest manhunt in Montana's history ensued, led by the FBI. As days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months, Special Agent Pete Dunbar attended a workshop at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virgina, led by two agents who had hatched a radical new idea: What if criminals left a psychological trail that would lead us to them? Patrick Mullany, a trained psychologist, and Howard Teten, a veteran criminologist, had created the Behavioral Science Unit to explore this new voodoo they called "criminal profiling."

At Dunbar's request, Mullany and Teten built the FBI's first profile of an unknown subject: the UnSub who had snatched Susie Jaeger and, a few months later, a nineteen-year-old waitress. When a suspect was finally arrested, the profile fit him to a T...

Author: Ron Franscell
Publisher: Berkley Books
Published: 03/01/2022
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.06h x 6.06w x 1.26d
ISBN: 9780593199275


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 01/01/2022 pg. 75
Publishers Weekly 01/17/2022
Booklist 02/15/2022 pg. 8

About the Author
Ron Franscell is the acclaimed author of 18 books and has been hailed as one of America's best narrative nonfiction writers. A journalist who has covered war and natural disasters abroad, he wrote the international true-crime bestsellers The Darkest Night and the 2017 Edgar finalist Morgue: A Life in Death. His debut book Angel Fire--a USA Today bestselling literary novel about two brothers and the wounds of war--was listed by the San Francisco Chronicle among the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century West.