Customer Reviews

The Cases That Haunt Us: From Jack the Ripper to Jonbenet Ramsey, the Fbi's Legendary Mindhunter Sheds Light on the Mysteries That Won't Go Away

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is the best Douglas book since his first, "Mindhunter." Subsequent books has have tended to be repetitive with not much new information. In this book, since he is looking into historical cases for the most part, he offers new analyses and ideas about the Unsubs in cases including Jack the Ripper, Lizzy Borden, Charles Lindbergh Jr, Zodiac killer, and Boston Strangler.

I almost wish he hadn't included the JonBenet Ramsey case, because I think that takes away from the rest of the book. He could have included some other cases that still "haunt" us, that would be interesting from a historical point of view. I don't think enough time has passed for people to consider the Ramsay case objectively. I am not saying I disagree with his conclusions about the Ramsays, but I don't completely buy them either. If he is ever proved wrong, he will have to eat a ton of crow. Enough said.

Still, I would recommend this book for true crime lovers, historical crime buffs, and anyone with an interest in psychological profilings. I admit freely my favorite TV show is Discovery Channels "The New Detectives." If you have never seen it, and you fall into one of the above categories, you must check this show out.

Not since his first work, MINDHUNTER, have I read a Douglas book this interesting. Mindhunter set the pace for all the profiling narratives that followed. Although nobody does it better than Douglas, his subsequent works were somewhat lacking because they did not grab the reader with the same tenacity as his first novel. He takes a somewhat new direction with THE CASES THAT HAUNT US and in turn a better book surfaces.

In CASES THAT HAUNT US Douglas looks at some of the more infamous murders of all time and adds his professional perspective. Whereas he can offer nothing new (after all there have been thousands of books on Jack the Ripper for example), he does weigh some of the more mentioned theories and shows their strenghts and more often than not, their weaknesses. He picks some of the all time chilling real life horror stories....Jack the Ripper, The Zodiac, The Boston Strangler, The Lindbergh Kidnapping, and even the infamous Jon Benet Ramsey case. All the chapters are intriguing and well thought out. He does an outstanding job of showing how some of the conventional thinking on these cases is flawed and in turn relays his years of hands on experience in the field. Along the way, he peppers his views with recollections of cases he has touched.

The main point of controversy in this book in sure to be the Ramsey killing. It is no secret that Douglas was called in to offers his thoughts on this tragic event by the lawyers representing the Ramseys. While I do not agree that he sold out as some would insist, I do question his desire to hire himself out to the main suspects in this grisly event. (in all fairness to Douglas he does contend that after the initial consultation fee he refused to accept further payment and even paid for subsequent flights to Atlanta). This chapter should not prevent anyone from reading the book. Rather, it ranks as one of the more interesting sections of this work. Douglas offers his own insights and makes convincing arguements for an inturder theory. You dont have to agree with the man to respect his logic, reasoning, and experience.

Overall the book reads at the speed of light. All of the chapters with the possible exception of the Lizzy Borden case are well written and really grab the reader's attention. True crime fans will have to read this book.

I've read most of John Douglas' books, and most of the other books inspired by the work done in the FBI's Behavioral Sciences unit. I have a deep respect for Douglas and his many colleagues around the country who continue to work in law enforcement and are students of the criminal mind.

"The Cases that Haunt Us" is, for the most part, a work that deserves as much accolade as Douglas and Olshaker's previous books. The historical perspective and fresh evaluative light shed on such classic cases as Jack the Ripper and the Lindbergh kidnapping is fascinating and invaluable. However, upon reading the final chapter, I was left with the nagging feeling that every chapter in the book was a carefully calculated setup to prepare the reader for the final chapter, where Douglas presents his findings and opinions on the JonBenet Ramsey murder case.

I don't fault him for being unobjective. He admits that he was hired by the Ramseys' lawyers to provide his opinions on their possible guilt or innocence. He was not, as is often assumed by the public, hired to provide a profile of the killer (he was never given access to the autopsy reports, crime scene photos, physical evidence, etc., that would be necessary for a true profile). As with his style in the previous chapters, he presents the facts of the case. But his chapter on JonBenet is hopelessly contaminated by his own involvement with the family (none of the other high profile cases in the book involved him personally). The result is a missive that reads like a cross between a rationalization and an apology. Don't get me wrong, Douglas presents his findings in a clear and very logical manner, and I don't disagree with his findings. I just wish for the sake of this book, that he had left the Ramsey case alone and had added some additional historical cases (JFK or MLK Jr assassinations, for instance, or the OJ case) in which he was not personally involved.

Much has been written about the JonBenet Ramsey murder, and I was curious to see Douglas' own conclusions on this case. But by including it in this book, he busted what was easily a 5-star work down to 3 stars.

I bought this book about a week ago--both my wife and I have finished reading it already, and we spent most of the week reading over each other's shoulders (or "borrowing" the book when the other wasn't looking). Douglas has a lot of interesing things to say, and Olshaker is an excellent writer. Their collaboration has produced a book that is nearly impossible to put down.

The most controversial part of this book will be the last chapter, in which Douglas sets out his views about who killed JonBenet Ramsey. He will be pounced on by many irate readers who are just absolutely, positively certain that one (or both) of the Ramseys did it--these readers will give the book an undeserved "one star" rating not because the book isn't terrific but because they disagree with Douglas' conclusion.

For my part, I found Douglas' defense of the Ramseys to be diplomatic, well-reasoned and persuasive. After reading Steve Thomas' JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, I was convinced that the crime was not committed by an intruder. Douglas made me think twice about that conclusion and has moved me back to sitting on the fence.

For those who are ready to hang the Ramseys from the nearest tree, remember that the standard of guilt in America is "beyond a reasonable doubt." The only thing that is "beyond doubt" about the Ramsey murder is that an understandably inexperienced Boulder police department allowed the crime scene to be turned into a world class mess within the first few hours of arriving at the Ramseys' home, thus insuring that, short of a confession, the real killer would never be brought to justice. (Douglas once thought that having a child murdered was the worst thing that could happen to someone; now he believes that the worst thing that could happen to someone is to have a child murdered and be wrongly blamed for it.)

And for those who are focused to the point of obsession on the Ramsey murder, Douglas reminds us that 804 other children were murdered in the year JonBenet died. As Douglas says, those are the cases that should really haunt us.

I purchased this book on the assumption that Mr. Douglas would shed new light on old mysteries. I mistakenly assumed he would have looked at the case files and then offered new perspectives given his experience in profiling. Having some knowledge of the cases presented, I expected better.

The Lindburgh chapter was interesting. In all these years, I somehow missed the fact that the kidnap ladder was hinged. I never doubted Hauptmann's involvement. And I still don't.

Unlike others posting here, I take no issue with his stance on the Ramsey case, there is simply no solid evidence with which to charge them. Absent that evidence, it is irresponsible to assume their guilt. We should ALL know better than to convict people via the news media.

My main gripe, I suppose, is that I expected better information on the Zodiac case. Douglas seems to rely almost entirely on the work of author Robert Graysmith. And Graysmith's work is unfortunately more fiction than fact. Perhaps Douglas should have used Graysmith's latest book identifying Jack the Ripper. He could have pronounced that case solved.

If you still feel the need to read this book, borrow it from the library.

It's been a long time since John Douglas has written a strong book, and I was delighted to find that this is his strongest book in years. I often have wondered when Douglas was suddenly going to run out of ideas to work from, when the Douglas writing well was going to run dry, and indeed, for a while it seemed that he was just running the same idea over and over, or running new ideas weakly.

With this book, we get a nice taste of Douglas's profiling and an in-depth look at many cases that have bothered all of us for a long time in terms of their never having been solved.

I found it very interesting that this book is so in-depth that Doulas even includes the Lawrencia Bembenek case, one that even while it happened, was mostly local in interest rather than national.

Douglas carries us from the unsolved "Jack the Ripper" case all the way to the JonBenet Ramsey case, and shows us how he'd solve the crimes and who possible suspects might be. I find this clever and interesting writing.

He gives powerful energy particularly to the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Zodiac serial killer, and in these two sections, he is at his best, and really gets the reader deeply involved and Douglas himself writing with great skill and powerful ideas.

The only weak link in the book is the section on the JonBenet Ramsey killing, which section seems more like "In Defense of John Douglas's Profiling."

Other than the Ramsey section, this is an excellent and even thrilling book, and the first Douglas book in a long time that I couldn't put down.

I admit I wasn't familiar with Douglas' earlier works or his connection with the Ramsey case before buying this: what drew me to the book were both the historical murders (Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, & The Lindbergh case), and Douglas' way of approaching them, weighing all the evidence, considering victimology, the various suspects, and profiling the killer. What kept the book from being dry was Douglas' writing style, the fact that he spoke in his own voice, and not the voice of a police report. This offered a chance to see not just into the mind of the UNSUB's (unknown subjects), but also into the mind of Douglas, to see how he works these cases. Given the historical interest of the earlier cases, the book works quite well until the last chapter; Douglas provides many sensible hypotheses and observations to the cases of Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, the Zodiac killer and the Boston strangler.

However, the last chapter, dealing with the JonBenet Ramsey murder, is difficult going from the start, given Douglas' relation to the case. Obviously, he can't be completely objective. While he does go through all the evidence as meticulously as in the other chapters, he seems to be too close to the events in question. After describing an interview with John Ramsey and his lawyer, which ended in tears being shed by both men, Douglas writes, "Could this have been more staging for my benefit? I quickly concluded it was not. I think after interviewing hundreds of offenders and victims, I'm experienced enough to recognize genuine tears when I see them."

In the same chapter, Douglas argues that the child's killer would have had to enter the house and wait several hours for the Ramsey's to fall asleep before taking the girl from her bedroom. Yet in the chapter on Lizzie Borden, Douglas argues for Miss Borden's guilt by casting serious doubt that a stranger to the household would hide in the Borden house for the ninety minutes that elapsed between the two murders there.

All in all, I believe that too little time, less than four years, has passed since the Ramsey case for Douglas or anyone else to write objectively about a subject which is still so emotionally charged. Interestingly enough, in the first chapter, Douglas admits that his feelings on the Jack the Ripper case have changed in the twelve years since he participated in a television show called The Secret Indentity of Jack the Ripper. I would be curious to hear Douglas' feelings about the Ramsey case in a decade or so, after some of the lingering controversy surrounding that case has faded.

Jack the Ripper. Lizzie Borden. The Zodiac. Bruno Richard Hauptmann. The psycho who killed JonBenet Ramsey. Crispin Glover. O.k., that last name doesn't belong there, but the guy is so weird I thought I'd throw him in for good measure. All of these folks (except for Crispin Glover), according to former FBI profiler turned author John Douglas, share a common theme. One is murder, of course, but the other is their involvement in criminal cases that continue to haunt the public imagination. Plug in any one of the abovementioned names into a search engine and you'll understand why the authors chose "The Cases That Haunt Us" as the title of the book. On one of the most popular search engines JonBenet Ramsey brings up 780,000 returns. Jack the Ripper has over two million, Zodiac a million and a half. While not all of these links directly relate to these infamous cases, obviously, the numbers do show how these names have worked their way into the popular consciousness. And that occurred, sadly, because the crimes documented in this book are truly hideous, bone-chilling incidents of murder most foul that stand out even in a country as violent as America.

John Douglas is a familiar name to those of us who follow dastardly deeds. He once worked as one of the premier criminal profilers at the FBI. Profiling is a cutting edge psychological approach to fighting crime that attained national prominence thanks to the film "The Silence of the Lambs". It's also a lot older than the FBI. Profiling an unknown criminal in an attempt to catch him or her stretches all the way back to the 19th century. But Douglas and his ilk updated the techniques and have used them to catch many murderers. Clever killers who would never have been captured are now sitting in prison thanks to profiling. So what exactly is profiling? Well, according to this book it involves assembling every scrap of available evidence and using said evidence to assemble a mental profile of the suspect. Douglas and his colleagues then determine if the killer is "organized" or "disorganized". They can then use the profile to identify likely suspects. Many times their profile matches a person being held in another, minor case. The purpose of "The Cases That Haunt Us" is, therefore, an attempt to apply profiling to major unsolved crimes. The results are, to say the least, interesting and likely controversial.

If you believe Lizzie Borden killed her father with forty whacks, Douglas agrees with you--except for the forty whacks part. It took far fewer blows to do in Andrew Borden. But Douglas does believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lizzie killed her father and stepmother. He also comes up with a compelling suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders, although it's nothing we haven't seen in other treatments on the monster of Whitechapel. His analysis of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping endorses the view taken by history, i.e. that Bruno Richard Hauptmann was guilty of the crime, if not its prime architect. As for the Zodiac case...well...Douglas does a great job summarizing his terrible crime spree. Coming up with a viable, living suspect is another matter entirely. He also tackles the Black Dahlia mutilation, Bambi Bembenek, and the Boston Strangler outrages. He doesn't really shed new light on these cases, at least not in my opinion, but he does do an excellent job of assembling the facts and giving us an insight or two into the twisted minds that carried out the crimes. Ahh, to have had a modern profiler back in Jack the Ripper's day!

The most controversial part of the book deals with the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. If you ever want to read about a crime that chills the blood, peruse the various accounts of this horrific killing. It's a case so bizarre in nearly every one of its aspects that solving the crime has proved insurmountable to everyone involved. That doesn't stop Douglas, who once worked as a paid advisor to John and Patsy Ramsey, from taking a crack at this mystifying incident. Those who believe the Ramseys killed their daughter will fume at Douglas's conclusions. He believes that an intruder invaded the house and murdered the young beauty queen. So do I, actually, although there's always that little part of me that suspects the parents. How else to explain the pineapple on the table, or that weird ransom note? To totally exclude the parents, one has to believe them incapable of carrying out such an evil act, and we know from the newspapers and television that such evil acts (and far worse) occur every day. We can't seem to rely on the evidence, which points to just about everyone in JonBenet's life as a possible suspect. Douglas does a great job of condensing the pertinent facts down to a few pages, but his analysis will do nothing to stop the endless speculation concerning the case that continues unabated to this day.

On the whole, I'd say "The Cases That Haunt Us" is a worthy effort. It's not going to solve any of these cases, or even bring about a seismic shift in how we view these crimes, but it is a well-written account of these nightmarish events. I would definitely recommend this book to someone just starting to read about famous crimes. Douglas's ability to summarize the evidence is masterful, always a plus when you're refreshing the old memory banks or just charting a course into the dark waters of real life murder and mayhem. If you're an old hand looking for new information on Saucy Jacky, Lizzie, and JonBenet, I'd probably look elsewhere. You have already seen everything that appears here, and you have already heard about the suspects Douglas names in these pages.

THE CASES THAT HAUNT US provides fascinating and convincing insights into some very high-visibility crimes. When Douglas says Jack the Ripper was So-and-So or someone like So-and-So (I don't want to give you a spoiler here), I believe him. Douglas makes solid arguments regarding Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Zodiac. Those chapters kept me turning the pages and then wanting to learn more. I ordered additional Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden books and videos...even before I finished reading CASES.

Which brings me to the last chapter, on JonBenet Ramsey. That chapter read too much like a justification of Douglas's controversial defense of the Ramseys, and less like a profile. After all, he didn't have access to the evidence he would normally use to make a profile, so how could he really decide that the Ramseys are innocent? He measures other theorists with the yardsticks: "people don't act out of character. If they appear to, it is only because you don't understand the character well enough," and "'when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'" Douglas would do well to measure himself with those yardsticks, too.

In retrospect, the "look and feel" of the beginning chapters of CASES doesn't seem to match the last chapter, and vice versa. Douglas and Olshaker seem to make careful studies of the historic cases, then quickly zoom over decades to Douglas's defense of his position regarding the Ramseys. Only a few references to the earlier murders tie the chapters together. Perhaps...the earlier chapters were included only as a build-up to JonBenet Ramsey. Alternatively, perhaps Douglas and Olshaker were writing a history, then decided to tack on JonBenet Ramsey. Or, maybe they knew that Jack the Ripper and JonBenet Ramsey would sell, and therefore added some cases in between.

That said, the bottom line is that CASES is a slightly disjointed but intriguing book from beginning to end. There's something here for those interested in history, and those interested in current events.

This is one of those books that can completely change your view of events on a daily basis. It's the best of Douglas' books, and it creates order out of what had once been utter chaos. His Jack the Ripper chapter was particularly valuable. There has been so much garbage written about that case that Douglas's logical analysis was very welcome. After reading this book, I can't look at any crime the same way again, and I have also come to a different understanding of human psychology. I have recommended this book to everyone I know, and even the skeptical ones, once they started it, couldn't put it down! It made the rounds of my office, and then of my friends, and then of my friends' friends! Warning: it can be grim and horrific. The Lindbergh baby case and the JonBenet Ramsey cases in particular were painful. The authors are skilled at conveying the horrors of these crimes, yet at the same time really delving into the psyches of the criminals in an unflinching way.