For their wedding portrait, petite Pat Taylor and handsome Tom Allanson posed as Rhett and Scarlett. Both came from fine Southern families, and dreamed of the Tara-like plantation where they would grow roses, raise horses, and move in the genteel circles of Atlanta society. Less than two months later, their dream exploded in terror and murder: their beautiful home mysteriously burned to the ground and Tom was convicted of the brutal slaying of his mother and father.
Pat's only brother had died in a puzzling suicide, her grandparents-in-law were poisoned with arsenic, and no one -- from her wealthy employers to her own children -- was safe when Pat Allanson didn't get her way. It took Georgia lawmen more than two decades to stop her for good -- if indeed they have.
In this fascinating account, Ann Rule delivers a tour de force: a whirlwind of misguided love, denial, guilt, and passions out of control; a series of brilliantly manipulated crimes; the bizarre and horrifying tale of two families brought to ruin; and, at the center of it all, the heartless, supremely selfish sociopath whose evil hid behind soft words and gentle manners, but who destroyed -- without mercy -- those who loved her.
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Spoiled rotten by her family, Patricia Vann Radcliffe Taylor Allinson, a Georgia beauty whose goal in life was to emulate Scarlett O'Hara, led a life of deadly horror. Fed by her family's constant devotion from early childhood through middle age, Pat, who could do nothing wrong by her family's standards, could do nothing right in the view of society. A narcissistic personality, without a shred of conscience, she systematically destroyed her own family. Nothing she ever had was enough. She had to make things go her way and she did: through manipulation, poisoning, theft, lies, and deceit. Her presence was a constant danger to people who stood in her way: her brother a suicide, her new in-laws shot dead, her grandparents-in-law nearly poisoned by arsenic, her employer severely overdosed, her daughter, who finally saw the awful truth about her mother, possibly poisoned. Rule's tautly written study of this diabolical woman constantly fascinates the reader. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/92. - Sandra K. Lindheimer, Middlesex Law Lib., Cambridge, Mass. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Rule hits the bull's-eye." -- Publisher's Weekly
"A headlong plunge into the depths of a sociopathic mind, told with a master's hand." -- Kirkus Reviews
I am an author of true-crime books, and I'm now working on my 25th and 26th: NO REGRETS and TOO LATE TO SAY GOODBYE. I have lived in the Seattle Area for many years. Before that, I grew up in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and lived in Texas, Oregon, and near Niagara Falls, N.Y. I always wanted to be a police officer--because my grandfather was a sheriff in Michigan. I joined the Seattle Police Department when I was 21, worked a year and a half, but then I couldn't pass the eye test. After five years of rejection slips, I finally sold my first article for $35! Soon, I found my niche when I began writing for the fact-detective magazines like TRUE DETECTIVE in 1970, and I wrote more than a thousand homicide cases, and went to hundreds of trials. My first book, THE STRANGER BESIDE ME, was about Ted Bundy, but, amazingly, I had the book contract to write about an unknown killer six months before Bundy was identified as the "Ted Killer." And I had known him all along, and didn't realize it; he was my partner in the all-night shift at Seattle's Crisis Clinic! Oddly, I started out writing humor, but unless you are Erma Bombeck, Garrison Keillor, or Fanny Flagg or Dave Barry, it's hard to make a living. Now I write humor for fun and for my friends.
I graduated in Creative Writing from the U of Washington, with minors in criminology and psychology. I also have an AA degree in law enforcement, taking classes in crime scene investigation, arrest, search and seizure, crime scene photography and forensic science. I've lectured in seminars all across America to detectives, prosecutors, and even at the FBI Academy. My subjects have been serial murder, high profile offenders, and women who kill. I write two books every year--one hardcover single-case book, and one Ann Rule's True Crime Files original paperback. Although people tend to think I write only about the Northwest, I go wherever the cases are most interesting. I've written about murder cases in Florida, Georgia, New York, Kansas, Texas, Hawaii, and California, too.
I raised five children on my own--starting out with articles for baby care magazines, Sunday features, true confessions, and then "slicks" like Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Reader's Digest. Now, my children are grown.
I like to keep in very close touch with my readers, and I'm able to do that with a weblog and a guestbook on my website pages at www.annrules.com This also gives readers a chance to talk with each other, and its' a pretty lively spot--as I'm sure this page will be.
To choose a book subject, I weed through about 3,000 suggestions from readers. I'm looking for an "anti-hero" whose eventual arrest shocks those who knew him (or her): attractive, brilliant, charming, popular, wealthy, talented, and much admired in their communities--but really hiding behind masks.
I'm a reader myself, and I always have several books going at once--one upstairs, downstairs, near the bathtub, in my car, and beside my hammock (in the summer, of course!)
44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsCaptivating Ann Rule story of the ultimate sociopath, April 17, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Everything She Ever Wanted (Mass Market Paperback)
The most horrific, conniving, controlling, murderous, childish, sick person I have ever read about. Ann Rule is excellent in plotting the story of a truly heinous pathetic soul as Pat. Her enabling, sad parents and family members are to also be responsible for allowing such appalling behavior to continue. Pat would destroy anyone who was in her way, including her own children and grandchildren. There was absolutely no one who was exempt. The pain caused to her own parents was another devious act. She would keep her imprisoned husband from his only family; she would keep a small son from his sick mother (Pat's daughter); she would keep a dying old man from his beloved wife. etc. After serving prison time, and released, it was shocking to learn that she would include one of her daughters into her life of crime and deceit AGAIN. But fortunately, one daughter had the tenacity and courage to report her back to authorities. Family members become enablers and someone should have stopped her long ago, before innocent people are hurt.
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This review is from: Everything She Ever Wanted (Mass Market Paperback)
I can't much improve on the one review where the fellow who wrote it said he wish he could've reached into the book and strangled Pat Allanson.
This sociopath was never made to face reality. But, then again, her mother indulged in illusion. Marguerite had three illegitimate children before she was 20 years old by a married man, but acted as if she was this paragon of virtue and looked down her nose at everyone else. Meanwhile, her precious daughter, who drove her own brother to suicide, is ruining lives right and left.
I think the entire family was nuts and if Pat Allanson got the opportunity she would just repeat her past conduct because she knows her family...save the only sane member, her daughter, Susan...will continue to defend her and cover up for her!
Heaven preserve us from people who think they are entitled to everything they want and don't care who they run over to get it.
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This review is from: Everything She Ever Wanted (Mass Market Paperback)
In "Everything She Ever Wanted" we are introduced to Patricia Vann Radcliffe Taylor Allanson, a woman fixated on emulating her role-model Scarlett O'Hara, a modern-day refined southern belle of infinite selfishness and a complete lack of remorse or empathy, devoid of conscience and incapable of love for anyone or anything save for herself, in search of her paradisaic "Tara".
While some have mistaken this as a story of a freak, it is quite the opposite - a tale of a clever, stubborn, adorable spoiled child whose submersion in unmitigated gratification and complete lack of disciplinary boundaries during her formative years turned the Shirley-Temple dream child into the Jekyll/Hyde adult. Do I recall that Pat Taylor Allanson served as the model for Caleb Carr's cold-blooded, manipulative, and realistic if fictional "Libby" in his chilling classic "Angel of Darkness"? If she didn't, she certainly could have.
The tale of a monster? Perhaps, but a common monster, one that breeds and multiplies and festers in the milieu of our modern society, that arises again and again, in ever more resistant strains, to test the limits of our enfeebled enforcement and justice systems.
Ms. Rule adroitly demonstrates the chameleon nature of the sociopath, the quicksilver-like ability to evade culpability and responsibility, while churning a carnage-laden path of ruined lives and festering emotional trauma through the lives of those who love them. We sense the frustration of a legal system than can never adequately resolve those crimes against the innocent which ultimately only a higher power can fully and fairly address, as is acknowledged in the novel's concluding and ironic axiom.
A fascinating read (I read it in about 3 long sittings) for those willing to wade into the restricting mire of non-idyllic reality far removed from Hollywood fantsies of quick revenge and violent retribution. Recommended.
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First Sentence:
Zebulon, the seat of Pike County, fifty miles south of Atlanta, is little more than a town square, the four streets surrounding it, and some houses radiating beyond. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
everything she ever wanted, doll room, blue jeep
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
East Point, Walter Allanson, Tom Allanson, Pat Allanson, Fulton County, Pat Taylor, Paw Allanson, Don Stoop, Carolyn Allanson, Colonel Radcliffe, Jean Boggs, Nona Allanson, Tell Road, Margureitte Radcliffe, Betty Crist, North Carolina, Michelle Berry, Bill Alford, Fanny Kate, Washington Road, Clifford Radcliffe, Norman Berry Drive, Andy Weathers, Judge Holt, Judge Wofford
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