Customer Reviews

Lethal Shadow: The Chilling True-Crime Story of a Sadistic Sex Slayer

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Story of a counterfeiting, spousal abuse, kidnapping, rape and murder. The author focuses mainly on the counterfeiting aspect and the U.S. Secret Service agents who pursued Mike DeBardeleben. You never get the feeling of really knowing the subject as you do with Jack Olsen, Ann Rule, et al. This is a problem with half the true crime books out there; probably because they are written from court transcripts and do not scratch the surface of a great story.

I am an avid true crime reader and this book wasn't worth the typing effort to order. The author focused on every pointless event of the case and crime. I honestly couldn't finish it. I made it 2/3 the way through and tossed it on the bookshelf...and believe me, it has to be bad for me not to finish it! Its to bad too, because the REAL story that he was attempting to tell was an outrageous crime that was commited and worthy story to be written about, he just couldn't get it across.

I found this book to be mildly interesting, but certainly not the best book I've read. I found it to be a bit dry at times, with too much focus on the police, FBI & Secret Service personnel and too little on the criminal and his crimes.

THIS BOOK WAS GREAT - the author didn't make it a hollywood show like ann rule, etc. He wrote the facts of the case. Explained the horrific things that this man did. As a TRUE crime book goes this is one of the best.... Ann Rule and others like her GLAM it up to tell a story for the new york times best seller list. This book states how it is - no beefing up the evidence to try to impress you. No lying and storytelling.. simply put - the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Sounds like a really interesting book. This is the updated version of the original book more stuff was added to describe the actual events that took place. This is a true adventure these agents were on and it has been narrated quite well by the author.

James Mitchell DeBardelban 3/20/40--IQ 148. Serving 375 years. (aka- Mitch, Mike, Jim). Mall Passer.

Mertz, Foos & Stephens--Secret Service Agents, fraud and counterfeiting unit.

DeB was a car thief, kidnapper, rapist, serial killer, con artist, bank robber, counterfeiter, father and husband-5x. His crime spree lasted 18 years and his fake bills ($20's) showed up in 37 states.

He also left many dead women and rape victims behind in those states too. But the police never knew he was responsible for them. Not until his storage shed was found. What a fantastic find. A gold mine of his perversions and crimes.

Roy Hazelwood , sexual crimes expert calls him the best known sexual sadist since the Marquis de Sade.

Many of the reviews are not good. This book is not boring and dull.

You have to realize that police work is months and months of plodding along and 1 day of hits. The book is straight forward on how case work is conducted. These were Secret Service agents--not sex crimes detectives. I think they did a great job. I think the author did a great job.

Mr. DeB will die in prison as he should. He is a very sick man.

You can read this book in 1 day and it has some good pictures. Please give it a try and don't be turned off by the negative reviews.

LETHAL SHADOW, an excellent entry into the true crime pantheon, is the story of the hunt for and capture of Mike DeBardeleben, an intelligent, perverted, violent and completely sociopathic career criminal. DeBardeleben's vocation was counterfeiter - something he was quite good at - and his counterfeit $20s never failed to impress. Additionally he picked up occasional income by kidnapping bank executives for ransom. He worked hard and appears to have made a decent living.
His avocation was randomly kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing women. You might say he had a double major.
Federal authorities knew DeBardeleben as a counterfeiter but uncovered his hobby by accident while searching one of his storage lockers for his printing press.
What they uncovered was brutally astounding: pornography dealing largely with inflicting pain on and degrading women, carefully written plans for his next assault, and simply awful graphic audio tapes of DeBardeleben sexually humiliating and torturing women, among them some of his five wives.

DeBardeleben was captured for the second time in his life for counterfeiting in 1983, which is when his other life came to light. The Feds inventoried massive evidence from his numerous storage facilities - he doesn't appear to have thrown much out - and made the information available to other law enforcement. Inquiries flooded in from various state jurisdictions. While it was eventually determined that DeBardeleben had been actively kidnapping, raping, and murdering for around 15 years, the true scope of his evil is unknown.
LETHAL SHADOW ends with a highly interesting epilogue detailing the meetings of his three daughters by three different wives, and particularly the account of a prison visit by Lindsay to meet her father for the first time in her life, Lindsay is quoted, "I felt really dirty around him." And later, at the end of three horrible days of visiting him, "I've never felt so helpless as I did at that point. Honestly until then I'd thought `I'm his daughter. Even if he got out of prison he'd never hurt me.' But after I met him I really felt I was nobody to him. I just FELT that way. I can't describe it. But I know I've never felt that way before, and I never want to feel that way again." And she later advises her newly found sisters, "Don't go. You don't want to see him."

Author Stephen G. Michaud has created a fascinating story. It is thoroughly researched and professionally, and reportorially written, and contains none of the phony melodrama too often found in true crime. There are no snide asides and Michaud makes no attempts to insert himself into the story. There is considerable background on DeBardeleben's early life and while that is not the main focus of the book, it gives the book depth rendering it considerably more than a simple story of an investigation.
One of my benchmarks for good true crime writing is that when you finish a book, love it, and think about what a great job the author did, you then realize that while you were reading, you were not aware of him at all. That describes LETHAL SHADOW and Michaud.

LETHAL SHADOW has been reissued as BEYOND CRUEL. They have been reviewed 12 times in total on Amazon, and not all the reviews are complimentary. But there is one 5 star review by Michelle W. Estrada, which I think, after reading other reviews, nails the reason that some of the others down rated it. She says, "The author didn't make it a Hollywood show like Ann Rule, etc. He wrote the facts of the case." Insightful, Michelle!

I loved this book and recommend it unreservedly for any true crime fan who likes TRUE crime as opposed to soap opera.

This item came WAY before the expected arrival date and was in the condition the seller stated it would be. I was very satisfied with it :)

I found this book to drag on so much that I never finished it. It was just simply too full of facts and was a complete bore to read. I get enough required dry reading material in my college courses.