Why would a man kill his lover's husband and then his wife, the woman who fought successfully to have him paroled from prison? Why would he risk arrest by kidnapping the child of another woman who adored him?
Because they were...
Worth More Dead
A cold case reopened -- and solved -- with dogged police work and new evidence. One of the shocking true crimes of passion and greed from Ann Rule's Crime Files.
Former Marine sergeant and judo instructor Roland Pitre Jr. claimed it was all an elaborate plan to win back his wife's love -- it wasn't supposed to end with her dead body in the trunk of a car. Nearly twenty years later, he acknowledged that he had hired someone to kill his estranged wife in 1988, though his alleged excuse for why a monstrous "mistake" happened is as shocking and convoluted as the crime itself. Eventually, he was charged with first-degree murder in the long-unsolved death of Cheryl Pitre, after a mysterious witness betrayed Pitre to save his own skin. Tracing back the dark and bloody path of Pitre's life, two generations of detectives found a chain of brutal and terrifying crimes by a man who manipulated the courts and prisons to walk free.
Go deep inside the darkest crimes and twisted minds of the most baffling killers and schemers -- with this collection of chilling cases from Ann Rule, "America's best true-crime writer"
Ann Rule is the author of more than two dozen New York Times bestsellers, all of them still in print. A former Seattle police officer, she knows the crime scene firsthand. She is a certified instructor for police training seminars and lectures frequently to law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and forensic science organizations, including the FBI. For more than two decades, she has been a powerful advocate for victims of violent crime. She has testified before U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittees on serial murder and victims' rights, and was a civilian adviser to the VI-CAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). A graduate of the University of Washington, she holds a Ph.D. in Humane Letters from Willamette University. She lives near Seattle and can be contacted through her Web page at www.annrules.com.
--This text refers to the
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
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!)
First, I am a fan of Ann Rule. I feel she handles her genre expertly. With the past few crime files books, however, I found myself becoming a little disappointed although I still enjoyed her books. I felt that too much time was spent on the detectives (yes, I am sure that her police background makes her partial) and I found that old cases were being written about without any new information added. Along came this book and I purchased it expecting to be entertained but not expecting the book to be up to Ms. Rule's usual standard. Well, this book surprised me. I thoroughly enjoyed the five stories in this volume and I will now look at the next in the crime files a bit differently and without skepticism. I feel like this is a worthy book and not one that the publisher was in a hurry to get "out there" in order to make a buck. Whether you are new to Ann's book or someone who has read everything she has written, you will enjoy this book.
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I must admit I was giddy when I saw this at the grocery store. I so love Ann's work, that I'd read just about anything she's written. This Crime File was a great one. The first story is the more detailed of the bunch and centers on a man that got away with quite a bit in his criminal lifetime. I think the last story however, was the most personal for Rule; you can feel her empathy through the pages. "Desperate Housewife" cronicles a woman's struggle to leave an unhappy marriage and her ultimate demise by the hands of her husband.
I learn so much about the Seattle area in her books...I think I could probably visit one day and know my way around.
If you're a true crime buff, you know Rule's work and certainly don't need to be told to buy this book. If you're new to the genre and want to read a master, here she is!
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Ann is my favorite true crime writer; in fact, she's pretty much the only one I read regularly. I really enjoy her story-like style which allows the case to unfold in a very real and natural feeling way. I especially have appreciated this series, with a "main" case and then several short story length ones after.
I felt this one didn't have enough pictures. I find that a picture of the victims, killers, etc. helps make the story real (even though I know it is already). I also thought that past crime files had a sort of theme or common thread, and this one felt more random. It's still absolutely worth it. Fascinating reading, unbelievable stories.
Thanks, Ann!
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