Killer's Shadow

June 1, 2020

Douglas, the FBI's first full-timer, again joins forces with writer and documentary filmmaker Olshaker, following up on their streak of New York Times best sellers (Mindhunter) to investigate an early test case for the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit: the late 1970s rampage of Joseph Paul Franklin, a White Nationalist serial killer. With a 50,000-copy first printing; still scarily relevant.

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Starred review from September 28, 2020
In 1977, Joseph Paul Franklin, the subject of this thrilling true crime account from Douglas and Olshaker (Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit), embarked on a cross-country racist killing spree that claimed at least 15 lives. In 1980, Franklin was detained by police on a weapons charge, but managed to escape from jail before authorities could link him to the shootings. That’s when Douglas, one of the FBI’s first full-time profilers, stepped in. Douglas learned from a blood bank receipt police found in Franklin’s car that he was financing his spree in part by selling plasma, and he was apprehended at a blood bank in Florida two months later. Franklin racked up several life sentences on federal civil rights charges for his killings of African Americans and Jews, but it wasn’t until he confessed to a 1977 synagogue sniper attack that killed one man and injured two others that he got the death penalty in 1997. He was executed in 2013. Douglas’s profile and later jail house interviews with Franklin did much to aid law enforcement in identifying similar race killers and assassins. The authors write with clarity and authority as they lay out a devastating portrait of an unrepentant racist. This is a must read for those looking for insight into the minds of those instigating racial violence today. Agent: Frank Weimann, Folio Literary Management.

November 15, 2020
Fast-paced tale of the search for a racist serial killer in the early days of criminal profiling. As an FBI agent and instructor, Douglas largely invented the criminal profile, a branch of psychology of the sort that fuels TV shows like NCIS and Criminal Minds. He gained a reputation for ferreting out likely perpetrators by means of patterns. For example, when a young woman was murdered in the Georgia woods, he specified a subject in his 20s, with a military record ending in a dishonorable discharge, a smug attitude, a blue-collar trade, and a dark vehicle--the last because, he and Olshaker write, "I had observed that orderly, compulsive people tended to drive darker cars." Bingo: He perfectly described a subject whom the Georgia police had just interviewed. These skills come into play when the narrative turns to the search for the virulently racist Joseph Paul Franklin, who targeted Jews, Black men, and, more pointedly, White women who dated the latter. Sometimes his victims were Black children, targets of opportunity. "Though it still wasn't part of the cultural lexicon," write the authors, "by then we were already using the phrase serial killer to reference a predatory offender who killed three or more victims at different times and places." They found Franklin also was implicated in the shootings of Larry Flynt, who published pornographic images of interracial couples, and Vernon Jordan, the civil rights leader. Douglas and Olshaker carefully lay out the trail of evidence but come to unsettling conclusions. Although such killers are marked by a sense of powerlessness and alienation, the racist murderer at the heart of this book has also inspired other killers such as Dylann Roof. As the authors write about Franklin, "his unwavering dedication to fomenting hate made him a potential inspiration and symbol to others with similar orientation." A taut, terrifying view of White supremacy taken to murderous extremes, now all too common.

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