About this ebook
George Russell Jr. had a gift. He could walk into any room, any bar, any party, any crowd, and within minutes everyone knew his name. Women were drawn to him. Men wanted to be around him. He was handsome, magnetic, and unfailingly entertaining. He knew how to make people feel seen, special, and safe. He was also, beneath every carefully constructed smile, a predator.
In the summer of 1990, three women were murdered in the affluent suburbs of Seattle. Their bodies were posed, arranged with grotesque deliberateness, as if the killer wanted to send a message. Law enforcement was baffled. The community was terrified. And George Russell Jr., the charmer everyone knew and liked, kept right on smiling.
Jack Olsen, the New York Times bestselling author hailed as "the dean of true crime," traces Russell's life from his rootless childhood. A Black child growing up isolated in a white suburb, developing a performer's instinct for becoming whatever each audience needed him to be, through his years as a small-time burglar and accomplished liar, to the murderous rage hiding beneath the polish. He gives full humanity to the victims, refuses to reduce them to footnotes in a killer's story, and turns a careful eye on the culture that enabled Russell for so long. A world where charm was currency and nobody wanted to look too closely.
Because Russell didn't just fool his victims. He fooled everyone.
As the New York Times wrote: "Like fine cinema vérité, Charmer mesmerizes us with the sense of watching real life, unaugmented, move before our eyes."
With compassion for the victims and unflinching clarity about the killer, Charmer reminds us why Jack Olsen was known as the dean of true crime.
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About the author
Jack Olsen is the award-winning author of thirty-three books, which have been published in fifteen countries and eleven languages. Olsen’s journalism earned the National Headliners Award, Chicago Newspaper Guild’s Page One Award, commendations from Columbia and Indiana Universities, the Washington State Governor’s Award, the Scripps-Howard Award and other honors. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as “an American treasure.”
Olsen was described as “the dean of true crime authors” by the Washington Post and the New York Daily News and “the master of true crime” by the Detroit Free Press and Newsday. Publishers Weekly called him “the best true crime writer around.” His studies of crime are required reading in university criminology courses and have been cited in the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In a page-one review, the Times described his work as “a genuine contribution to criminology and journalism alike.”
Olsen is a two-time winner in the Best Fact Crime category of the Mystery Writers of America, Edgar award.
