The Cases That Haunt Us: From Jack the Ripper to Jon Benet Ramsey, The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Sheds New Light on the Mysteries That Won't Go Away

Mark Olshaker · John E. Douglas

Jan 2001 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Did Lizzie Borden murder her own father and stepmother? Was Jack the Ripper actually the Duke of Clarence? Who killed JonBenet Ramsey? #1 New York Times bestselling author and legendary FBI criminal profiler John Douglas, along with author and filmmaker Mark Olshaker—the team behind the famous Mindhunter series—explore those tantalizing questions and more in this mesmerizing work of detection.

Violent. Provocative. Shocking. Call them what you will…but don't call them open and shut.

In The Cases That Haunt Us, Douglas and Olshaker explore the mysteries that both their legions of fans and law enforcement professionals ask about most. With uniquely gripping analysis, the authors reexamine and reinterpret the accepted facts, evidence, and victimology of the most notorious murder cases in the history of crime, including the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, The Zodiac Killer, and the Whitechapel murders. The cases touch a nerve deep within us because of the personalities involved, their senseless depravity, the nagging doubts about whether justice was done, or because, in some instances, no suspect has ever been identified or caught.

Taking a fresh and penetrating look at each case, the authors reexamine and reinterpret accepted facts and victimology using modern profiling and the techniques of criminal analysis developed by Douglas within the FBI. The Cases That Haunt Us not only offers convincing and controversial conclusions, it deconstructs the evidence and widely held beliefs surrounding each case and rebuilds them—with fascinating, surprising, and haunting results.

Ratings and reviews

Great tool in learning how to profile. John Douglas is a phenomenal writer. Mindhunter was better, and Obsession was not as good as this read, to give you an idea on the calibre. Thank you, John Douglas for this informative and creative tool to help others interested in fine tunning their profiler skills.

A deep look in some of history's most understood and unsolved cases

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About the author

Mark Olshaker is an Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker and author of thirteen nonfiction books and five novels, including Einstein’s Brain and The Edge. His books with former FBI Special Agent and criminal profiling pioneer John Douglas, beginning with Mindhunter and most recently When a Killer Calls, have sold millions of copies and have been translated into many languages. Mindhunter was recently adapted by David Fincher into a critically acclaimed and award-winning dramatic series on Netflix. Olshaker and his wife, Carolyn, an attorney, live in the Washington, DC, area.

John Douglas is the legendary FBI criminal profiler and former Chief of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit where he researched, investigated, and conducted interviews of some of America’s most violent criminals. Over the past half-century, he either directly worked on or had overall supervision in over 5,000 violent crime cases. He is one of the foremost experts of the criminal mind, its methods, and motivations. Douglas is a veteran of the United States Air Force and holds a doctorate degree in Education, and lives with his wife, Pamela, in the Washington, DC, area.