Preface

Author's Note

In my three decades of writing about actual crimes, only once have I been personally involved in a case before I wrote about it. That, of course, was the story of Ted Bundy, who had been my partner at Seattle's Crisis Clinic a few years before he was exposed as a merciless serial killer. During the years I knew him, I had no more knowledge of the man behind the "mask" than anyone else who interacted with him. Indeed, I had a contract to write a book about an unknown killer — my first book contract — only to find out I would be writing about my friend.

Now, twenty years after that almost incomprehensible coincidence, another singular circumstance has touched me, making this book much more than the recounting of a tragedy that echoes and re-echoes in the lives of so many people. In a sense, I was chosen by the victim herself to tell her story, even though we never spoke, never met, and when I read about her fate, I had no reason to believe that we had any connection at all.

Her name was Sheila Bellush, and she was the age of my daughters. The premonition that haunted her for the last ten years of ... read full excerpt from: Every Breath You Take: A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder ebook