About the Author

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.

Stephen Singular has authored or coauthored seventeen previous books, including numerous New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestsellers. His titles include Presumed Guilty: An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, the Media, and the Culture of Pornography; and Anyone You Want Me to Be: A True Story of Sex and Death on the Internet, coauthored with legendary FBI profiler John Douglas. Formerly a staff writer for the Denver Post, he lives in Denver. Visit his website at www.stephensingular.com.

Reviews

"Publishers Weekly" Fascinating....The sordid and horrific story of John Robinson, the nation's -- if not the world's -- first Internet serial killer.

"The Washington Post" Riveting.

Douglas (The Cases That Haunt Us)-criminal profiler, ex-FBI agent, true crime writer and supposedly the model for a key character in Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs- presents the sordid and horrific case of John Robinson, "the nation's-if not the world's-first Internet serial killer." A chubby middle-aged father of four with a long history as a con man, Robinson explored the local s&m underground of Kansas City while skillfully using Internet chat groups to lure sexually adventurous women to Kansas, where he killed six of them, and perhaps five more, before his arrest in 2000. Douglas's methodical pace and his careful accretion of detail to describe bizarre crimes committed by seemingly ordinary people is highly reminiscent of the work of true crime writer Ann Rule, with Douglas seeing the case as being "about sex among unglamorous people and how the Internet had unleashed so many pent-up possibilities." He also spends a lot of time describing how the proliferation of porn-related sites on the Internet has made it "the fastest-growing criminal frontier in cyberspace." While much of this is fascinating, Douglas too often breaks his tone to issue simplistic warnings to the reader ("Nobody can any longer afford to be naive when it comes to cyberspace"). Johnson, writing with journalist Singular, helpfully offers an appendix featuring "tips for helping adults and kids avoid the dangers of on-line predators." (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

"Publishers Weekly" Fascinating....The sordid and horrific story of John Robinson, the nation's -- if not the world's -- first Internet serial killer.
"The Washington Post" Riveting.