KONDRO - The Untold Story of the Longview Serial Killer

16 Photos; Biblio; Indexed
"I inhaled their last breaths," Kondro revealed to the author with whom he corresponded for two years before his death in prison. He wanted her to know "how a good kid becomes a serial killer of young girls...Look what I have done -- I took a whole community's children." And, for decades, a whole community "never told." The author hoped to solve two mysteries -- to find and bring home the rest of the killer's small victims who police speculated to be as many as 70 missing young girls, and also to find out what made Kondro a child killer.. A feature story about this book was published in Longview, Washington, the town where Kondro lived and preyed on his neighbors' children. The mere mention of his name still angers the townspeople, many of whom "kept the secret," as in the Sandsusky/Penn State child molestation case. Some don't want anyone to read this book and have said so with bogus "reviews"-- which in itself is an interesting study on the long lasting effect this killer had on some people. Probably those most hostile to this book's existence have never come to terms with the fact that they invited the killer into their homes where he was given access to their children despite that he was known to be alcohol and drug addicted from a very early age. One person posted "no one should buy the book because serial killers are monsters." Another wrote that they knew Kondro well and described where Kondro buried one of the bodies that was never found -- but never told police -- why not? And the mother of that same victim emailed her belief that Kondro never killed her daughter despite that Kondro confessed to it but the girl was never found. This book balances what Kondro revealed about his life and his secrets with accounts by detectives; news reporters, records, and those who knew him . The author's purpose was to discover "the elephant in the room" -- what Joe Kondro had hidden in plain sight. In that, she succeeded.