Double Lives: True Stories of Crime and Addition in America

John Wayne Gacy. Ted Bundy. Jeffrey Dahmer. Everyone has heard of these sociopaths and their crimes, and yet, no one is scared of them. Why? Well for one, they’re all dead, but it’s more that — after all, movie villains aren’t even real, yet people remain frightened of the bad guys on the screen long after the lights come up. No, what makes these criminals seem almost pedestrian is that we can see them for what they are; they hold no mystery. Dastardly though they were, they’re famous. They’re celebrities. For all intents and purposes, they’re Paris Hilton.

Why are kids afraid of the monsters under their beds?
Because what really shocks us is the unknown. It’s the commonality shared by Adnan from Serial and Jame Gumb from Silence of the Lambs: the criminals who blend in, who don’t stand out, are the ones about that captivate us the most.

Double Lives is a book that chronicles those very monsters who walk unnoticed among us — the neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives, . It’s a nonfiction account, an expose and a search, that details the exploits of some of the worst Americans in recent history, all of whom succeeded in going undetected for years while perpetrating one gross misdeed after another… and all in their own hometowns. Gender? Race? Age? Socioeconomic class? It doesn’t matter. All stripes of people from all walks of life are profiled within.