ShadowMan, Ron Franscell
ShadowMan, Ron Franscell
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ShadowMan
An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling

Author: Ron Franscell

Narrator: Patty Nieman, Chris Berger

Unabridged: 8 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 03/01/2022

Synopsis

"Mindhunter crossed with American Gothic. This chilling story has the ghostly unease of a nightmare."—Michael Cannell, author of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling

The pulse-pounding account of the first time in history that the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit created a psychological profile to catch a serial killer

On June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana campground where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of their tent and snatched her from under their noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished into thin air, plucked by a shadow.

The largest manhunt in Montana’s history ensued, led by the FBI. As days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months, Special Agent Pete Dunbar attended a workshop at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virgina, led by two agents who had hatched a radical new idea: What if criminals left a psychological trail that would lead us to them? Patrick Mullany, a trained psychologist, and Howard Teten, a veteran criminologist, had created the Behavioral Science Unit to explore this new "voodoo" they called “criminal profiling.”

At Dunbar’s request, Mullany and Teten built the FBI’s first profile of an unknown subject: the UnSub who had snatched Susie Jaeger and, a few months later, a nineteen-year-old waitress. When a suspect was finally arrested, the profile fit him to a T...

About Ron Franscell

Ron Franscell is the author of numerous books, including Delivered from Evil: True Stories of Ordinary People Who Faced Monstrous Mass Killers and Survived, Angel Fire, and The Deadline. His writing has been compared to Truman Capote, Charles Frazier, and Robert Olen Butler-diverse, poetic, evocative, and muscular. His writing has appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He has been a guest on CNN, NPR, and other major broadcast outlets all over America. He appears regularly in crime documentaries on Investigation Discovery, History Channel, and A&E. Ron lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Reviews

Goodreads review by JanB

I love everything about how the mind works, so I find the subject of true crime/criminal profiling endlessly fascinating. What it is not, is a voyeuristic pleasure in the suffering of others. Instead, I want to know what drives someone to perpetrate such evil against a fellow human being. I want to......more

Goodreads review by Debra

FBI Profiling. They have become adept at catching killers. The Behavioral Science Unit created a psychological profile to catch a serial killer for the first time in history when seven-year-old Suzie Jaeger disappeared from the tent she was sleeping in with her siblings. June 25, 1973 The Jaeger fami......more

Goodreads review by CYIReadBooks

It began with the disappearance of little Suzie Jaeger. Only seven years old at the time, Suzie was abducted from the camping tent she shared with her sister and brothers. Then, nearly a year after little Suzie’s disappearance, nineteen year old Sandy Smallegan vanishes without a trace. It would be a......more

Quotes

Praise for ShadowMan

"Ron Franscell has written criminal profiling’s origin story, an urgent and obsessive true-crime tale that transcends the genre. ShadowMan ramps up to an almost unbearable pitch, Mindhunter crossed with 'American Gothic.' This chilling story has the ghostly unease of a nightmare—as atmospheric and unnerving a story as you’ll ever read."—Michael Cannell, author of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling
 
“If any modern crime writer should bear the mantle of the late, great Jack Olsen it is Ron Franscell. He’s one of our most provocative authors in any genre. . . Here, he does his usual splendid job of weaving fear, monstrosity, and place into a vivid, harrowing story about an epic moment in forensic history. Nobody does it better.”—Dr. Vincent DiMaio, celebrated medical examiner and author of Forensic Pathology

“A thrill ride through the entangled brutality and brilliance that gave birth to one of the FBI’s most intriguing forensic tools: criminal profiling."—John Douglas, legendary FBI profiler and author of Mindhunter
 
“A brilliant, long overdue page-turner of a story about the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit Mindhunters.”—Peter Vronsky, author of American Serial Killers

“Ron Franscell has always been in the upper echelon of true-crime authors. ShadowMan is his crowning achievement. Bravo to a master of the genre!”—Gregg Olsen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of If You Tell and The Hive

“A thrilling book about the lengths to which investigators went to catch an elusive killer and a pivotal moment in the history of criminal investigation.”—Library Journal

"ShadowMan makes an important contribution to the history of profiling as well as a more gripping true-crime narrative than the popular fiction we see about profilers today.”—Psychology Today

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