CASE STUDIES · MURDER
Gary C. King
Gary C. King, a freelance author and lecturer, is regarded by readers and critics alike as one of the world's foremost crime writers, a reputation he has earned over the last 28 years with the publication of more than 400 articles in true crime magazines in the United States, Canada, and England. King’s stories regularly appeared in True Detective, Official Detective, Inside Detective, Front Page Detective, and Master Detective magazines, until those magazines’ demise in the mid-1990s. More recently he has found alternate venues for his stories, including Crime Library. He is also the author of several true crime books including: Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer, Driven to Kill, Web of Deceit, Blind Rage, Savage Vengeance (with Don Lasseter), An Early Grave, The Texas 7, Murder in Hollywood, Angels of Death, Stolen in the Night, and Love, Lies, and Murder. An Almost Perfect Murder will be published in September 2008. Driven to Kill, the story of serial child killer Westley Allan Dodd's killing spree, was published in April 1993 by Pinnacle Books and was nominated for an Anthony Award in the Best True Crime Book category at Bouchercon 25. Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer, details the bizarre case of Dayton Leroy Rogers, Oregon's worst serial killer to date. Blood Lust was published in December 1992 under NAL/Dutton's Onyx imprint as an original paperback and is now in its twelfth U.S. printing. A German language edition of Blood Lust was published later, in 1995. Both Blood Lust and Driven to Kill were chosen as featured selections of Doubleday's now defunct True Crime Book Club. King has also written articles on several celebrated cases that include: "Son of Sam" David Berkowitz; the Hillside Stranglers; Jim Jones and the Guyana Massacre; D.B. Cooper; Gary Gilmore; John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman; and Seattle's bizarre Chinatown Massacre in the 1980s. He has also contributed to several true crime compilations books with various publishers. The subject of King's other books include: Blind Rage, about suspected serial murderer Darren Dee O'Neall, was published by Dutton-Signet under their Onyx imprint in August 1995, and was reprinted in 2001 by the Mystery Writers of America/iUniverse. Savage Vengeance was published in 1996. More recently King published An Early Grave, a book about the mysterious death of Las Vegas casino scion Ted Binion; The Texas 7: A True Story of Murder and a Daring Escape, about the infamous Texas prison break in which a dedicated cop with a family was brutally murdered; Murder in Hollywood, about the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley, actor Robert Blake's wife; Angels of Death, a story detailing the murder of Terry King in Florida, purportedly committed by King's 12- and 13-year-old sons, Derek and Alex King; and Stolen in the Night, about the horrific Joseph Edward Duncan III case out of Idaho. His latest, Love, Lies, and Murder, is about the riveting Perry March case, the shady Nashville lawyer who was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his wife, Janet, and for plotting the murders of Janet’s parents, from Pinnacle Books. He is currently at work on two additional books for Pinnacle. King also writes the Bizarre Crime of the Week blog for Investigation Discovery. King’s television appearances have included Entertainment Tonight, Larry King Live, Inside Edition, Court TV, MSNBC’s Headliners and Legends, E!, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Extra TV, and several other programs. He also frequently provides radio interviews. King is an active member of the Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, American Crime Writers League, The Crime Writers' Association, National Press Club, Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors (I.R.E.) and the International Association of Crime Writers. Gary C. King is represented by agent Peter Miller, President, PMA Literary and Film Management, 45 West 21st Street, Suite 4SW, New York, NY 10010. Phone: 212-929-1222; Fax: 212-206-0238.
On a slow, chilly Saturday in December, shortly after the Lakers overcame a sixteen-point halftime deficit and beat New Jersey, I got a call from a murderer.
— from Rage
Most acclaimed
Blood Lust
Dayton Leroy Rogers was known in Portland, Oregon, as a respected businessman and devoted husband and father. But at night he abducted women, forced them into sadistic bondage games, and thrilled in their pain and mutilation. His murderous spree was stopped only after, in plain view, he slashed to death his final victim...and when a hunter accidentally stumbled onto the burial grounds of seven other women Rogers had killed one by one in the depths of Molalla Forest. This is the shocking true story of the horrifying crimes, capture, and conviction of Dayton Leroy Rogers, Oregon's mild-mannered businessman by day--vicious serial killer by night.
Dead of night
For years UN peacekeepers have been deployed to war-torn regions of the world, now it's America's turn. A crippling terrorist attack has left the United States cities deserted, it's countryside set ablaze and the government shaken to its knees. Then in the aftermath of the attack civil war has broken out, that is until the UN arrives to restore peace. Sam Simpson is a young idealistic journalist from Canada who is looking for some adventure. So he volunteers to become a record-keeper for a UN war-crimes investigation team at work in upper New York State. While Sam and his team are travelling through the New York countryside, they are searching for evidence of war atrocities, they soon learn that death can strike from any farmhouse, road corner or rest area. But even more chilling than that is when he begins to suspect that there is a traitor in their group, who is trying not only to conceal evidence of this war crime but who is willing to kill them all to do it...
An early grave
On September 17, 1998, police found Las Vegas gambling magnate Ted Binion lying dead on the floor of his palatial home, an empty bottle of Xanax beside him. The police had been called by Binion's live-in lover, Sandra Murphy, 23, a California girl who had been working in a Vegas strip club when Binion had first met her. At first it seemed it was a fatal drug overdose that hilled the handsome multi-millionaire. But was it? A few days later, Binion's "friend" Rick Tabish was arrested for trying to break into a vault where the eccentric millionaire had stored seven million dollars' worth of silver bars and coins. Family members hired ex-homicide detective-turned-private investigator Tom Dillard to start digging into the case. Dillard turned over the evidence he collected to Las Vegas police. What they found led to Binion's death being ruled a homicide and Murphy and Tabish's arrest for murder. The state said they were greedy lovers who'd conspired to kill Binion before he could strike Murphy out of his will, while the defense claimed that his vengeful family was trying to railroad Murphy to keep her from inheriting her fair share of the estate. The two sides collided in court in what became the Southwest's Murder Trial of the Century! But in a dramatic chain of events, both Murphy and Tabish were acquitted of murdering Binion.