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In Loving Memory of Lisa Mitchell

1963–2002

Forever by your side

A Message from the Author

My wife, Lisa Mitchell, died unexpectedly on April 28, 2002. She was 1,200 miles away visiting her parents, while I was halfway through with this book.

For the next eight months I could not think of anything but my grief. The last thing I wanted to do was to write a book about rape and murder. But I remembered how she listened to me read the manuscript while she cooked pasta in our cozy West Hollywood apartment. How she made helpful suggestions when I went astray. How she desperately wanted me to tell this story.

Lisa wanted me to tell it because she had also been a rape victim. Lisa, always stoic by nature, maintained an untarnished demeanor her whole life. She chose not to discuss it. That began to change in the last couple of years. She started to express an interest in speaking out about what happened to her. She hoped I would become a successful writer so she could help others.

One of Lisa’s two rapists was freed in early 2002. He supposedly “found God” and was living a “righteous” life. She worried that this man could become another Rex Krebs, freed from prison for a vicious crime, only to be paroled and allowed to walk the streets. She wanted this book to be published to alert the public to the absurdity of paroling rapists.

On the morning of April 28, I completed the section on recidivism among rapists as well as the underreporting of rapes by victims. Lisa never got to read those passages.

At 8:00 P.M. I got the call from my Mom. Lisa had died in her childhood home from sudden arrhythmic death syndrome. She was only thirty-eight years old. She never got to help other rape victims.

Maybe now she can.