The Scientist and the Serial Killer

“Lise Olsen is not only a masterful investigative reporter, she’s one hell of a storyteller. Her writing jumps off the page. Her sentences are completely dramatic, her character descriptions spot on. I felt a pit in my stomach reading The Scientist and the Serial Killer.”—Skip Hollandsworth, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Assassin   “The Scientist and the Serial Killer is a masterwork of crime writing. Lise Olsen has taken a fifty-year-old story and made it new and fresh and terrifyingly real. I hate to use the old cliché, but for anyone interested in crime narratives this is a must-read. Her brilliantly organized pages turn themselves.”—S. C. Gwynne, author of the New York Times bestsellers Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell “A murder mystery in reverse, The Scientist and the Serial Killer traces the hunt for an essential type of justice: identity. This is the story of a scientist’s obsession to bring that justice to the families of a killer’s unknown victims, five decades after they vanished. No surprise that Olsen, who has devoted much of her celebrated career in journalism to the missing, simultaneously delivers a fascinating history of forensic science.”—Claudia Rowe, author of The Spider and the Fly “The once forgotten murder victims of a Houston serial killer are lost no more, their stories brought achingly to life in an act of redemptive recognition that is both haunting and heartbreaking. The Scientist and the Serial Killer is essential reading, for the depth and precision of its meticulous reporting, for its gripping storytelling, and for its insistence on providing the long-overdue justice these Lost Boys never received in their own brief lives. Its elegiac power has stayed with me long after the final pages.”—Ellen McGarrahan, author of Two Truths and a Lie “Lise Olsen has expertly crafted a fascinating, in-depth examination of one of the most horrific serial-killing sprees in U.S. history and the dedicated forensic scientist who unraveled a mystery that haunted Houston for decades. A must read for CSI and true crime fans, The Scientist and the Serial Killer kept me up late into the night. Highly recommended.”—Kathryn Casey, author of In Plain Sight “The Scientist and the Serial Killer is a brilliant work of reporting and writing as Olsen takes readers on a dark voyage into a mass murder that has haunted Houston for decades. But instead of stopping there, she recounts how one brave forensic investigator finally brought light to families whose private investigations and perpetual grief had been repeatedly ignored by authorities. Olsen’s mystery story is impossible to put down, but the families’ losses and her heroine’s persistence will stay with you forever.”—Mimi Swartz, author of Ticker