Tony Ciaglia’s life changed forever when a traumatic brain injury at 15 left him uninhibited and struggling to control his temper and emotions. Searching for a way to connect, Tony turned to the unlikeliest of pastimes: writing letters to serial killers. Edgar winner Earley (Comrade J) intersperses Tony and his family’s continuing struggles to adjust to life as a TBI survivor with excerpts from Tony’s pen-pal correspondence. While he received letters from over 30 killers, his primary communications were with Arthur Shawcross, Joseph Metheny, and David Gore. Shawcross and Metheny describe in lurid detail the pleasure they derived in raping, torturing —and often eating—their prostitute victims. Tony’s brain injury made it impossible for him to judge the convicts’ heinous actions and the closer he became to his “best friends,” the more convinced Tony became that he could help bring closure to families by drawing out details from the killers about unsolved cases. While Tony’s recovery story is inspiring, the sheer amount of graphic sexual sadism and violence is overwhelming: the warning “not for the faint of heart” is an understatement. (Jan.)
The Serial Killer Whisperer: How One Man's Tragedy Helped Unlock the Deadliest Secrets of the World's Most Terrifying Killers
Narrated by Alan Sklar
Pete EarleyUnabridged — 13 hours, 14 minutes
The Serial Killer Whisperer: How One Man's Tragedy Helped Unlock the Deadliest Secrets of the World's Most Terrifying Killers
Narrated by Alan Sklar
Pete EarleyUnabridged — 13 hours, 14 minutes
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Overview
The Serial Killer Whisperer takes listeners into the minds of murderers in a way that has never been done before-straight from a killer's thoughts. It is also an inspiring-albeit sometimes terrifying-tale of an American family whose idyllic life is shattered by a terrible accident and how healing and closure came to a tormented man in the most unlikely way: by connecting with monsters.
Editorial Reviews
"For [listeners] of true crime and psychology and others interested in the workings of the brain." —Library Journal
Earley (Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness) here tells the story of Tony Ciaglia, an average 15-year-old boy whose life was tragically transformed after he suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) while operating a Jet Ski. After the accident, Tony's TBI caused him to become easily obsessed, and when he stumbled across information about a serial killing case online, he soon initiated correspondence with dozens of convicted serial killers, who also exhibited feelings of isolation and rage. Curiously, his therapist condoned the letter writing. His hobby became an obsession that continued well into his thirties, and he meticulously maintained a scrapbook of each killer's letters, even visiting some of them in prison. The effects of Tony's TBI—being both totally tolerant and obsessive compulsive—helped him gain their trust and listen without judgment to the sordid details of their murderous sprees, including torture, rape, murder, and cannibalization. He was then able to help police detectives with their investigations, bring closure to the mother of a missing child, and ultimately find a purpose in life. VERDICT For readers of true crime and psychology and others interested in the workings of the brain.—Krista Bush, Shelton Public Sch. Lib., CT
A highly disturbing, in-depth look at notorious serial killers. As a young Texan, Tony Ciaglia enjoyed a rambunctious childhood, but a near-fatal jet-ski accident left him comatose at 15. Suffering from brain damage, he was prone to angry rages, depression and obsessions, such as one with an Internet site advertising serial killer "murderabilia." After intensive research and with his therapist's blessing, Ciaglia mailed 41 introductory letters to—and received responses from—a laundry list of killers, including "Cross Country Killer" Glen Rogers, who meticulously described the details of his first murder. Regular communication emerged from the best of the worst: child rapist and cannibal Arthur Shawcross, neurotic sexual sadist David Alan Gore and Joseph Metheny, a career murderer who unremorsefully "enjoyed" the butchering and necrophilic molestation of women. Investigative journalist Earley (Comrade J, 2008, etc.) documents Ciaglia's intensive interplay with a brilliant combination of scrutiny and unobtrusive narration, allowing the verbatim letters to do the book's grisly spadework. The letters incrementally ramp up to reveal the killers' shockingly intimate secrets, including stories of their traumatic childhoods, admitted details on abandoned case files, specific directions to shallow graves and the grotesquely detailed procedurals of a kill. Ciaglia's involvement with these killers, many of whom were sympathetic to his plight, escalated to penitentiary visits, the attempted exhumation of unrecovered remains and, finally, assistance with police investigators working on cold cases. Definitely not for the faint of heart, this as a macabre, stomach-turning glimpse at true crime's most evil villains.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170522095 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 01/10/2012 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
The Serial Killer Whisperer
July 23, 1992
A half-dozen boys running barefoot down an embankment into a cove at Possum Kingdom Lake. It was shortly after four o’clock. The afternoon temperature had just peaked at 93.9 degrees. Unlike most man-made reservoirs in Texas, which were muddy, the water in this twenty-thousand-acre playground was clear blue. It was home to Camp Grady Spruce, a popular YMCA getaway about a hundred miles west of Dallas.
Tony Ciaglia, Andy Page, and Grant Cooper were among the first to reach the Yamaha WaveRunner jet-ski there. The boys had met three years ago when they were assigned to bunks in the same tent. They had been inseparable ever since. Best buds forever.
This was the first summer the camp had owned WaveRunners, and anything fast and exciting was a welcome respite at the conservative religious outpost, which traced its roots to 1949. Only in the last nine years had girls been permitted to attend the camp’s two-week sessions. The boys formed a line behind the WaveRunner and with a twist of the throttle, the WaveRunner’s powerful 650-cc engine roared to life. The first rider burst from the cove, sending a rooster spray rocketing from the tail of the red and white machine.
“Tony’s counselor had the day off,” Chris would later recall, “but it was hot and the boys wanted to take a WaveRunner out onto the lake, so they asked another counselor. He gave them the key and then disappeared, leaving them unsupervised.”
WaveRunners were supposed to be ridden only as far as a red buoy bobbing about two hundred yards offshore. After reaching the buoy, the rider returned to shore to let someone else take a turn. Andy was next in line with Tony and Grant behind him. But as the WaveRunner was returning to the cove, Andy yelled to a younger camper named David standing on the dock close to them. He was waiting to go waterskiing. Andy asked David if he wanted to switch places.
David did. He jumped into the lake and got to the head of the line at about the same time as the returning WaveRunner. He climbed aboard the WaveRunner and took off.
As the others waited in the waist-deep water for their turn, Grant splashed Tony and asked, “Have you asked her yet?”
“When we get done here,” Tony replied, smiling.
“You’d better hurry up.”
Tony had a crush on Kelly Christiansen, a fellow fifteen-year-old from Dallas. Blond. Cute. He wanted to take her to the Friday night dance, the last social event before camp ended. Unfortunately, so did Andy. They’d been competing for her affections while Grant played the neutral friend, watching amused from the sidelines.
Tony had first noticed Kelly last summer, but she’d not shown any interest in him or any other boys. Tony had promised himself that this summer would be different. He’d searched for her as soon as his family pulled into the Southern Methodist University parking lot twelve days earlier. It was where campers boarded commercial buses hired to transport kids in Dallas to the camp. Seats in the buses were assigned alphabetically. Because “Ciaglia” followed “Christiansen,” Tony had known Kelly would be sitting near him. He’d get an uninterrupted, two-hour head start over Andy.
Tony had been so eager to talk to Kelly that he’d scooped up his gear from the back of the family’s Plymouth minivan and started running across the SMU parking lot without saying goodbye to his parents or Joey, his kid brother, three years younger. Joey also was going to camp—but at a different site.
Once inside the bus, Tony slipped into his assigned seat and immediately leaned forward to speak to Kelly. That’s when he heard someone rapping on the bus window. Everyone did. It was Al, signaling Tony to come outside.
Tony trudged down the aisle, and when he got outside, his parents—both Al and Chris—hugged and kissed him. Tony was totally humiliated. He could feel all of the kids inside the bus watching him. He wanted to yell, “My dad’s Italian, okay? That’s what Italian families do! They kiss and hug whenever they say hello or goodbye.” Just like in The Godfather.
He’d returned to his seat red-faced, without saying a word.
Despite that rocky start, this summer had been Tony’s best. He, Andy, and Grant were CITs, counselors in training. The younger kids looked up to them. It was their year to be the cool, older kids who taught the newbies the camp’s traditions.
Waiting for his turn on the WaveRunner, Tony appeared to be a teenager who had, as Texans liked to put it, “life by the horns.” He’d won more gold medals that week than anyone else in a camp Olympics. Even better, he’d sat next to Kelly several nights during dinner.
Molly Ray, another camper swimming in the lake, noticed Tony and Grant waiting in line for the WaveRunner to return. She thought it was odd because campers were supposed to sign their names on a clipboard the night before if they wanted to ride a WaveRunner. She began swimming toward the boys to claim a turn.
Because Tony was facing Grant in the water, he had his back to the lake and didn’t see the WaveRunner as it rounded the red buoy and began racing back toward the cove. But other kids did. The WaveRunner’s young driver was not slowing down. David apparently planned to make a sharp turn at the last possible second and splash the older boys with the wake.
But the young driver had overestimated his skills. He couldn’t accomplish the maneuver as planned.
Grant Cooper looked up from the water just as the WaveRunner smacked into the back of Tony’s skull.
“It whacked him hard,” Cooper said later. “He took the brunt of it. I tried to duck and turn, but it hit me on the side of my head and I went under.”
Molly Ray would still remember the scene years later. “I saw this flash—this huge thing—suddenly shoot by me as I was swimming. The next thing I noticed was bright red in the water and, I thought, ‘Oh my God! That’s blood. That’s blood in the water. Oh my God! That’s from the WaveRunner and it almost hit me.’”
Grazed on the side of his head, Grant Cooper next remembered waking up on the shore. “I don’t remember getting out of the water or how I got to the shoreline, but when I came to, I was walking around in circles and people were yelling at me because my head was bleeding. I had a gash on the side of my head and a concussion.”
Grant looked for Tony. “He was floating facedown in the water where we’d been standing. People were rushing to drag him out. I remember thinking, ‘Oh shit! Tony’s not moving. I think he’s dead!’”
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