Books*Reviews*Etc: Rape Is Just A Whisper Away From Murder

An Older Book

Published in 1995

UNFINISHED MURDER

The Capture of a Serial Rapist

James Neff

The crimes, capture, and conviction of a serial rapist is based on interviews with survivors, police, psychiatrists, and the rapist himself, in the triumphant story of a group effort to bring a criminal to justice. By the author of Mobbed Up.

From Publishers Weekly

Between 1983 and 1988, Ronnie Shelton raped at least 30 women in the Cleveland area. Neff (Mobbed Up), a senior editor of Cleveland magazine, discovered, after Shelton's conviction, that he had committed rapes before 1983 and estimates the total number of his victims at nearly 100. In the course of his spree, Shelton was stopped or picked up by the police 15 times for offenses like peeping into windows, but the connection to the rapes was never made. In faulting the police, Neff's chief target is Lt. Lucie Duvall, head of the Sex Crimes Unit. Yet the book is less about the rapist or inept police work than about the phenomenon of 30 victims bonding together to support one another and to testify in court about their experiences. As an outcome of their action, the judge determined that Shelton should never be released and sentenced him to 3198 years in prison. For this vivid and memorable account, the author interviewed survivors, the police and Shelton himself.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

For five years, Ronnie Shelton terrorized Cleveland's West Side in a series of rapes and sexual assaults. His violent tendencies went unchecked for years as he managed to elude capture through a combination of luck, police ineptness, and an overburdened justice system. Neff presents the account of Shelton's crimes, capture, and trial in a crisp text filled with factual detail as well as psychological insight. Shelton was finally stopped as a result of the untiring work of a detective and the victims, who banded together to testify against him. The writing is well organized and skillful, and readers will be appalled not only by Shelton's crimes but by the five-year spell when he fell through the cracks unnoticed and undeterred.
--Christine Moesch, Buffalo & Erie Cty. P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

AMAZON BUY LINK

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Atria; First Edition edition (April 1, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0671731858
ISBN-13: 978-0671731854

MY THOUGHTS

What drives a person to find pleasure in giving others pain. Why do they do it? Perhaps there is no reason. What this man did to so many, and I mean so many, women was heartbreaking, disgusting and demeaning. These women were everyday women, many with jobs, family, boyfriends, husbands. They did nothing to deserve the fear that they endured, the fear of being alone, of him coming back to kill them, of even taking a shower or going into the bathroom. No one should have to live with that kind of fear. But, these many women did, they suffered, some became recluses, some went about their way in a trance, just to get through the day. Many lost the intimacy and love with their boyfriends and husbands. Nothing would ever be the same. How could it? Under the pain, the fear and all the emotions that went with it, they rallied together. They had each other to lean on, rant to, cry together and at times, cheer each other on. They came together during the trial of Ronnie Shelton, the rapist. What bravery they showed. Ronnie Shelton, after many years of raping and terrifying his victims, finally had to pay his dues. Over three thousand years of prison life. But that will never take away or diminish what he did. It will never give those women back what they lost, and they lost a lot. Imagine what it would be like to wake up with someone over you holding a knife. His words putting you into utmost fear. "Don't look at me. Do what I say and you won't get hurt...." What would you do, fight or submit? What if your little child was in the room and that child was threatened.? You'd do what you had to do. Rape is just a whisper away from murder.

Read this book and you will get an insight into these women's lives, before and after the rapes.

I picked this book up at a sale and once I started reading I couldn't put it down.

I would give this book 5 STARS.