Beyond Cruel: The Chilling True Story of America's Most Sadistic Killer

by Stephen G. Michaud

Book Overview

AUTHORITIES OPENED THE DOOR ON ONE MAN'S HIDDEN LIFE Mike DeBardeleben was known as the Mall Passer for the way he passed off fake money at local shopping centers. But when U.S. Secret Service agents... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312942516
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: St. Martin's True Crime
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 0.9" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

Beyond Cruel

Good book, I love true crime, can't believe this man got away for so long. Very twisted.

Beyond the Pale

As one of the judges in Mike DeBardeleben's trials commented, DeBardeleben's crimes are "beyond the pale". So perverse and depraved were his fantasies, that using the term sadist is not an exaggeration in labeling him. What makes his crimes unusual are the counterfeiting schemes that parallel his rampage. Not only did he devise a sophisticated way of printing phony money, but he also extorted from the wealthy. The life of DeBardeleben follows a familiar path of a rough childhood and a poor relationship with his mother. The anger toward women is mirrored in each of his five wives and in each victim on a remarkmable scattered path of crime. So base and cruel were the recordings of his crimes that hardened investigators were disturbed. Although author Stephen Michaud's writing is rather dry at times, the errors that should have been corrected by proofreaders are unacceptable. The misplacement of punctuation marks in Chapter 10 is so bad it is comical. Yet the most interesting mistake is on page 91, the first page of the Chapter 12. "Indistinct voices filtered down from an upstairs radio as the team picked its way through DeBardeleben's dark, dusty living mom ...". It would seem as though spellcheck did not recognize "mom" should have been "room". As other readers have noted, I found great interest in the Epilogue. In this section, we learn the fates of the children DeBardeleben left behind. It is an aspect of true crime that is rarely explored.