Hunting Evil

By Carlton Smith

What did a high-priced hooker and a low-class sex-offender have in common? It was-according to police-their lust for stalking, raping, and terrorizing young women and girls, in once case as young as thirteen-years-old. Michelle Michaud and her husky-voiced boyfriend James A. "Froggy" Daveggio used to hang around the local high school in search of their prey-and are suspected of brutally raping numerous women in the gutted van that was rigged to strap down their victims. But they may have gone farther than that... When the body of 22-year-old Vanessa Lei Sampson was found by the side of a California highway, police zeroed in on Michaud and Daveggio, who may be responsible for the young woman's murder, as well as numerous rapes. In a case as strange and gruesome as fiction-one of the few in which a woman has taken part in sexual assault-author Carlton Smith explores the twisted motives and shocking exploits of this dark and deadly duo.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312975724
• ISBN13: 9780312975722
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: St. Martin's True Crime
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Very Interesting and shocking

This book took me by great suprise. For a writer to have not known these two individuals nor,from my understanding, not having a personal interview with either of Michelle or James has really done some homework. Though I do think that revealing Rachels name in the book was quite inappropriate and a violation, as far as Im concerned. I think the book uncovered enough damage, then to have to exceed further by doing so. As far as the true character that exhists in Michelle, that is something the writer came close to, but yet so far. The true Michelle under the facade. Thats the Michelle I knew and will never forget.

Good read, good writing, good journalism

Fascinating story, well-written by a writer with a good grip on the English language. Contains an interesting summary of research on the childhood behavior and family patterns of serial killers. One reviewer questions why the book was written before any trial. The way it works in the book business is that the publisher, not the writer, specifies the date a manuscript shall be delivered. And often, as a result of a plea agreement, there is no trial. This same reviewer apparently wants this author to tell us what makes someone become a serial killer, something that not the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit, Freud, Adler, Skinner, Jung nor any psychologist or behavioral scientist has been able to do. What Carlton Smith does is give us the background facts and details and summarizes the current state of behavioral science research into the question. That is a lot more than we usually get from a true crime writer. The same reviewer complains that the author did not interview the perpetrators. Excuse me, but attorneys will not permit their criminal defendant clients to be interviewed. The same reviewer then complains that the author uses quoted material from interviewers, something that is normally considered good journalism. This book is a good read, well-researched, well-written and free of the lurid tabloid approach so characteristic of the true crime genre. Within its genre, I give 5 stars.