Killers Next Door

Behind ordinary front doors, trusted professions and unremarkable lives, some of history's most notorious serial killers concealed crimes that remained undiscovered for years.

Killers Next Door examines six extraordinary cases: Dennis Rader, John Wayne Gacy, Harold Shipman, Gary Ridgway, Dennis Nilsen and Dorothea Puente.

Drawing on court records, official inquiries, investigative material and contemporary reporting, Christopher Byron follows the crimes, investigations and evidence that eventually exposed them. Along the way, the book examines the warnings that were missed, the systems that failed, the forensic breakthroughs that changed investigations and the people who refused to let victims simply disappear.

This is not a collection of myths or sensationalised retellings. Convictions are separated from allegations, confessions from proven facts, and offender claims from independently established evidence.

Carefully researched, accessible and victim-conscious, Killers Next Door explores not only who these killers were, but how apparently ordinary people were able to conceal extraordinary crimes.

Six cases. Six investigations. And the disturbing distance between the people we see and the people we truly know.