Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, death, child death, rape, graphic violence, emotional abuse, suicidal ideation, and anti-gay bias.

McCloskey recounts the harrowing case of Kerry Max Cook, who was wrongfully convicted of the brutal murder of Linda Jo Edwards in Tyler, Texas, in 1977. The chapter outlines the flawed investigation and legal proceedings that led to Cook’s conviction and death sentence.

The story begins with the discovery of Edwards’s gruesome murder in her apartment. She was savagely attacked, with severe mutilation of her body and sexual anatomy. The crime scene was both violent and oddly meticulous, with minimal blood traces despite the brutality of the act. Edwards’s roommate, Paula Rudolph, had seen a man in Edwards’s bedroom earlier that night and initially identified him as Jim Mayfield, a professor at Texas Eastern University and Edwards’s former lover. Mayfield had been involved in a tumultuous and public affair with Edwards, which had led to his dismissal from the university just days before her murder.

Mayfield’s complex relationship with Edwards became a focal point of the investigation. He had a history of manipulating Edwards, transforming her physically and emotionally and maintaining control over her even after their relationship officially ended.