This book was a bit of a mess. Lots of information, but also a ton of hearsay and gossip. I suppose that's to be expected when the case files aren't available for researchers, but I bought this book thinking it was about the Jeannette DePalma murder. It was more like an overview of all of the (perhaps connected?) crimes taking place around Springfield in the early 1970s. It felt like the author didn't have enough information about the DePalma case to write a full book, so they just filled it in with other crimes to pad it out. Still interesting, just not what I expected.