Trail of Blood

Your son has disappeared, said a soft, feminine voice. In an instant, Jim Dunn's world crashed, setting into motion a six-year nightmarish odyssey of desperate searches and fervid hopes that despite his son's blood-spattered room, he would be found alive. However, as Dunn worked with the Lubbock, Texas police and time passed, neither his son nor his body were found. Finally, Dunn came to believe the worst. Scott had been murdered and the evidence pointed to his live-in girlfriend, Leisha Hamilton, and her new lover. Dunn learned that there was a seemingly insurmountable problem to prosecuting the two for his son's murder: Texas law requires a body in order to prove homicide and Scott's body was nowhere to be found. Frustrated, he turned to members of the little-known Vidocq Society, highly experienced criminalists and forensic experts who crack the coldest unsolvable or unprovable cases around the world. Vidocq member Dr. Richard Walter, a forensic pathologist and criminal profiler, interviewed Scott's friends and co-workers, consulted Scotland Yard, studied DNA evidence, blood spatter patterns and other characteristics of the killing room, then pointed to who he thought had killed Scott and why. The D.A. agreed, but said his hands were tied. Scott's body had still not been found. Yes, it has, Dr. Walter argued, and set out to prove an innovative premise which would allow prosecution of Scott's spurned girlfriend and her accomplice. This is a fascinating true crime story with all the complex elements that tantalize readers: forensic evidence, DNA, hair and fiber comparisons; an investigation by a cryptic group of international crime experts who take on only the most baffling cold casesand a moving portrait of a father who refuses to stop searching for his missing son and the truth--even as the evidence builds that he has been brutally murdered.