Behind the serial killer myth lies a darker truth. ABC News legal contributor and former homicide prosecutor Matt Murphy takes readers inside real murder cases, multiple-murder investigations, the American justice system, and the criminal psychology of sexual psychopaths.

Ted Bundy. Jeffrey Dahmer. Rodney Alcala. Their names helped define the popular image of serial killers, infamous predators whose depravity and violence terrified America in the 1970s and 1980s. With their dark shadows in mind, people sometimes ask: Where did all the serial killers go?

The bad news: They never went away. In fact, there may be more individuals on that dark path than ever before. The good news: Law enforcement has increasingly been able to stop dangerous criminals like these before they evolve into monsters whose names dominate headlines.

Hollywood, the public’s imagination, and even FBI profilers have created a mythology around serial killers, often portraying them as strange outsiders, themselves victims of extreme childhood circumstances. Matt Murphy deconstructs those myths, showing how these murderers often begin as sexual psychopaths whose upbringings look disturbingly ordinary.

For twenty-six years, Matt Murphy worked as a Senior Deputy District Attorney in Orange County, California, investigating and prosecuting the worst of the worst when it came to sex crimes and murder. In his seminal work The Book of Murder, he explained the ins and outs of a homicide prosecutor’s life, duty, and practice. Now in The Book of Serial Killers—featuring the cases of the Golden State Killer, Victor Miranda-Guerrero, Randy Kraft, John Laurence Whitaker, Rodney Alcala, Jason Balcom, Andrew Urdiales, and more—he takes readers even deeper into the crimes and minds of society’s most craven individuals.