A Need to Kill by Mark Pettit

A Need to Kill by Mark Pettit

In the autumn of 1983, a thirteen-year-old boy named Danny Joe Eberle set out on his regular paper route. But he never completed it. The discovery of his bound and stabbed body profoundly shocked and panicked the normally quiet community of Bellevue, Nebraska, which had never known a crime of such monstrosity. For 116 days, parents, children, and law officers lived in abject terror that he fiend would strike again, as a massive manhunt - involving both police and the FBI - turned up few clues, less hope and, eventually, a second child's corpse.

But for John Joubert, a scoutmaster and United States Airman, it had begun a long time ago. His obsessive fantasies of murder - and his eventual "need to kill" - dated back to his earliest childhood. For this slight, unassuming young man - barely older than the boys he murdered - the impulse to take life was a strong and unrelenting as sexual desire. And finally, it was all that could satisfy him.

Here, in detail both repellent and mesmerizing, is the chilling account of the crimes of John Joubert - chronicled by the only journalist to speak with the convicted murderer face-to-face. That his story is true is what makes it utterly unforgettable.