The Book of Cold Cases

In 1977, during the time Beth Greer’s trial was going on for the Lady Killer murders, police investigation or understanding of the serial killer mentality was not nearly as advanced as it is currently. Yet, as Shea points out in the novel, “As every true-crime lover knows, the seventies were a banquet of particularly brutal serial killers” (81). St James references many of the most infamous serial killers of this time as a way of placing Lily Knowles, the Lady Killer, in a historical context, lending true crime authenticity to Lily’s story.

In the fictional Lady Killer case in the novel, one of the most significant quotes comes from Ransom Wells, Beth’s lawyer, who says “I know pure evil when I see it” (46). As the book continues, the reader finds out that this statement refers not to Beth, but to Lily, the actual Lady Killer. This quote is a striking parallel to a quote from one of Ted Bundy’s lawyers, who called Bundy “the very definition of heartless evil.” Ted Bundy is an infamous serial killer, who confessed to the murders of 30 women between 1974 and 1978 and is suspected of many more. Bundy was known to be good-looking and charismatic and would often lure his victims by feigning some kind of injury. Lily uses much this same approach, utilizing her looks and a supposedly broken-down car to lure her victims to their deaths.

Other serial killers referenced include Ed Kemper, who murdered 10 people in 1972 and 1973 in California; and Gary Ridgeway, otherwise known as The Green River Killer. Ridgeway was convicted of 49 murders during the 1980s and 90s in Washington and Oregon and was not arrested until 2001. He, too, is suspected of many more murders, and his history parallels Lily’s, in which she would disappear and travel far and wide across America. In the novel, Beth and Shea both wonder how many murders Lily committed that were never solved or considered to be part of a larger, serial killer picture.

St. James also references the Zodiac Killer, who operated during the late 1960s in California. The Zodiac Killer infamously involved the media in his crimes, sending cryptic letters to the newspapers and threatening that he would kill again if they did not publish them. Lily Knowles imitates this behavior when she leaves a note with a riddle and a demand to publish the note or more people will die. Also, as with many other serial killers, while Zodiac claims to have killed 37 people, he is suspected of others, as Lily is suspected of more murders during the times when she disappeared from Claire Lake. Joshua Black draws this parallel directly when he says, “‘We didn’t know what a female Zodiac was supposed to look like” (83). The Zodiac killer was never caught, and the mystery never solved, as it was with Lily until Beth decided to tell her story. 

Lily uses societal perceptions of women as a weapon with which to get away with her crimes. As Lily herself tells Beth, “Being a girl is the best [...] because no one ever believes you’d do something bad. People think you’ll do nothing, which means you can do anything” (199). St. James takes this idea one step further, highlighting how the police’s inability to see that a woman was capable of murder or of being a serial killer is actually a gross underestimation of women with misogyny at its core. She does this by drawing strong parallels between Lily and a number of America’s most famous serial killers, all of whom were operating across the country at a similar time as Lily Knowles.