Ann Rule: Master Author of the True Crime Genre

Strange and scary things were happening in King County, Washington. Beautiful young girls were disappearing off the face of the earth and re-appearing, dead, much to the horror and sorrow of their families.

At the time, Anne Rule was a former police officer who worked as a volunteer. She was passionate about law-enforcement, though problems with her eyesight had cut her own career short. She began researching the vicious crimes that were happening around her, since she was an aspiring true crime writer. She often discussed her work with a handsome, gallant young man named Ted Bundy, whom she worked with.

Although she was involved in the case early on, Ann Rule was shocked- like almost everyone else- when ted Bundy was fingered for the crimes. Her first true crime work of non-fiction The Stranger Beside Me, details her shock and horror at finding out that such a bright young man was actually a brutal necrophiliac serial killer.

Ann Rule began writing true crime under the male pseudonym of Andy Stack. At the time, people said that no one would believe that a woman knew anything about true crime- even if she was a former officer herself. Her early work appeared in many publications including Master Detective, Inside Detective, Front Page Detective, Office Detective and True Detective.

Ann Rule has published over 28 books and 1400 articles. 26 of the 28 made the bestseller's list.She was part of a task force that created a serial-killer identifying computer system called Vi-CAP and is a certified instructor in many states on Serial murder, sadistic psychopaths, women who kill, and high profile offenders. She is an expert on serial killers and victim's rights and is credited with having invented the True Crime genre as we know it today.

She was born in Lowell Michigan on October 22, 1935. Law enforcement was a tradition in her family. Her curiosity about criminal behavior might be traced to her childhood summer vacations with her grandparents. her grandfather was a Sheriff and young Ann used to help her grandmother prepare the prisoner's meals. The prisoners were kind and seemed normal to the little girl. One woman even taught her how to crochet. The little girl wondered: what were they doing on trial for murder?

She is the mother of five children and one of them, Leslie Rule, has written books of her own.. Leslie Rule's latest is Coast to Coast Ghosts--True Stories of Hauntings Across America

Ann Rule lives in Renton, Washington. She is 73 years old.