She was just a fifteen-year-old girl when she was strangled to death. The ruthless murderer dumped her body in a cold alley, just three blocks away from The Saber. The Saber was San Diego’s red-light district, where Karen Phillips was known to have worked. She had a two-year-old daughter, too. What happened to her? Did Karen’s profession give the right to her murderer to kill her so coldheartedly? Or it was an attempt to cover up something more brutal, something more dark and sinister?
A decade passed by, and her case fell through the cracks. It was not because there were “limited resources,” and it was certainly not “investigative priorities,” and all the other bureaucratic garbage we hide behind when we don’t want to admit the truth. But it was this one truth that Karen’s case went cold because powerful people wanted it that way.
There was a lot behind her disappearance. Many wanted her case to be buried, her mouth silenced and what of her daughter? Well, it could not get any worse than what unfolded in the lives of that mother and daughter. This book is about Karen and how people in high places exploited power and authority for their own advantage. It is about the bending of the law to silence the one who knew how to protect those who fooled everyone.
I was shot four times during my career. The fourth one was meant to kill me, but somehow it didn’t. When my wife begged me to quit, I did after much consideration and reluctance. I thought that was the end of the danger. I could not have been more wrong. It was only just the beginning. And opening Karen’s file, Pandora’s Box.
This book is not the ordinary kind. It’s angry and raw and uncomfortable. It won’t give you easy answers because there aren’t any. But if you’ve ever wondered what really happens when ordinary people go up against extraordinary corruption—if you want to know what it costs and whether it’s worth it—then Karen’s story is waiting.
Some cases you solve. Some cases solve you.
This one did both.