Death Space
A smell in a dormitory hallway was the first warning. The horror behind the door was unthinkable.
In the fall of 2000—only weeks into the semester at Gallaudet University—freshman Eric Plunkett was found brutally murdered in his dorm room. The discovery shattered a campus known for its closeness and safety. Within the insulated world of the Deaf community, fear spread fast, while a language barrier between investigators, students, and the media created confusion at the very moment clarity was needed most.
Weeks passed. Then months. No arrest.
When students returned after winter break, they carried hope that the nightmare had ended. But early one morning in January 2001, a fire alarm went off in Cogswell Hall. Strobe lights flashed through the dorm rooms to wake Deaf students, an emergency system meant to protect. Instead, the alarm led to another devastating discovery: Ben Varner, dead and mutilated.
The Last Class: The Killing Of College Students by Murderers Hearing And Deaf
College is supposed to be a place of learning, but history shows it can also be a hunting ground.
The United States has a long and unsettling history of homicide on school and college campuses, dating as far back as the mid-1800s. These crimes take many forms: student-on-student violence, attacks on faculty and staff, and offenders who deliberately target students.
To increase transparency and safety, federal law requires institutions to report crime data under the Jeanne Clery Act. Yet even with prevention efforts, campuses remain vulnerable environments. In rare but chilling cases, serial offenders have exploited colleges because they offer something every predator seeks: access. Even tight-knit communities, like the Deaf community, are not immune.
The Last Class: The Killing of College Students by Murderers, Hearing and Deafexamines the patterns and risk factors behind campus homicide, including the social and psychological conditions that allow frustration, resentment, and violence to escalate. It also offers practical safety considerations and strategies that students can use to reduce vulnerability and respond more effectively to danger. Because awareness isn’t paranoia. It’s protection.
Making Lemonade
When a child is murdered, the story doesn’t end with the crime. It begins again, inside the lives of the people left behind.
In Death Space, Pants on Fire, The Last Class, and Taboo Deaths, readers explore homicide through different lenses: deception, campus violence, and murders committed by family and friends.
But after the headlines fade, families remain living, with devastation that reshapes everything. How do parents survive the unthinkable? How do they breathe again when the future they imagined has been destroyed?
Making Lemonade: Surviving the Tragedy of a Murdered Adult Child introduces three parents whose adult children were murdered and follows their journeys through shock, grief, and permanent loss. Through their stories, paired with professional guidance, readers learn strategies for enduring the trauma, navigating complicated grief, and rebuilding a life that will never be the same but can still hold meaning. Survival is possible, even after tragedy.
Pants on Fire: Liars, Psychopaths, and Serial Killers
There’s a fine line between a liar, a psychopath, and a serial killer. Sometimes the only difference is what they’re willing to do to protect the lie.
Most people have lied at some point. Children start early, and many adults get comfortable with small distortions: the white lie, the omission, the half-truth meant to avoid conflict or spare feelings. But for others, lying becomes a way of life—habitual, compulsive, and eventually predatory.
From everyday deception to high-stakes manipulation, from scammers seeking money to individuals seeking power, lies can escalate into something far more dangerous. And at the far end of that continuum lies the most lethal deception of all: the lie designed to lure a victim into harm or death.
Pants on Fire: Liars, Psychopaths, and Serial Killersexplores the spectrum of deception, the psychological profiles behind different kinds of liars, and the warning signs that distinguish low-impact dishonesty from malicious exploitation. Most importantly, it offers practical strategies for recognizing manipulation early, setting boundaries, and protecting yourself from becoming the next target.