NecroSearch International Confronts Many Monsters In NO STONE UNTURNED

Michele Wallace’s killer, Roy Melanson, as he looks now at a Colorado prison

It takes a certain kind of person to willingly confront murderers and deal with the ripple effect of their monstrous crimes. And not just police officers or those you’d typically associate with the justice system. The members of NecroSearch International, a “membership by invitation only” group of scientists, criminalists and law enforcement officers, are those kinds of people, too. Headquartered in Colorado but operating all over the United States and the world, the group uses their expertise and collective brainpower to locate the clandestine graves, or hidden remains, of murder victims, and find critical evidence when other means have failed the investigating agency. In doing so they are frequently exposed to the worst of humanity, as well as to the hopes, fears and sorrow of the people they’re trying to help.

Thomas Luther, who murdered and buried Cher Elder, as he looks now

In NO STONE UNTURNED: The True Story of the World’s Premier Forensic Investigators the “worst of humanity” stories include those of serial killers and suspected serial killers Ted Bundy, Roy Melanson, Thomas Luther, and Tom and Mike McCormick, as well as a drug-dealer named Tony Emery who was willing to do whatever it took to keep a witness from testifying again him, a jealous husband in Eugene Keidel, who resorted to arson and the murder of his own children to keep his terrible secret, and even Bolshevik assassins in 1918 Russia.

Tony Emery was convicted of murdering Christine Elkins after her body was found by NecroSearch.

Like a revolving door of true crime horror stories, the killers and their victims pass in and out of the lives of NSI members, most of whom entered their chosen fields never dreaming it would lead to someday using that knowledge to help solve murder cases. If many of them admit that they were fans of Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew in their youth–and indeed the group has been described as a “many-headed Sherlock Holmes”–that did nothing to prepare them for the brutality of real murder cases, or the grief, sorrow and desperation of victims’ families. It comes at a cost and effects them deeply; I know it does, because many of them have told me, or I’ve seen it in their faces when they talk about a case.

Wife- and child-killer, Eugene Keidel before his death in 2004

Yet, in spite of that cost, most of the same NSI members I met when I wrote the original edition of NO STONE UNTURNED remain with the group more than a dozen years later as I released the updated eBook version in April. They are, at times, a decidedly odd group of people who often guard their own emotional health with a dark sense of humor, and who kiddingly call themselves “crime fighters,” but with a humble pride knowing that it’s also true. They do it for the victims, for the families seeking answers, for the police investigators who invest their lives in trying to help others, and for the ultimate triumph of justice over evil.

I hope you’ll give NO STONE UNTURNED a chance. I think it will please the most avid true crime reader with gripping real-life horror stories, as well as those who enjoy television shows such as Forensic Files and CSI.

*NecroSearch International receives a portion of the proceeds from the sale of NO STONE UNTURNED.