Cat and Mouse

Lawyer-author Brian Alan Lane planned on doing "just another" true crime book until he met Bill Suff, now awaiting execution on San Quentin's Death Row. For seven years - 1985 to 1992 - Bill hid in plain sight while terrorizing three Southern California counties, murdering two dozen prostitutes, mutilating and then posing them in elaborate, artistic scenarios in public places - he'd placed a lightbulb in the womb of one, dressed others in men's clothes, left one woman naked with her head bent forward and buried in the ground like an ostrich; he'd surgically removed the right breasts of some victims, and cut peepholes in the navels of others. When the newspapers said that the killer only slayed whites and hispanics, Bill ran right out and raped, tortured, and killed a pregnant black woman. When a film company came to town to make a fictional movie about the then-uncaught killer, Bill left a corpse on their set. And, as the massive multi-jurisdictional police task force fruitlessly hunted the unknown killer, Bill personally served them bowls of his "special" chili at the annual Riverside County Employees' Picnic and Cook-off. William Lester "Bill" Suff. He says he's innocent, says he's been framed, says he's the most wronged man in America, maybe the world. He's easygoing, genial, soft-spoken, loves to read, write, draw, play music, and chat endlessly. He describes himself as a lovable nerd and a hopeless romantic, and he fancies himself a novelist and poet. Brian first connected with Bill on the basis of writer to writer, and that's when the mind games began. Even in jail, Bill was the master manipulator, the seducer who somehow always got his way. But Brian was determined to lose himself in Bill's mind, in Bill's fantasies, to get at the truth of who and what Bill Suff is. Only then would he know the truth of how close we all are to being just like Bill.