Overview

A police detective and an investigative journalist team up in secret to try and solve a series of rapes and murders from the early 1980s on Florida’s Gulf Coast hoping to solve the cold case that has been passed through generations of detectives. On December 31, 1984, Tonya Ethridge McKinley was out with friends celebrating New Year’s Eve and the start of her new life in Pensacola, Florida. Finally free from an abusive relationship, she was just weeks from her 24th birthday and moving toward becoming the person she’d always wanted to be, which included crafting a future with her 18-month-old son. When Tonya’s body was found dumped on the side of the road, half-naked, raped, beaten and choked to death in the early-morning hours of New Year’s Day, it was the first of two unsolved rapes and murders in the same area in the first two months of the year. The cases would go unsolved for decades, leaving one generation of detectives after another passing the case down. When it landed on the case of a legendary detective at the beginning of 2019, his unorthodox approach would set off a chain of events that would eventually bring him and those closest to him face-to-face with an unimaginable evil. Chase the Devil takes readers back to that rainy night on December 31, 1984, and barrels forward like a freight train, moving across the decades, diving into the details of the crime and inside the lives of the victims and their families, the suspects, and the law enforcement officers who kept the case alive. With original reporting and unprecedented access to investigators, case files, and FBI reports kept hidden for decades, investigative journalist Tony Adame takes us inside the investigation and tries to answer the question of what really happened to Tonya that night and who took her life.

Full Product Details

9798881805265

Table of Contents

Reviews

Chase the Devil is an intimate and engrossing account of how the rapist and killer of a young woman in Gulf Coast Florida was arrested, after thirty-six years, through use of familial DNA and old-fashioned detective work. Author Tony Adame was granted full access to the case files and, quite unusually, was in the room when decisions were made. It shows.--David DeKok In the world of contemporary true crime, entertainment, a focus on morbid details, and sensationalism tend to reign supreme. Tony Adame's Chase the Devil is the antidote. A procedural that follows the dictate of Joe Friday on Dragnet--just the facts--Adame makes the most of his unprecedented access to a cold case investigation to tell a compelling story of justice delayed through all of its dark, blind alleys with a guiding light of clarity and humanity.--Drew Morton, PhD Tony Adame's backstory of Chase the Devil is an added bonus of a thirty-six-year-old cold case that Pensacola Police thawed, and then solved in 2020.--Bitty Martin

Author Information

Tony Adame lives on Florida’s Gulf Coast and is also the writer and host of the award-winning podcast and long-form series The Sheriff: Murder, Lies & Revenge in Okaloosa County. Tony’s work has been honored by the Florida Society of News Editors and the Associated Press Sports Editors Awards. Tony has worked at The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal and the Northwest Florida Daily News. Chase the Devil is his first book.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available