Through anecdotes and first-person accounts of some of his acquaintances and victims, the account focuses on Russell's youth in an affluent area near Seattle, his problems with his highly educated and professionally successful parents, his early and lengthy involvement in a wide variety of property offenses, his academic difficulties at school, his efforts to make friends with the local police, his pleasant personality, his employment difficulties, and his psychological decline over a period of 30 years. It describes how young women were drawn to him and trusted him as their protector and how his murder victims were attractive young females who had been bludgeoned to death, violated sexually, and then posed like gallery sculptures. The police investigation is also detailed, with emphasis on how Russell offered the police helpful clues and how he was not considered a suspect at first. The psychological impacts on his surviving victims are also described through their first-person reports.