Best-selling true crime author John Leake tells the full story of a Dallas socialite long suspected of serial murder, presents new evidence, and exposes how she evaded scrutiny by law enforcement.
 

The Meaning of Malice not only a sensational true crime story, but a portrait of the author's affluent community of Highland Park in the early 1980s and its fatal decision—out of fear and conflict avoidance— to let a dangerous woman remain free.
 

From the book:

“Terrible stories like [this] don’t go away just because we cease talking about them. Concealing the dreadful truth to avoid conflict allowed a predator to roam free in the community. This failure to take difficult but necessary action is like ignoring early signs of cancer. In all cases, turning a blind eye to the problem doesn’t eliminate it. On the contrary, failing to confront these malignancies in their early stage only makes the inevitable reckoning with them far more terrible.”