by Wanda Evans in collaboration with James Dunn

When Jim Dunn got the heart-stopping call every parent dreads: “Your son has disappeared,” on a Sunday night in 1991 and then saw his son’s blood-splattered apartment, it set into motion a six year nightmarish odyssey of desperate searches. Ahead were moments of frantic hope, growing despair and finally acceptance that Scott was dead, despite the fact that his body was not found.

As Dunn worked with Lubbock, Texas police investigators and followed his own leads, mounting evidence pointed to Scott’s live-in girlfriend and her new lover. However, Dunn learned there was a seemingly insurmountable problem to getting justice for his son: Texas law insists on a body before prosecuting anyone for murder and Scott’s body was nowhere to be found.

Frustrated, Dunn turned to members of the little-known Vidocq Society, highly experienced criminologists and forensic experts who crack the coldest “unsolvable” or “unprovable” cases around the world. Vidocq member, Dr. Richard Walter, a forensic pathologist and criminal profiler, consulted Scotland Yard, studied DNA evidence and blood spatter patterns and then pointed out who he deduced had killed Scott and why. The D.A. agreed, but said his hands were tied: Scott’s body still had not been found. However, when Walter set forth a unique theory based on the fact that there was enough of Scott’s blood in the room to prove murder, the DA brought the case before the grand jury. Six years after his disappearance, Scott’s girlfriend Leisha Hamilton and Tim Smith, a love-smitten neighbor, were tried and convicted of Scott’s murder.

Wanda Evans, a noted journalist, writer and speaker, has been published in many venues, including Reader's Digest, Good Housekeeping and Southern Living. A former columnist for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, she lives in Lubbock, TX where she is working on two political biographies.

James Dunn, a former sales and marketing professional and CEO of the software company Comprehensive Marketing, is an active member of the Vidocq Society and Parents of Murdered Children. He is a financial planner, lives in St. Marys, GA with his wife and continues to hope for the day when he can bury his son.

*March 2005 Release

A New Horizon Press Release
True Crime
6 x 9, 320 pages
LC # 2004108086, world rights
ISBN: 0-88282-261-6 (pb)