THE MAN IN THE MONSTER

Michael Ross was a serial killer who raped and murdered eight young women between 1981 and 1984, and several years ago the state of Connecticut put him to death. His crimes were horrific, and he paid the ultimate price for them.

When journalist Martha Elliott first learned about Ross, she learned what the world knew of him—that he had been a master at hiding in plain sight. Elliott, a staunch critic of the death penalty, was drawn to the case when the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned Ross's six death sentences. Rather than fight for his life, Ross requested that he be executed because he didn't want the families of his victims to suffer through a new trial. Elliott was intrigued and sought an interview. The two began a weekly conversation—which developed into an odd form of friendship that lasted over a decade, until Ross’s last moments on earth.

In The Man in the Monster, Martha Elliott gives us a ground-breaking look into the life and motivation of a serial killer. Drawing on a decade of conversations and letters between Ross and the author, readers are given an in-depth view of a killer’s thought processes and motivations, revealing the human face of a monster—without ignoring the horrors of his crimes. Elliott takes us deep into a world of court hearings, tomb-like prisons, lawyers hell-bent to kill or to save—and families ravaged by love and hate. This is the personal story of a journalist who came to know herself in ways she could never have imagined when she opened the notebook for that first interview.

MARTHA ELLIOTT has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, working primarily in television and newspapers. With her mentor and longtime collaborator Fred Friendly, she has written several books and produced hundreds of television programs for PBS. Elliott has written for publications from the New York Times to Slate and has won five Silver Gavel Awards from the American Bar Association and a Peabody Award. She is at work on her first novel.