Predator: Rape and Injustice in Seattle

Predator is a true crime account of Edward Lee King, a serial rapist whose crimes spanned more than a decade across Washington State, as well as the related wrongful rape conviction of Steve Titus. Jack Olsen uses the pseudonym "McDonald Smith," for Edward Lee King, to avoid any legal issues as the convictions, at the time of Predator's publication, were still potentially subject to legal review/appeal. Two-time Edgar Award winner Jack Olsen, known as "the dean of true crime", traces how Edward Lee King manipulated women, deceived authorities, and avoided accountability while law enforcement failed to connect a pattern of violence that left dozens of victims traumatized. King appeared outwardly respectable. He held steady jobs, dated regularly, and often posed as religious and polite. But behind this image, he led a secret life of predatory behavior. Starting in the late 1960s, King attacked women in parking lots, homes, and isolated areas. He used intimidation, deception, and force. Although his attacks followed a pattern, local police departments working in isolation mistakenly treated each case as a standalone incident. Olsen documents how this lack of coordination allowed King to avoid suspicion. Meanwhile, a respectable young businessman named Steve Titus found himself charged with one of Smith's most sadistic rapes in a nightmarish case of mistaken identity and injustice. The idealistic Titus was certain that the American system of justice would clear his name right up to the day that a jury of his peers returned a verdict of guilty. As Edward Lee King continued to terrorize the women of Seattle, Steve Titus lost everything: his reputation, his job, his loved ones, his freedom and eventually his life. It was only when a Pulitzer prize-winning Seattle Times reporter, Paul Henderson, answered Titus's pleas for justice that the terrible truth emerged: a truth that was darker than anyone imagined. Predator is a gripping work of true crime reporting: Jack Olsen doing what he does best. It is a searing study of violations: of women, of justice, of power, and of the human spirit. What sets Predator apart is Olsen's disciplined, evidence-based storytelling. He avoids sensationalism. He centers victims and shows how institutions dismissed them. He illustrates how King operated openly for years, relying on people's willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt. Olsen draws a picture of a man who was not clever or elusive but enabled by weak oversight and a culture unwilling to take sexual violence seriously. The book is also a critique of how law enforcement and the courts treated rape during that period. Olsen shows how male authority figures often discounted women's testimony, ignored patterns of repeat behavior, and failed to act until the damage was irreversible. By the time King was finally sentenced to life in prison, the lives of many women had been permanently altered.