Listen free for 30 days
-
The Forever Witness
- How DNA and Genealogy Solved a Cold Case Double Murder
- Narrated by: Edward Humes
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $6.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
You may also enjoy...
-
I Know Who You Are
- How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever
- Written by: Barbara Rae-Venter
- Narrated by: Barbara Rae-Venter
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For twelve years the Golden State Killer terrorized California, stalking victims and killing without remorse. Then he simply disappeared, for the next forty-four years, until an amateur DNA sleuth opened her laptop. In I Know Who You Are, Barbara Rae-Venter reveals how she went from researching her family history as a retiree to hunting for a notorious serial killer—and how she became the nation’s leading authority on investigative genetic genealogy, the most dazzling new crime-fighting weapon to appear in decades.
-
-
Fascinating book, I couldn’t stop listening.
- By William candlish on 2023-03-05
Written by: Barbara Rae-Venter
-
The Urge
- Our History of Addiction
- Written by: Carl Erik Fisher
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a psychiatrist in training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher found himself face-to-face with an addiction crisis that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of his condition, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that our society’s current quagmire is only part of a centuries-old struggle to treat addictive behavior.
-
-
very good
- By Pascal on 2022-05-13
Written by: Carl Erik Fisher
-
I'll Be Gone in the Dark
- One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
- Written by: Michelle McNamara
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Gillian Flynn - introduction, Patton Oswalt - afterword
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer - the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade - from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.
-
-
Confusing as an audiobook
- By Odell Saliga on 2018-05-17
Written by: Michelle McNamara
-
The Killer's Shadow
- The FBI's Hunt for a White Supremacist Serial Killer
- Written by: John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker
- Narrated by: Holt McCallany
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Worshippers stream out of an Midwestern synagogue after sabbath services, unaware that only a hundred yards away, an expert marksman and avowed racist, antisemite and member of the Ku Klux Klan, patiently awaits, his hunting rifle at the ready. A riveting, cautionary tale rooted in history that continues to echo today, The Killer's Shadow is a terrifying and essential exploration of the criminal personality in the vile grip of extremism and what happens when rage-filled speech evolves into deadly action and hatred of the “other" is allowed full reign.
-
-
Intriguing, informative, Well written!!
- By bill on 2020-12-19
Written by: John E. Douglas, and others
-
Lost Girls
- An Unsolved American Mystery
- Written by: Robert Kolker
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert - after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life - went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene - of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap.
-
-
The care for the lives of the victims
- By nicolas on 2024-03-09
Written by: Robert Kolker
-
In Light of All Darkness
- Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America's Child
- Written by: Kim Cross
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On October 1, 1993, a 12-year-old girl was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom in Petaluma, California, during a sleepover with two friends, while her mother slept soundly in the room next door. This rarest of all kidnappings—a stranger abduction from the home—triggered one of the largest manhunts in FBI history.
Written by: Kim Cross
-
I Know Who You Are
- How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever
- Written by: Barbara Rae-Venter
- Narrated by: Barbara Rae-Venter
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For twelve years the Golden State Killer terrorized California, stalking victims and killing without remorse. Then he simply disappeared, for the next forty-four years, until an amateur DNA sleuth opened her laptop. In I Know Who You Are, Barbara Rae-Venter reveals how she went from researching her family history as a retiree to hunting for a notorious serial killer—and how she became the nation’s leading authority on investigative genetic genealogy, the most dazzling new crime-fighting weapon to appear in decades.
-
-
Fascinating book, I couldn’t stop listening.
- By William candlish on 2023-03-05
Written by: Barbara Rae-Venter
-
The Urge
- Our History of Addiction
- Written by: Carl Erik Fisher
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a psychiatrist in training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher found himself face-to-face with an addiction crisis that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of his condition, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that our society’s current quagmire is only part of a centuries-old struggle to treat addictive behavior.
-
-
very good
- By Pascal on 2022-05-13
Written by: Carl Erik Fisher
-
I'll Be Gone in the Dark
- One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
- Written by: Michelle McNamara
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Gillian Flynn - introduction, Patton Oswalt - afterword
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer - the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade - from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.
-
-
Confusing as an audiobook
- By Odell Saliga on 2018-05-17
Written by: Michelle McNamara
-
The Killer's Shadow
- The FBI's Hunt for a White Supremacist Serial Killer
- Written by: John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker
- Narrated by: Holt McCallany
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Worshippers stream out of an Midwestern synagogue after sabbath services, unaware that only a hundred yards away, an expert marksman and avowed racist, antisemite and member of the Ku Klux Klan, patiently awaits, his hunting rifle at the ready. A riveting, cautionary tale rooted in history that continues to echo today, The Killer's Shadow is a terrifying and essential exploration of the criminal personality in the vile grip of extremism and what happens when rage-filled speech evolves into deadly action and hatred of the “other" is allowed full reign.
-
-
Intriguing, informative, Well written!!
- By bill on 2020-12-19
Written by: John E. Douglas, and others
-
Lost Girls
- An Unsolved American Mystery
- Written by: Robert Kolker
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert - after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life - went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene - of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap.
-
-
The care for the lives of the victims
- By nicolas on 2024-03-09
Written by: Robert Kolker
-
In Light of All Darkness
- Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America's Child
- Written by: Kim Cross
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On October 1, 1993, a 12-year-old girl was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom in Petaluma, California, during a sleepover with two friends, while her mother slept soundly in the room next door. This rarest of all kidnappings—a stranger abduction from the home—triggered one of the largest manhunts in FBI history.
Written by: Kim Cross
Publisher's Summary
“Thought-provoking true-crime thriller…the book raises urgent questions of balancing public and private good that we’ll likely be dealing with as long as the title implies.”—Wall Street Journal
A relentless detective and a civilian genealogist solve a haunting cold case—and launch a crime-fighting revolution that tests the fragile line between justice and privacy.
In November 1987, a young couple from the idyllic suburbs of Vancouver Island on an overnight trip to Seattle vanished without a trace. A week later, the bodies of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook were found in rural Washington. It was a brutal crime, and it was the perfect crime: With few clues and no witnesses in the vast and foreboding Olympic Peninsula, an international manhunt turned up empty, and the sensational case that shocked the Pacific Northwest gradually slipped from the headlines.
In deep-freeze, long-term storage, biological evidence from the crime sat waiting, as Detective Jim Scharf poured over old case files looking for clues his predecessors missed. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in California, CeCe Moore began her lifelong fascination with genetic genealogy, a powerful forensic tool that emerged not from the crime lab, but through the wildly popular home DNA ancestry tests purchased by more than 40 million Americans. When Scharf decided to send the cold case’s decades-old DNA to Parabon NanoLabs, he hoped he would finally bring closure to the Van Cuylenborg and Cook families. He didn’t know that he and Moore would make history.
Genetic genealogy, long the province of family tree hobbyists and adoptees seeking their birth families, has made headlines as a cold case solution machine, capable of exposing the darkest secrets of seemingly upstanding citizens. In the hands of a tenacious detective like Scharf, genetic genealogy has solved one baffling killing after another. But as this crime-fighting technique spreads, its sheer power has sparked a national debate: Can we use DNA to catch the murderers among us, yet still protect our last shred of privacy in the digital age—the right to the very blueprint of who we are?
What the critics say
"Whether one is interested in cold case puzzles or genealogy, or just curious about solving crimes, The Forever Witness should be read and reread until it becomes a dog-eared part of one’s library.”—New York Journal of Books
“This book was fabulous. The Forever Witness was thorough, informative, and deeply emotional.”—True Crime Index
“Humes' writing is suspenseful yet also journalistic, providing fascinating details about the case, technological advances in police work, and genetic genealogy. A winner for any fan of true crime.”—Booklist (starred review)
More from the same
Author:
Narrator:
What listeners say about The Forever Witness
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 2023-02-10
Excellent work!
One of the most compelling true crime books that I have read. So happy that Audible suggested it to me because I had never heard of it. I am from Vancouver Island and was familiar with this sad, sad story. It is obvious that the writer is an excellent journalist and displays compassion and fine details without being gratuitous.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Pursuing Pretty
- 2024-05-02
I’ve recommended it to everyone I know!
As a Canadian genetic genealogist, this book hit home in so many ways. It was well written and researched, weaving a tragic tale that ended with the justice that so many true crime stories never get. Thank you for explaining this in a way that anyone can understand. I hope that investigative genetic genealogy is used as common practice everywhere in North America one day in the near future. It’s books like this that push the cause forward.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!