Love's Blood

Book excerpt: “[This] deeply engaging tale of a teenager who may—or may not—have helped kill her parents [is] a model of evenhanded true-crime writing.” —Kirkus Reviews Sixteen-year-old Patricia Columbo began working for pharmacist Frank DeLuca, a married father of five, in the 1970s, and the two soon entered into a sexual relationship. Against her father’s wishes, Patricia and Frank moved in together. Then, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, Patricia’s father was brutally murdered, along with her mother and thirteen-year-old brother. Police were suspicious of Patricia’s strange behavior after the bodies were discovered, and following their investigation, they arrested both Patricia and Frank. The details revealed during their trial would horrify the residents of Chicago’s middle-class suburbs. This book—informed by extensive interviews with Patricia Columbo in prison—tells the haunting story. “A vivid, captivating, exhaustively researched case history.” —Publishers Weekly “An unsettling trip into a world of kinky sex, devotion and love gone wrong . . . stays with you long after the final page.” —Ridley Pearson, New York Times–bestselling author