A grotesque figure burst into the girl's room. Its head piled with fake curls, its face concealed behind a smiling mask, it wore the rubber gloves of a surgeon or perhaps a mortuary attendant. It seized the girl from behind and chloroformed, suffocated, and finally, decapitated her.

Hers was only one in a series of horrendous murders by a killer who played games with the police, always mailing them cryptic bits of poetry--baffling clues to the identity of his next victim.