Between the Devil and the Tide: A True Story of Obsession, Power, and the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer by Alexis Linkletter

Part investigative thriller and part personal reckoning, Between the Devil and the Tide chronicles a journalist's decade-long obsession with the Long Island Serial Killer case, where questions about violence, power, and manipulation become impossible to separate from her own life. Women have been disappearing on Long Island for decades. The violence was so persistent it became part of the landscape, an undercurrent running beneath suburban neighborhoods, beach towns, and childhood memories. Then, in December 2010, the search for a missing woman revealed that a serial killer had been using Ocean Parkway to conceal the remains of his victims. Alexis Linkletter grew up on Long Island. By the time the case captured national attention, she was living in Los Angeles and building a career as a journalist and producer. But when a former high school friend became entangled in a corruption scandal involving Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke, she found herself at the center of a story that would consume the next decade of her life. What began as an effort to understand a stalled serial murder investigation soon exposed a web of corruption, misconduct, and institutional failure that had shaped the case for years. At every turn, the consequences fell hardest on the women at the center of the story and the families left searching for answers. The investigation began colliding with Alexis's own life, resurfacing in her relationships as she worked to bring renewed attention to the case. Read more