Scientist and the Serial Killer book
Lise Olsen, Investigative reporter

 

Lise Olsen is a senior investigative reporter and editor whose work has appeared in the Texas Observer, Inside Climate News, and the Houston Chronicle, as well as in documentaries on Netflix, CNN, A&E, and Paramount.

Her book, THE SCIENTIST AND THE SERIAL KILLER: The Search for Houston's Lost Boys will be published by Random House April 1, 2025. Olsen's first book is CODE OF SILENCE.


For more information, email the author: liseolseninvestigates@gmail.com

Or Rachel Parker, Publicity, Random House: rparker@randomhouse.com.


Follow Lise on:

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THE SCIENTIST AND THE SERIAL KILLER is the gripping, upside-down detective story of a Texas forensic anthropologist named Sharon Derrick who, determined to close the cases of the notorious 1970s Houston-area serial killer Dean Corll, has painstakingly deployed the latest science to identify victims who had become known as the Lost Boys of Houston. This unforgettable narrative of forensic science, missing persons, and unsolved crimes by award-winning investigative journalist Lise Olsen is expected to be published in 2025 by Random House, an imprint and a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

 

Advance Praise

"Lise Olsen is not only a masterful investigative reporter, she's one hell of a storyteller. Her writing jumps off the page. Her sentences are completely dramatic, her character descriptions spot on. I felt a pit in my stomach reading The Scientist and the Serial Killer."

-- Skip Hollandsworth, New York Times bestselling author of
The Midnight Assassin

"The Scientist and the Serial Killer, is a brilliant work of reporting and writing, as author Lise Olsen takes readers on a dark voyage into a mass murder that has haunted Houston for decades. But instead of stopping there, she recounts how one brave forensic investigator finally brought light to families whose private investigations and perpetual grief had been repeatedly ignored by authorities. Olsen's mystery story is impossible to put down, but the families' losses and her heroine's persistence will stay with you forever,"

-- Mimi Swartz, author of Ticker

Investigations

Wasteland Underwater article

WASTELAND UNDERWATER

On the central Texas coast, Lavaca Bay is already poisoned by mercury. Climate change will only make matters worse there and at 944 other hazardous-waste sites across the country.

Image of Texas Killing Fields

TEXAS KILLING FIELDS

An overgrown field and a stretch of highway connect a series of grisly murders spanning several decades as grieving families search for answers.

Unatural Causes article

UNATURAL CAUSES

The Case of the Texas Serial Elder Murders.
How the fatal age bias of police and others made it easy for a serial killer to continue his spree against two dozen older women in the Dallas area.