True Crime Florida

Tallahassee is a capital, a college town, and a city where local tragedy can reshape law across Florida. Behind the Capitol dome, the case files hold famous prosecutions, unresolved family murders, campus attacks, appellate reversals, and names that deserve more attention than the offenders attached to them.

True Crime Florida: The Tallahassee Files begins with the women attacked at Chi Omega and examines the evidence and legal judgment without allowing Ted Bundy's notoriety to consume their stories. It returns to the unresolved murders of Robert, Helen, and Joy Sims; the death of Rachel Hoffman and the confidential-informant safeguards enacted in her name; the disappearance and killing of Mike Williams; and the staged prosecutions that followed the murder of Florida State law professor Dan Markel.

The record continues through attacks at Strozier Library, Hot Yoga Tallahassee, and Florida State University's Student Union; the murders of Brandi Peters and her three children; the search for Cheryl Dunlap; and shorter Big Bend files involving Oluwatoyin Salau, Victoria Sims, Dorothy Thomas, Ali Gilmore, Yamada Bell, Jermaine Siplin, an unidentified man, and Seymour Rice.

Built from court opinions, official investigations, legislative records, archives, and responsible reporting, this victim-centered volume distinguishes accusation from proof, plea from verdict, reversal from acquittal, and an investigative conclusion from a judgment in court.

The Tallahassee Files is Book Eight in the True Crime Florida series.