PERFECT VICTIM

by Christine & Carla J. Norton McGuire ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 22, 1988

The perfect victim was Colleen Stan, ""The Girl in the Box,"" a young hitchhiker kidnapped to California in 1977 and held in sexual slavery for seven years. Christine McGuire--the assistant D.A. who eventually prosecuted fiendish culprit Cameron Hooker--and free-lance writer Norton approach this lurid material with admirable dignity and restraint. Actually, a second victim joined Colleen on her odyssey into depravity: Janice, Cameron's wife, subjected by the lumber-mill hand to whippings even before their wedding. Cameron needed fresh flesh to feed his perversity, however, so Janice went along when he snatched Colleen, screwed onto her head a homemade ""head box,"" and hung her by her wrists in his basement--where Cameron and wife had sex beneath her dangling feet. Much, much worse followed: Colleen was shoved into a three-foot square box, her home for the next several years as Cameron raped and tortured her, and used her as slave labor. During those years, something very odd occurred: Colleen passed up many chances to escape; so powerful was Cameron's mind-hold on her--enforced by tales of a national slave-ring that would kill her if she fled--that, on his orders, she took a maid's job in town and, one weekend, even visited her family. Was she, then, a willing victim? Once Janice rebelled against Cameron's brutal rule and ran away with Colleen, that question proved crucial. At the trial--limned in bright detail in chapters alternating with the account of Colleen's ordeal--McGuire needed to prove that Colleen's imprisonment was one continuous kidnapping. After a long legal battle--with Janice turned state's witness--the jury at last believed McGuire's charge that Colleen was brainwashed, and the judge threw the book at Cameron: today he's a captive in turn, at Folsom prison. The authors conclude with a forceful epilogue declaring that Cameron is no pitiful product of society, but ""an aberration""--evil, a monster. There's no whiff of pandering as the authors shine a bright light into some of the foulest corners of human behavior. Gut-wrenching, but heart-wrenching too; sorely lacking an adequate look at the philosophical implications of Cameron and Colleen's bizarre duet, but overall still one of the most gripping true-crime books of the year.

Pub Date: July 22, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Arbor House/Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION