THE MURDER GENE

This true-crime book links a North Carolina man’s violent, homicidal acts to his DNA.

Lukah Chang had a relatively quiet childhood. He and his little sister grew up in a Christian household, where their mother home-schooled them and they helped raise rabbits to sell. So what led this young man to murder Amyjane Brandhagen in a hotel in 2012 and nearly kill another woman a year later? Zacharias argues that a genetic defect may have ignited his brutal behavior. As she explains in this work, scientists have tied a marker, the MAOA gene, to violence. There’s a chance that Chang’s maternal grandfather, Gene Dale Lincoln, passed this gene down. In 1973, Lincoln murdered a woman and later attacked and abducted a 12-year-old Michigan girl, who narrowly escaped. Chang forged a similar path after joining the Marines and befriending a fellow soldier who showed him “enticements” (alcohol) that he seemingly bypassed in his youth. As Chang’s violent urges may have been latent, it was only a matter of time before rage surfaced—the emotion he “felt the most kinship with.” The author provides an extensive, engrossing background for this true account. She devotes pages to such striking developments as Lincoln stalking victims at a campground and Chang entering into a “loveless contract marriage.” There are also copious details about the investigation of Brandhagen’s murder, which involved a prolonged hunt for the culprit and a suspect list that kept growing without any arrests. Zacharias is an exceptional writer and turns her thorough research on genetics into lucid, absorbing chapters. But her argument that Chang’s propensity toward violence was hereditary, while intelligent, isn’t entirely convincing. For example, she notes his drinking and synthetic-marijuana abuse may have exacerbated “compromised DNA,” whereas some readers will speculate those addictions alone may have incited his ferocious acts. In addition, Chang, who’s in prison, and his parents declined to be interviewed for this work, so there may have been telling signs in his childhood or environmental factors that the author never learned about. Still, this book will unquestionably spark a healthy discourse on the titular gene.

A skillfully written, well-informed account of startling real-life crimes by family members.