content: Author Greg Kelly was 10 years old growing up in Rockford, Ill., when Ray Lee Stewart went on a weeklong killing spree that took 6 lives and shook the community's small-town midwestern roots. Like so many others in Rockford, Greg was terrified until long after Stewart's capture and haunted by his crimes for years afterwards. Fifteen years later as a young newsman working at WGN Television in Chicago, Greg called in sick so he could attend the murderer's clemency hearing. A few weeks later he witnessed the execution. Kelly's vivid description of that eerie evening is alone worth the price of the book, as are the insights into courtroom proceedings, TV reporting, and Kelly's portraits of victims' families and their suffering.