Juan David Ortiz was a Navy veteran who became employed by the Border Patrol after his enlistment was up. He was married, with three children. He had attended college, graduating with a master's degree. While employed with border patrol, he frequented an area known for sex work. He murdered Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Luera, Guiselda Cantu, and Janelle Ortiz in September 2018. One sex worker escaped and identified him to police as the person who had been killing sex workers. Ortiz was arrested and tried for his crimes.

This book was very sensitive to the victims, describing their lives, familial connections, and struggles. It also offered a lot of information about the life of Ortiz. His military experiences were brought up, and I do have a great deal of sympathy for the things that he saw while on deployment in the Middle East with the Marines as a medic. I knew and deeply loved a Marine who experienced some really terrible things in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that was a few years after Ortiz had experienced it. I can understand how that type of thing might desensitize or disturb someone's psyche, but I do not think that was the root cause of his murdering spree. It was interesting to see how it all played out. The book was very detailed.