Maureen Callahan > Quotes

“Adventurers and loners, romantics and desperadoes, eccentrics and slow suicides—the luxuriousness of the place, its seduction and savagery, calls to the wildest among us. Alaska, the land of black moons and midnight suns.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“As the final decade of the millennium dawned, there would be no greater expression of the cultural, economic, and social revolutions to come than fashion. What rock 'n' roll was to the '50s, drugs to the '60s, film to the '70s, and modern art to the '80s, fashion was to the '90s: the fuse, then the filter.”
― Maureen Callahan, Champagne Supernovas: Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and the '90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion

“What Keyes was describing was the textbook progression, from childhood, of a sadist and a psychopath. Torturing and killing small animals, pets especially, is experimentation in controlling and killing another living thing for pure pleasure. It is practice, the last step before graduating to humans. Even as an adult,”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“I've got lots more stories to tell.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Yet Alaska remains the “Great Land,” as James Michener called it: the closest we have to a time before man, unsullied terrain, nature so titanically overwhelming it’s impossible not to be awed and a little afraid.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“And while investigators didn’t necessarily think Keyes was responsible for all of the missing kids on his computer, their inclusion was disturbing. Who reads about missing children and babies for kicks?”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Before beginning Samantha’s recovery, Chacon had his team gather in one of the tents, where they were invisible to cameras and agents on the ice. They observed a moment of silence, and as they exited, they saw an enormous bald eagle circling overhead. Chacon took it as a sign that Samantha was watching over them. The divers looked at each other, nodded, and silently went to work.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Anna Wintour hadn't been to any of McQueen's shows, and McQueen didn't like it. McQueen said American Vogue could borrow the dress only if they flew it to New York and back, in its own seat, with an escort. It was a fuck-you and they took it, and the dress was shot by Richard Avedon. "Fashion people haven't got any brains," McQueen said.”
― Maureen Callahan

“She was having nightmares, vivid and unceasing. Most days she couldn’t get out of bed. She was as inconsolable as ever, reminiscent of the months after Jack’s death when little Caroline told her schoolteacher, “My mommy cries all the time.”
― Maureen Callahan, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

“What Kate wore, whether on the street or the red carpet was much cooler to them than what she modelled. Her paparazzi photos were becoming indistinguishable from her editorials.”
― Maureen Callahan, Champagne Supernovas: Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and the '90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion

“Then there was the driving, the ability to stay awake without the aid of drugs, just his Americano coffees and soaring adrenaline, moving through five states in as many days. Until Samantha, Keyes had left no digital trail, no cell phone or credit card activity. Until Samantha, he swore he’d never killed in his own backyard. Decades of mayhem, geographical boundaries unknown.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black… “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”
― Maureen Callahan, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

“I’m walking this over to you, I’m talking to you, which means this is important.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Ari Onassis was a Greek shipping magnate, a billionaire, an antisemite, a vulgarian, and a bisexual with a string of bought-and-paid-for young men that he savagely beat after sex. On October 17, 1968, he and Jackie Kennedy, thirty-nine years old to his sixty-two, announced they would marry in three days’ time.”
― Maureen Callahan, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

“I decided to go back to my old stomping grounds,” he said. “Back east.” Another clue. Had Keyes killed more on the East Coast than the West? They could tell he was getting off on telling investigators things they’d never heard nor had ever known to fear. It could be difficult to tell how much he was exaggerating, but so much of what he had told them bore out. They were inclined to believe him. “I have hundreds of plans,” Keyes said, “and a grand plan.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Before his death in 2016, Hazelwood spoke about Keyes. Hazelwood’s decades of service had left him with a cynical view of the FBI’s truthfulness in general, and he believed stranger abductions are far more common than the Bureau insists. He was convinced that the proliferation of hard-core pornography, so easily and anonymously accessible online, has contributed to increasingly sadistic crimes and murders.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Another passage nailed Keyes: “The sexual offender is never fully inactive,” Hazelwood wrote. “He may not be acting out against a specific victim, but he will be making plans, selecting new targets, acting out against other victims, or gathering materials. He is never dormant.” Keyes was a cluster bomb. Investigators were learning that some of his tactics were borrowed from different predecessors, reconstituted for the modern age.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Keyes had told investigators that there were two texts that he studied closely, both written by pioneering behavioral profilers in the FBI: Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide, and the Criminal Mind by Roy Hazelwood, and Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglas, in turn the model for Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“If the FBI hadn’t been informed of this interview, it was highly unlikely the Department of Justice had—and DOJ was the final word, the lone authorizing agency on federal death-penalty cases. Investigators and prosecutors had to do everything—everything—by the book. And Kevin Feldis was pissing all over it. Nor was this an isolated example.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Studies of twins have shown that psychopathy may be a trait more heritable than environmental, yet good children can thrive despite bad parents, and vice versa.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“New York City, near death and calling for her desperately. His cries had broken her heart. In his anguish she heard the little boy who’d been left in one too many hospital beds by his mother and father. But back then Jackie did what the doctors said and stayed in the hallway, trusting they knew best. She had sworn that she would never leave Jack alone like that again.”
― Maureen Callahan, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

“She told Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. that she couldn’t find slumber at night despite all the sleeping pills she took, that her medications did nothing to stop her mind from obsessively replaying the assassination. She told Roosevelt that Bobby Kennedy was the only person keeping her from killing herself. For Bobby, the same was true of Jackie.”
― Maureen Callahan, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

“Chacon retired in July 2014, and at his going-away party said the one thing he’d never miss was pulling another dead child out of the water. He meant it as a joke, but it left his colleagues stunned. To this day, he suffers from post-traumatic stress. He will probably have it the rest of his life. He sometimes thinks that the reason he and his wife were never able to have children despite years of trying, specialist after specialist offering no solution, was so he’d never have to know a parent’s grief.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Breaking apart his cell phone and removing the battery was something the team hadn’t seen before either. For Kat Nelson, those dark spots in his history, the hours that his phone gave off no signal, would be a tell. That’s when Keyes was doing something.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“When Jackie gave birth to a stillborn alone, Bobby called Jack who was still at sea. “What’s done is done…the baby is lost.” Jack saw no point cutting his vacation short.”
― Maureen Callahan

“the”
― Maureen Callahan, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

“Ted Bundy, who Keyes called his great hero, killed all over the country. James Mitchell “Mike” DeBardeleben, the basis for Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, kept at least one kill kit. John Robert Williams was a long-haul trucker who killed in one state and left bodies in another. Dennis Rader, the BTK (“bind, torture, kill”) Strangler, posed at least one of his victims in the basement of his church, tied up in sexually degrading positions.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby”
― Maureen Callahan, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

“Chacon retired in 2014, and at his going-away party said the one thing he'd never miss was pulling another dead child out of the water. He meant it as a joke, but it left his colleagues stunned. To this day, he suffers from post-traumatic stress. He will probably have it the rest of his life. He sometimes thinks that the reason he and his wife were never able to have children despite years of trying, specialist after specialist offering no solution, was so he'd never have to know a parent's grief.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

“Showered and shaved now, they all looked the same: buzz cuts, khaki pants, black jackets. Chacon joked that it was as close as they could get to wearing "FBI" across their chests.”
― Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century