Code Blue: the serial killer, the cover-up, and a two-generation quest for justice

by Jake Adelstein, Amy Yoshida-Plambeck (Other)

In the summer of 1992, patients at a veterans’ hospital in mid-Missouri began dying under suspicious circumstances — but the institution meant to protect them was busy protecting itself. Three decades on, Jake Adelstein comes home to his native Missouri to take up the case his father never stopped investigating.

Strange things were happening at the Harry S. Truman Memorial Veterans’ Hospital. Patients who should have gone home were never making it out. And in Ward 4 East, the loudspeakers kept crackling with an announcement that told the staff someone was about to Code Blue.

When staff raised concerns, administrators found a suspect — a nurse. They acted quickly. But they didn’t call the police. Instead, they went after the people trying to tell the truth. The nurse moved on to new jobs. Death followed.

This is the story of serial killings in a college town, the cover-up, and the devastating ripple effects of a crime that went unpunished. It is a story of grieving families, courtroom battles. law enforcement agencies that fumbled the case, and whistleblowers who should have been heroes but were treated like criminals. At the centre of it the hospital pathologist who started the investigation and asked his son to finish it.

For the first time in thirty years, Jake Adelstein — the author of Tokyo Vice — has returned to his hometown of Columbia, Missouri. Together with his daughter, Beni, and co-writer, Amy Yoshida-Plambeck, they turn up the heat on a very cold case in a quest for real justice.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication February 2, 2027

About the author

Jake Adelstein has been an investigative journalist in Japan since 1993 and low-ranking Zen Buddhist priest since 2017--and is unlikely to ever achieve satori. That's okay. He's considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan and works as a writer and consultant in Japan, the United States and France. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: A Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (Vintage) and has written two other books published by Marchialy in France.

𝗝’𝗔𝗜 𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗨 𝗠𝗢𝗡 𝗔̂𝗠𝗘 𝗘𝗡 𝗕𝗜𝗧𝗖𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗦 (I Sold My Soul For Bitcoins) 2019