Books That Make You Lie Inside a Shallow Grave Alongside an Immersive Investigative Journalist and True Crime Author
True crime stories are among the most riveting, so often filled with mystery and real victims for whom we can’t help but feel empathy. To in some small way understand and connect with their experience, and to relay that authenticity to readers, requires the unique skills of a true true crime author.
Doug Kari is the man who exposed The Berman Murders — the story of Barry Berman, heir to the Kahlua fortune, and his wife Louise — who went missing in 1986 in Saline Valley, a popular Mojave Desert draw for nudists and eccentrics.
Doug brings a blend of scholarly research and good old-fashioned storytelling to his writing. He believes in immersive investigation, which has led him to lie inside the grave of a murder victim, envisioning the carnage befalling them moments before death.
He’s scoured remote corners of Death Valley and uncovered key clues that authorities ignored in a missing persons case. And he’s stood alongside Mexican migrant refugee children to understand the peril they face in squalid encampments.
Doug’s true-crime stories have run on the front pages of LA Weekly, Las Vegas Review-Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, and other respected outlets. With an English major from U.C. Berkeley, Doug honed his writing skills under novelist and professor Leonard Michaels (The Men’s Club). After receiving his law degree from U.C. Law San Francisco, Doug practiced IP law while doing pro bono wilderness protection work for Desert Survivors, an outdoor group that he co-founded
