In the spring of 1980, three lives were taken in my hometown of Mojave, California.

Patty, age 14, lived across the street from me. She was beautiful, smart, funny, headstrong, and endlessly kind – the kind of girl who made you feel safe just by sitting beside you. She played tea party with me on my bedroom floor and babysat the neighborhood kids with care. She was trustworthy, close to her parents and three siblings, and beloved by her community.

Diane, almost 12, had recently moved to Mojave with a close-knit and loving family. She was vibrant, thoughtful, bright, and responsible – treasured by her three older siblings and adored by her parents. She’d already made many friends and was starting to feel at home in Mojave.

Sarah, age 29, was a radiant young mother, working two jobs to save for a house for herself and her two children. She came from a large, loving family and was always surrounded by friends and coworkers who admired her warmth, positive attitude, and strength.

They were abducted, brutalized, murdered, and left in the Mojave Desert. Their killer likely thought they’d never be found. But they were. And eventually, he was too.

I was six years old when it happened. I’ve never forgotten. For decades, I’ve carried the ache of those crimes, and the quiet injustice of how little the world seemed to know about the girls and women we lost.

I’ve wanted to write this book for more than twenty-five years. But in 2023, as I approached fifty, I realized that many of the people central to this story – families, witnesses, survivors – were growing older. If their voices weren’t heard soon, they might be lost forever. That urgency, combined with my childhood affection for one of the victims, finally compelled me to intensify the research I’d begun decades earlier.

So, in 2023, I made my priority the writing of The Desert Gave Them Back: The True Story of a Serial Killer & Justice in the Mojave Desert. Over the past couple of years, I’ve:

• Made more than 15 cross-country research trips;
• Conducted over 60 interviews with family members of the victims, survivors, jurors, the detectives, the district attorney, the defense attorney, the convicted killer’s relatives, key trial witnesses, the trial criminologist, and others;
• Reviewed thousands of pages of trial transcripts, exhibits, police reports, media coverage, and archival records;
• Listened to years of interrogation tapes;
• Stood at the sites where the victims were taken and where they were found.

But most importantly, I’ve sat with the families. I’ve asked for their trust, and worked hard to earn it. I’ve listened and learned from them. Out of respect, I’ve offered survivors and families the opportunity to review how their contributions are represented in the manuscript, and I’ve used aliases when requested. Their trust and comfort are more important than anything else. With their support, I am writing this book not just to document what happened, but to honor what was lost.

Their daughters and sisters were more than crime victims. They were vibrant girls and women who laughed, loved music, teased their siblings, worked hard, dreamed big, and were on promising paths. They deserve more than just footnotes in forgotten files. They deserve to be known – their hopes, their inner lives, their legacies.

This story also belongs to the assault victims who survived – girls, women and men whose lives were forever changed by encounters with this same man. Some of them, like Bess, Darene, Donna, Michelle, and Dennis, had the courage to tell their stories, and help authorities understand the man they were hunting.

This book is also for those still unknown. Still not found.

This is not a clinical true crime story. Instead, like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, my book is a deeply researched true story, but told with warmth, humanity, and reverence for those who lived, those who died, and those who endured. In short, a literary work of narrative nonfiction.

The Desert Gave Them Back will be published in 2026. 

I’ve self-funded every step of this journey. And if the book generates any profit, I will donate it to a victims’ advocacy organization, selected with guidance from the victims’ families.

If you’d like to follow along, learn more about the girls and women at the center of this story, and walk this road with me, I invite you to stay. To listen, remember, and bear witness.

With gratitude,
Amy Van Ostrand