Award winning journalist Tamara Leitner will be here to discuss her book Don’t Say Thing: A Predator, A Pursuit, and the Women Who Persevered in conversation with King5’s Kim Holcomb. Tamara will be interviewed by Amity Addrisi on New Day Northwest June 12th followed by a discussion on friendship and empowerment with Kim Holcomb. Our book event will take place that evening at 6:30 and includes Q&A and a book signing. You don’t want to miss this amazing story!
In April of 1999, Tammy Leitner awoke to an active crime scene outside her Arizona apartment. Her neighbor had just been sexually assaulted and somehow a piece of evidence ended up in her apartment. A local crime reporter at the time, Leitner began an investigation that would eventually lead to a 20-year obsession, culminating in her speaking to the predator and forcing her to confront her own dark secret.
In DON’T SAY A THING: A Predator, A Pursuit, and the Women Who Persevered, Leitner finds and interviews the women who were attacked by Claude Dean Hull II. Most had never spoken to the media before, some had never even told their families about the attacks, but all of their lives were irrevocably altered by the assaults: downward spirals into shame, blame, isolation, alcohol, drugs, and stripping. Yet in the end, each woman clawed her way back.
Leitner, an Emmy, Peabody, and Murrow award-winning journalist, reveals the impacts this crime had on the mental health of these women—and herself—painting an intimate, raw picture of the immediate and long-term effects. Through the journey of each woman, Leitner also discovers that trauma manifests itself in many ways and she finally begins to understand the dark past she had buried. And in this book, she courageously exposes her own personal monster for the very first time.
As an investigative reporter, Leitner exposes a flawed justice system that offered little empathy towards women, and particularly women with any kind of less-than-perfect history. One that failed these women and allowed Claude Dean Hull II to sexually assault as many as 100 women and victimize 3,000 others. A system that had Hull in custody THREE separate times and allowed him to go free—free to rape for two decades.
Chilling, raw, and deeply personal, DON’T SAY A THING shows the power of perseverance. Perseverance of the detectives who wouldn’t stop until they found this predator, perseverance of a journalist determined to unearth the truth, and the perseverance of those survivors willing to relive the most horrible moments of their lives in order to heal and to bring hope to others.
TAMARA LEITNER is a twelve-time Emmy Award–winning broadcast and print investigative journalist. She worked as a network correspondent, regularly reporting on the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and MSNBC. Before joining NBC News in 2016, Leitner worked for local news outlets in New York City, Chicago, and Phoenix. She is the recipient of a 2011 George Foster Peabody Award, a 2012 Edward R. Murrow Award, and a 2018 GLAAD Media Award and lives in Southern California. Visit her at www.tamaraleitner.com.
In Conversation with Kim Holcomb
Kim Holcomb is an Emmy-award winning host for “Evening,” the longest running local lifestyle and entertainment show in the country (airing weeknights on KING 5 at 7:30pm.) She’s worked as a television news and features reporter for more than 25 years and holds a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University. She’s also a proud book nerd and writes creatively in her free time.