56 pages • 1 hour read
Chasing Evil: Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent's Search for Hope and Justice
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Prologue-Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, addiction, death, graphic violence, sexual content, emotional abuse, and sexual violence.
Prologue Summary: “Little Noah”
Near midnight on March 25, 2015, in Dublin, Virginia, Bob Hilland searches a dark strip of land between a junkyard and a steep hill behind a trailer. Hundreds of volunteers have been combing the area for five-year-old Noah Thomas, who has been missing for three days. John Edward, a psychic Hilland has long consulted on difficult cases, calls with urgent instructions, telling Hilland that he has just walked over the boy. Edward directs Hilland to turn around, retrace his steps toward some tires, and then go back up the hill.
Edward’s tone is unusually emotional as he tells Hilland to look for a Star Wars X-wing fighter toy, insisting that Noah is there. Hilland, holding a phone and a flashlight, follows the real-time directions.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Two Worlds”
In 1991, Bob Hilland, a New Jersey patrolman, first encounters suspected killer John Smith when Smith reports his second wife, Fran Smith, missing; Hilland later learns Smith’s first wife, Janice Hartman, vanished in 1974. A difficult childhood in which Hilland often had to care for his younger siblings due to his father’s alcohol addiction shaped Hilland’s protective instincts, which he carried into his police work. In 1997, he joins the FBI’s New York Cold Case Squad and meets his officemate, Richie DeStano.
