Chasing Evil: Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent's Search for Hope and Justice

Chasing Evil (2025) is a true crime memoir by former FBI special agent Robert Hilland and internationally acclaimed psychic medium John Edward, in collaboration with journalist Natasha Stoynoff. Hilland worked with the FBI for 25 years, while Edward is a bestselling author who pioneered the psychic medium genre on television with his show Crossing Over with John Edward. The book details their decades-long partnership, in which Hilland, a skeptical investigator, relies on Edward’s psychic insights to pursue justice in seemingly unsolvable cases. The narrative chronicles their collaborative efforts to hunt serial killer John Smith and solve other high-profile crimes, exploring themes of The Power of Intuition and Evidence Working in Tandem, Coaxing Truth from Deception Through Psychological Insight, and The Cost of Chasing Justice. The book has received positive early reviews, including a starred review from Booklist.

This guide refers to the 2025 St. Martin’s Essentials edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain depictions of death, addiction, graphic violence, child death, animal cruelty, animal death, sexual violence, sexual harassment, child sexual abuse, illness, emotional abuse, sexual content, rape, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

The narrative opens in Dublin, Virginia, on March 25, 2015, as FBI Special Agent Robert “Bob” Hilland searches for a missing five-year-old boy, Noah Thomas. During the frantic midnight search, Hilland receives an urgent phone call from his collaborator, psychic medium John Edward, who provides a cryptic but precise location for the boy.

The story then backtracks to 1997. After seven years as a New Jersey police officer, Hilland joins the FBI’s Cold Case Squad. In the summer of 1998, a chance encounter with the case file of a woman named Fran Smith ignites an obsessive need to find justice for her; Hilland briefly crossed paths with Fran’s husband, John Smith, when the latter was reporting her missing, and he was struck by Smith’s “evil” demeanor. Now, Hilland resolves to find not only Fran but also Smith’s first wife, Janice Hartman, who also disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Hilland convinces his reluctant FBI supervisors to let him reopen the case, which soon begins to strain his family life with his wife, Alex, and their two young children. The narrative then introduces John Edward, who grew up with a police officer father who was deeply skeptical of psychics. After two negative experiences trying to assist law enforcement, Edward vows to avoid police work. By 1998, he has become a famous medium.

In the summer of 1998, Hilland organizes a multi-agency meeting to review the John Smith case. Investigators recount Smith’s history, including Janice’s 1974 disappearance in Ohio, Fran’s 1991 disappearance in New Jersey, and Smith’s double life with a girlfriend named Sheila Sautter. New leads emerge, including Smith’s brother, Michael, who seems to be hiding something, and a sex worker named Janice Miller. Hilland and Detective Matt Dansman interview Miller in prison, where she reveals Smith’s volatile personality, his terrifying rages, and the collection of women’s clothes he kept in his attic. She also suggests that Smith may be the serial killer responsible for murdering several of her friends in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This lead takes Hilland and Dansman to Bridgeport, where they discover strong circumstantial links between Smith and 25 unsolved murders of sex workers, including a police sketch of a suspect that is a near-perfect match for John Smith.

Convinced that he needs unconventional help, Hilland arranges a meeting with John Edward. During the reading, Edward provides accurate details about Fran and identifies the murder location as a storage unit; he states that Fran was dismembered and her remains placed in “cylinders.” Edward also reveals that Smith’s brother, Michael, saw the bodies of women Smith killed and pinpoints Smith’s current location as Southern California. The reading’s accuracy is cemented for Hilland when Edward provides deeply personal and previously unknown details about Hilland’s own family.

Hilland convenes a meeting with FBI profilers at Quantico, where he presents a new lead, a bloody knife found in the attic of Smith’s former Connecticut home, and proposes a massive, synchronized interrogation of Smith and all his associates. Hilland tracks down Terry Poszier, a woman from a photo found in Smith’s wallet, who reveals that Smith is in Escondido, California. Further investigation into Smith’s past reveals an obsession with a teenage girl, Kathleen. Kathleen gives Hilland a watch that Smith gave her, which is later identified by Janice’s sister as the one she helped Smith buy for Janice’s birthday. On May 5, 1999, Hilland and a multi-agency team execute the synchronized interrogation. For hours, Smith denies everything. Acting on Edward’s advice, Hilland speaks about Smith’s recently deceased grandmother, Ethel. Smith breaks down and begins to confess, but Hilland’s supportive touch on his shoulder inadvertently breaks the trance-like state, and Smith fakes a heart attack to escape the interrogation.

The case takes a turn when Michael Smith, granted immunity, provides a full confession. He recounts that in 1979, he and his grandfather opened a plywood box that Smith had built and stored in the family garage five years earlier. Inside, they found the preserved, dismembered body of Janice Hartman. Michael called Smith, who returned to Ohio and took the box, later claiming he had disposed of it. The FBI excavates two sites in Ohio but finds nothing. The case stalls, and an enraged supervisor removes Hilland from the investigation, though Hilland continues working the case secretly.

In January 2000, Hilland’s colleague receives a crucial phone call about a 1980 case in Indiana, where a box matching Michael’s description and containing a dismembered female body was found. On March 2, 2000, Janice’s birthday, her remains are exhumed from a pauper’s grave. In July 2001, based on this evidence, Smith is convicted of Janice’s murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

With Smith in prison, Hilland’s collaboration with Edward expands to other cases. In 2001, Edward has a premonition about an assassination attempt on President George W. Bush, which Hilland relays to the Secret Service, who discover and fix a security breach. Following the September 11 attacks, Hilland works at Ground Zero for a year, and the search for Fran is paused. As the years pass, his collaboration with Edward proves crucial in several other high-profile cases. Meanwhile, Hilland continues his search for Fran, primarily at a Carborundum factory where Smith once worked. He has a profound spiritual experience when a streetlight turns on and off on his command, and he later experiences Fran’s presence directly through the smell of her perfume and a spirit photograph of her face.

The narrative eventually returns to the 2015 disappearance of five-year-old Noah Thomas. Guided by Edward’s urgent, live instructions over the phone, Hilland finds a Star Wars X-wing fighter toy pointing like an arrow to a septic tank, where Noah’s body is recovered. In 2019, Hilland’s marriage to Alex ends. That same year, he presents the case against Smith for Fran’s murder to the Mercer County prosecutor, and Smith is indicted. However, the trial is delayed, and in June 2023, the prosecutor’s office makes a deal with Smith. He admits to disposing of Fran’s body in a dumpster but does not admit to her murder. Hilland, who has by this point retired, is devastated, but Edward consoles him, explaining that this outcome is the universe’s way of forcing him to let go of his obsession. Hilland accepts that it is time to move on. The book concludes with reflections from both men, with Hilland acknowledging the spiritual lessons learned and Edward expressing his belief that their work together in the fight between good and evil is not finished.