Chase the Devil

A police detective and an investigative journalist team up in secret to try and solve a series of rapes and murders from the early 1980s on Florida's Gulf Coast, hoping to crack the cold case that has passed through generations of detectives. On December 31, 1984, Tonya Ethridge McKinley was out with friends celebrating New Year's Eve and the start of her new life in Pensacola, Florida. Finally free from an abusive relationship, she was just weeks from her 24th birthday and moving toward becoming the person she'd always wanted to be. When Tonya's body was found dumped on the side of the road, half-naked, raped, beaten, and choked to death in the early-morning hours of New Year's Day, it was the first of two unsolved rapes and murders in the same area in the first two months of the year. Chase the Devil takes readers back to that rainy December night in 1984 and barrels forward like a freight train, moving across the decades and diving into the details of the crime and inside the lives of the victims and their families, the suspects, and the law enforcement officers who kept the case alive. With original reporting and unprecedented access to investigators, case files, and FBI reports kept hidden for decades, investigative journalist Tony Adame immerses readers in the investigation and tries to answer the questions of what really happened to Tonya that night and who took her life.