Every Breath You Take

A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder

By: Ann Rule

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 20 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's Summary

America’s number one true-crime writer fulfills a murder victim’s desperate plea with this shattering New York Times best seller.

“If anything ever happens to me...find Ann Rule and ask her to write my story.”

In perhaps the first true-crime book written at the victim's request, Ann Rule untangles a web of lies and brutality that culminated in the murder of Sheila Blackthorne Bellush - a woman Rule never met, but whose shocking story she now chronicles with compassion, exacting detail, and unvarnished candor. 

Although happily ensconced in a loving second marriage and a new family of quadruplets, Sheila never truly escaped the vicious enslavement of her ex-husband, multimillionaire Allen Blackthorne, a handsome charmer - and a violent, controlling sociopath who subjected Sheila to unthinkable abuse in their marriage and terrorized her for a decade after their divorce. When Sheila was slain in her home, in the presence of her four toddlers, authorities raced to link the crime to Blackthorne, the man who vowed to monitor Sheila's every move in his obsessive quest for power and revenge.

©2002 Ann Rule. Originally published in hardcover in 2001 by The Free Press. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

reader

The reader does a good job IF you set the speed on 1.10. The story is good.

Good book

Good narration. Long story with lots of detail of characters and plot. Good pace on the performance and narrators telling of the murder.

How Can Some BE SO HATEFUL?

I'd gotten a glimpse of this story due to living in TX during these years yet has No Idea how Truly Horrible People Can Be. Tho fascinated by all the details also dazed by the fact the innocent really get little respect.

I love Ann Rule books

Overall a good book and worth the listen! Thought they didn’t quite pronounce the town of Boerne right, it is more like BURN nee! Lived in Texas for years and thought they could have researched that better.

Difficult to finish

Very draggy and over loaded with Court Transcripts. I thought this awful story would never end.

Nice narration.

Cassandra Campbell did a good job narrating the story and Ann Rule was such a good writer that I could really envisioned what Shiela Belush suffered under the hands of Blackthorn.
It’s a good thing that justice was served.

Excellent

Awesome read very moving wonderfully written. Excellent facts spellbinding. Very sad though and domestic violence is so prevalent sadly.

Great story, but a bit long on the unimportant asp

This story was incredible and heart breaking. I personally feel that the chapters upon chapters of background on the parents of Sheila and Allen was a little much...but overall a wonderful book.

I also have had the Police song stuck in my head way more often than ever before since coming across this book.

no ending

this book lacks an addendum. Allen had died in prison so one would expect an update.

Long boring backstory

The first third of this book is so slow and not necessary to the story. A brief background on the main characters families would suffice rather than a full detailed version of their parents, grandparents, siblings lives. It was more interesting after the crime actually happened.