Warren Steelgrave

“Love is the root of all that’s good and evil and is the root cause of all behavior.” (Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, 1308) 

Undomesticated is a story about love and how it shapes our everyday lives. The love of oneself, love of another, and perverted love. 

Kimberly Johnson is a decorated detective in the Dayton, Nebraska, and a serial killer. She believes most people have unhappy lives because of being domesticated. From our birth, parents, teachers, ministers, and society in whole domesticate us to what they feel is best for us and society, leading to very different views on killing. Society accepts killing for food and clothing to sustain life. 

Kimberly believes an undomesticated kills people to sustain the soul. There is no pattern to the killings of an undomesticated. No pattern, age, or sex. Typical serial killers are somewhere between domesticated and undomesticated; their patterns and signatures allow them to be profiled and caught. Kimberly is undomesticated and therefore has no pattern to her killings. 

There is a new serial killer in Dayton; killing young blonde girls and leaving them half nude along the side of the road. This infuriates Kimberly. She would never be so disrespectful; no one has ever found the body of one of her killings; people just disappear. These new killings are bringing national attention to Dayton and might uncover her killings. The new serial killer has got to be caught soon. She begins to suspect Bob Shepard: a patrolman she has a secret relationship with. One night she finds him outside a coffee shop as a young blonde girl is closing. He was driving the truck described in the other abductions and Kimberly decides to kill Bob and dispose of him and the truck. She thinks with the killings stopped, that after a time, everyone would suspect Bob was the killer and had left the area. 

Bob had a brother no one knew about: Larry Oliver. Larry contacts the police to report his missing twin brother Bob. Bob went missing the night that he was returning Larry’s truck he had borrowed. 

As if in a nightmare the chief of police finds out Bob, the prime suspect was dating his lead detective in the murder investigations of young girls, Kimberly. And that he had a twin brother Larry who owned the truck used in the abductions. He finds out the local paper has hired Warren Steelgrave, a best-selling author, as an investigating reporter to report on the murders. The chief is concerned Steelgrave was hired to sell papers because of his notoriety and being a hack will only complicate his investigation. 

Warren Steelgrave is not a reporter by trade but rather a retired businessman who had written a best-selling book, The Willing. The book was a fictional romance thriller about a retired businessman helping a singer-songwriter escape Italy, one step ahead of the FBI and terrorists. Kimberly researched Warren Steelgrave and is convinced the book was mostly a true account and that he has ties to the FBI. She realizes Warren Steelgrave suspects her in Bob’s disappearance and is dangerous to her and she must get rid of him.