Ann Rule was born on October 22, 1935 in Lowell, Michigan. She was surrounded by family following careers in law enforcement. Her grandfather and uncle were sheriffs in Michigan, another uncle was a medical examiner and a cousin was a prosecutor. She spent her summers with her grandparents doing volunteer work in the local jail. She eventually graduated from Coatesville High School then attended the University of Washington. She majored in creative writing, along with minors in criminology, penology and psychology. She extended her education for two more years at High Line Community College by taking criminal courses such as crime scene investigation, to include photography, police administration and several others.

After proving her ability in several magazines, including Master Detective, Inside Detective, Front Page Detective, and Office Detective she was invited to start writing under her own name instead of the male name she was using, but decided to keep the pen name at that time in the interest of protection for herself and her family from her subjects. She came to prominence with her first book, The Stranger Beside Me, about serial killer Ted Bundy. At the time she started researching the book, the murders were still unsolved. In the course of time, it became clear that the killer was Bundy, her friend and previous colleague on the suicide hotline at the King County Crisis Clinic. She has also met and interviewed a number of other serial killers in the course of researching her books.

Rule has been writing full-time since 1969 and has published more than 20 books and 1,400 articles, and she also teaches seminars to law enforcement groups. She was also part of the task force that created VI-CAP a computer tracking system designed to identify serial killers.

(Bowker Author Biography)