True-crime author Ann Rule, who famously wrote a profile on her former co-worker and serial killer Ted Bundy, died Sunday night at Highline Medical Center in Burien, Washington. She was 83.
“My mom died peacefully last night,” Leslie Rule said on Facebook. “She got see all of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.”
Rule’s daughter also said that her mother dealt with several medical concerns, such as congestive heart failure.
Throughout her long career, Rule penned more than 30 books. One of her most notable was her first publication, a profile on Bundy entitled “The Stranger Beside Me,” based on her experiences while working the late shift with the murderer at a Seattle suicide hotline.
She later wrote for magazines including “True Detective” in 1969 while working at the Seattle Police Department, and most of her writing was about criminal cases.
After becoming an expert on serial murder cases, the Justice Department and the FBI regularly sought her advice during investigations. Rule once aided the Green River Task Force in its search for a Seattle-area killer, which she wrote about in “Green River, Running Red.”
The writer was born in 1931 in Lowell, Michigan, and moved frequently throughout her childhood. She graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing, along with minors in psychology, criminology and penology.