THE ZANI MURDERS A True Story of Real Estate and Revenge in Texas

Hardback. From 1967 to 1980, Robert Joseph Zani - or "zany", as he was wryly referred to by the police and press who covered the case - committed a gruesome series of crimes and relentlessly terrorised the Texas real estate industry. Dozens of hungry agents showed expensive six-figure homes to an odd couple. Some of the agents returned with reports of theft; some didn't return at all. One San Antonio agent was found in a sand dune on Padre Island, his body partially gnawed by coyotes. An Austin agent received the scare of her life when, mounting the stairs in a home near San Antonio, she suddenly turned to find Zani's wife and accomplice, Irma, brandishing a green silk scarf over her head as if to strangle her from behind. Two Austin police Department detectives, assigned to a seemingly uncomplicated credit-card scam, obsessively reconstructed Zani's tortuous and bloody thirteen-year trail as it crisscrossed Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico - a trail strewn with bodies, riddled with questions of matricide and political intrigue, and ending in a trio of murder trials that set a national legal precedent. Illus., Epilogue and Index. 322pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in F. dw.