The Book That Betrayed Her: How a Library Copy Ended a 60-Mile Run

Hunting the Killer · Oct 9, 2026 · 24m

The Book That Betrayed Her: How a Library Copy Ended a 60-Mile Run

A damp library book left spine-up on the access road to Kettering Correctional Center for Women set off a four-day, sixty-mile manhunt across three counties - and its pages were perfectly dry. How did a woman who planned an escape down to toll plazas, power relays, camera angles and tracking dogs lose a run because of a dropped large-print novel?

In this episode, we lay out the sequence of events from the morning the book was found to the end of the search, describing Brenda Thorpe’s background, the prison garden that became…