Sondra London

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Sondra London is an American true crime author who was declared by one local alternative weekly tabloid, Folio, to be the Queen of Serial Killer Journalism.

Nevertheless, one author published in Crime Library has perpetuated the slur originated by nameless cyberphantoms on alt.true-crime [1] by calling her the Queen of Serial Killer Groupies: see [2] and [3]. "Actually, I'm not the queen of anything," says Sondra London here and now for the record.

Born in Florida, she dated future serial killer Gerard John Schaefer while the two were in high school. She earned a bachelor's degree in English at New College, The Honors College of Florida. In 1989, she contacted Schaefer in prison and worked with him to produce Killer Fiction, which was originally sold by mail order by Media Queen Enterprises, and then later released in an edition published by Feral House. Her collection of articles by death row prisoners was published in "Knockin' on Joe: Voices from Death Row" by Nemesis Books in England. Later she was contacted by serial killer Danny Rolling who asked her to help him tell his story.

She collaborated with Rolling in writing The Making of a Serial Killer: The Real Story of the Gainesville Murders, a psychological memoir which included Rolling's confessions to five murders, along with other capital crimes for which he had not been charged. It was illustrated by 50 pictures hand-drawn by Rolling in prison. The confessions were published in a three-part series appearing in the Globe, and for that, Sondra London was sued by the State of Florida under the Son of Sam law, which had been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The correspondence between the two co-authors, who only met once behind bars, ended uneventfully in 1997.

Feral House published her study of the reality of vampirism in 2004. True Vampires is illustrated by Nicolas Claux the French vampire artist.

1 Known Associates
2 Television
3 Books
4 External links

[edit] Known Associates

Danny Rolling contacted Sondra London in June of 1992, one week after being charged with five murders, and asked her to help him tell his story.

Keith Jesperson, a serial killer known as The Happy Face Killer, sent Sondra London a series of murder confessions, which she posted to her AOL Home page in 1996. A year later, then-Governor of Wyoming Jim Geringer called for a boycott of America Online, protesting that he found the items to be offensive. Although London voluntarily removed the pages in question, AOL banned her from the AOL domain, which in turn prompted an outpouring of support from all over the World Wide Web, including multiple offers of free server space. London thanked Geringer on Larry King Live for catapulting her modest website into the limelight.

Gerard Schaefer, a former high school sweetheart of London's, worked with London for several years; this collaboration resulted in the publication of Killer Fiction.

[edit] Television

In 2000, an episode of director Errol Morris's "First Person" television series centered on Sondra London. She has appeared on NBC Dateline, ABC Turning Point, Larry King Live, Geraldo, Leeza, A Current Affair, and Court TV in the United States; Channel 4 and BBC in UK; German and French cable, and Australian ABC.