Cruel Heart: The True Story of a Beautiful Co-ed, a Vicious Murder, and the Trial that Tore Apart a Town

On the morning of May 4, 2003, a well-loved, hard-working freshman student named Katie Autry was found dead in her dormitory room at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. She had been raped, stabbed, drenched in hairspray, and set on fire. The story of Katie's horrific murder made local headlines-and there was a huge public outcry to bring her killer to justice...

Stephen Soules, an unemployed high school dropout, had given Katie a ride home from a party on the night of her murder. With him was Lucas Goodrum, a twenty-one-year-old, sometime drug dealer with a known history of domestic abuse. Soules claimed that Goodrum forced him to participate in the crime, and received a life sentence in a plea deal. But what really happened in Katie's dorm room that night? And which of the two accused is the real killer? Cruel Heart is the true story of a crime that sent shockwaves through a small Southern town-and the mysteries that still remain...