Between the Devil and the Tide

Part investigative true crime and part personal reckoning, Between the Devil and the Tide chronicles a journalist’s decade-long investigation into the Long Island Serial Killer case, where questions about violence, power, and manipulation become impossible to separate from her own life.

Women have been disappearing on Long Island for decades. The violence was so persistent it became part of the landscape, an undercurrent running beneath suburban neighborhoods, beach towns, and childhood memories. Then, in December 2010, the search for a missing woman revealed that a serial killer had been using Ocean Parkway to conceal the remains of his victims.

Alexis Linkletter grew up on Long Island. By the time the Gilgo Beach murders captured national attention, she was living in Los Angeles and building a career as an investigative journalist and producer. But when a former high school friend became entangled in a corruption scandal involving Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke, she found herself at the center of a story that would consume the next decade of her life.

What began as an effort to understand a stalled serial murder investigation soon exposed a web of police corruption and misconduct, and institutional failures that had shaped the case for years. At every turn, the consequences fell hardest on the women at the center of the story and the victims’ families left searching for answers. The investigation began to collide with Alexis's own life, resurfacing in her relationships as she worked to bring renewed attention to the case.

Between the Devil and the Tide is a true story of two parallel investigations: one into the Long Island Serial Killer case and one into the patterns of power and manipulation that surfaced throughout Alexis's life. At its heart, it is a story about the women whose lives, deaths, and stories were too often overshadowed by those responsible for their suffering.