WAS SHE A SWEET SOUTHERN CHARMER? OR A COLD-BLOODED KILLER? For their wedding portrait petite Pat Taylor and handsome Tom Allanson posed as Rhett and Scarlett. Both came from fine Southern families and dreamed of the Tara-like plantation where they would grow roses raise horses and move in the genteel circles of Atlanta society. Less than two months later their dream exploded in terror and murder: their beautiful home mysteriously burned to the ground and Tom was convicted of the brutal slaying of his mother and father. Pat s only brother had died in a puzzling suicide her grandparents-in-law were poisoned with arsenic and no one -- from her wealthy employers to her own children -- was safe when Pat Allanson didn t get her way. It took Georgia lawmen more than two decades to stop her for good -- if indeed they have. In this fascinating account Ann Rule delivers a tour de force: a whirlwind of misguided love denial guilt and passions out of control; a series of brilliantly manipulated crimes; the bizarre and horrifying tale of two families brought to ruin; and at the center of it all the heartless supremely selfish sociopath whose evil hid behind soft words and gentle manners but who destroyed -- without mercy -- those who loved her.