Carlton Smith (1947-2011) was a prizewinning crime reporter and the author of dozens of books. Born in Riverside, California, Smith graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, with a degree in history. He began his journalism career at the Los Angeles Times and arrived at the Seattle Times in 1983, where he and Tomas Guillen covered the Green River Killer case for more than a decade. They were named Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative reporting in 1988 and published the New York Times bestseller The Search for the Green River Killer (1991) ten years before investigators arrested Gary Ridgway for the murders. Smith went on to write twenty-five true crime books, including Killing Season (1994), Cold-Blooded (2004), and Dying for Love (2011).
