Dead of Night by Don Lasseter (October 1997)

His Victims Were Elderly Women
Review by Kim Cantrell

Adolph “Jimmy” Rode troubled life began when his mother left his father for a black man in 1964.

Evidence of the future was exhibited when Jimmy was expelled from kindergarten.

When his father remarried Brenda, she knew that Jimmy needed help. His father denied it.

And so it was that women in Florida and Washington would pay the price for his father’s refusal to accept the obvious.

His stepmother, Brenda, would be one of this first known victims; as well as his own grandmother.

Older women were not safe around Jimmy.

Eventually caught and sentenced to a Florida state prison, Jimmy would serve his time while taking advice from Ted Bundy.

When he walked out of the Florida prison, he would recreate himself as Cesar Barone; having a morbid fascination with the Italian Mafia.

Living as Cesar in Washington, he married and had a son. But his thirst for torturing, raping, and killing elderly women was still prominent in his life.

In his 1997 true crime, author Don Lasseter tells the story of how Jimmy/Cesar would become a serial killer but one difficult for police to catch.

Dead of Night is a fascinating story about a serial killer who broke the mold and the intense efforts by police to catch him.

Unfortunately, much of this book became bogged down in too much detail. I frequently found myself skimming over repetitive portions and the too in-depth information about officers involved in the hunt.

There is a scary yet intriguing story within Dead of Night. Whether you want to skim through and find it, I’ll leave up to you to decide.

Updates from this book:

Cesar Barone, 49, died of natural causes, while still awaiting execution, on December 24, 2009. Although he knew he was dying, Barone declined to divulge any of his secrets.

Leonard Darcell was released from prison after serving 15 years. Today, he is living in Apache Junction, Arizona.