To the Last Breath

The Edgar Award–winning true crime story of the 1994 murder of a two-year-old Texas girl and her grandmother’s pursuit of justice.

“Carlton Stowers has always been in the top rank of crime journalists. This is his best.” —Jack Olsen, author of Hastened to the Grave and I: The Creation of a Serial Killer

On January 22, 1994, two-year old Renee Goode played happily with her sisters and cousin, as the four of them enjoyed an impromptu “slumber party” at the home of her father, Shane Goode. The next day she was dead.The local medical examiner could not determine the cause of little Renee’s death. But her mother Annette and grandmother Sharon were convinced she’d been murdered—and that they knew the identity of Renee’s killer: her handsome father, Shane Goode, a manipulative, emotionally abusive man who displayed virtually no interest in Renee—until he took out a $50,000 insurance policy on her life.With the help of a courageous female police investigator and Assistant DA, Sharon launched a case against Shane and had Renee’s tiny coffin, lovingly filled with her favorite stuffed animals, exhumed from its final resting place. And her small corpse revealed what her grandmother had suspected all along: cold, calculating Shane Goode had murdered his own daughter to cash in on her death.

“[A] masterful chronicle of a troubling case.” —Booklist

“Author Stowers knows good material when he sees it. He doesn't pump up his prose with bravado or obvious characterizations, but takes full advantage of the web of coincidence, allowing the players to speak for themselves and the complex plot to spin out. . . . More than enough melodrama for a grade-A movie-of-the-week.” —Publishers Weekly