Between August 25 and August 28 of 1990, five Gainesville, Florida students are found brutally murdered in their off-campus apartments. The University of Florida, the surrounding community colleges, and the city of Gainesville are gripped in terror for days as police work tirelessly to find the killer. But their work was stymied by the media storm that descended on the city, and it took the FBI, Gainesville Police, and a call from a small town in Louisiana to take down a serial killer.

A freshman boy is found murdered in his dorm room at Gallaudet University. But the campus’s tight security means that the only person who could be the killer is someone on the inside. Panic enshrouds the school, and in an effort to get everything under control, detectives make a quick arrest. But when another student is killed four months later, everyone realizes it’s worse than they thought; not only was the original defendant innocent, but one of their own students is a serial killer.

In 1886, a small tourist town in the hills of Warren County, New Jersey, are rocked when a young woman’s body is found on the grounds of the Centenary Collegiate Institute. Tillie Smith’s murder caused a media sensation throughout the tri-state area, and the incessant coverage forced investigators to quickly apprehend a suspect. And though the college’s maintenance man was tried and found guilty, later assessment of his arrest and trial would lead many to believe that justice had let the real killer escape.