From the day he was born, Patrick McCullough faced hardships and reacted with untempered anger. His mother, a soon-to-be-divorced military wife, was late to realize that he was deaf and never learned how to handle his outbursts. Eventually, she abandoned him by petitioning for him to be a ward of the state. Stints in mental institutions and dismissals from several schools punctuated the rest of McCullough s early years. Despite this severe childhood, no one could have predicted the outcome of his life described in "Deadly Charm: The Story of a Deaf Serial Killer."

Authors McCay and Marie...