Adrian Havill

Havill was born in Bournemouth, England in 1940 to Leslie and Molly Havill, their only child.

After World War 2, his mother remarried and brought him to their new home in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Later, married again (and again,) she brought her eventually-five total children (each from a different husband) to live with another spouse in the United States. He spent time at Jeff's Home for Boys. In 1958, he aged out and enlisted in the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army. Whilst stationed at Fort Bragg, he became editor of the division's newspaper, "The Paraglide." He also worked as a freelance sports writer for The Fayetteville Observer. His term of service was extended by the Berlin Crisis.

Once his military obligation was met, he became a US citizen and then went to work in 1962 for US News and World Report. Starting as a copy boy, when the opportunity arose, he moved over to writing advertising promotional material for the magazine. In 1964, he married Georgiana Atkins, at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., whom he had met in North Carolina. They have a son and a daughter, also born in the District of Columbia.

During those years, he worked for several area advertising and public relations agencies, before he and his wife formed their own award-winning agency on Connecticut Avenue in Washington. Later, they sold off most of their business including a separate typography company. In 1984, he began writing biographies of subjects as diverse as OJ Simpson and Jack Kent Cooke.

Havill is currently retired and living on Lake Thoreau in Reston, Virginia, while penning a daily blog on the entertainment industry, called Turtle Pond Cinema.

• The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold: The Secret Life of FBI Double Agent Robert Hanssen (2001)
• While Innocents Slept: A Story of Revenge, Murder, and SIDS (2001)
• The Mother, the Son and the Socialite: The True Story of a Mother-Son Crime Spree (1999) (about Kenny and Sante Kimes)
• Man of Steel: the Career and Courage of Christopher Reeve (1996)
• Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1993)
• The Last Mogul: The Unauthorized Biography of Jack Kent Cooke (1992)
• Born Evil: A True Story of Cannibalism and Serial Murder (2001) (about Hadden Clark)

• Crime Library bio