In The Drum Circle Murders we met Sgt. Phillip Davis and Sgt. Anthony Trangotta, detectives with the Pinellas County, Florida, Sheriff's Department. Except for cases involving one killer, Warren Williams, they had been successful in solving most of the murders that had been perpetrated within the Tampa Bay drumming community, and their success had been instrumental in helping Sheriff Jeff Spencer win reelection. Warren Williams had committed a particularly gruesome crime by decapitating a woman named Ruby and leaving her body hanging upside down from an oak tree in Boyd Hill Nature park in St. Petersburg. This crime had left a deep impression on Sgt. Trangotta, one that he could not seem to shake. Due to a lack of funding, some criminally insane inmates in Florida mental hospitals had been released, and they, like Warren, shared his lust for blood and a growing desire to kill and decapitate their victims. More and more, they were becoming head hunters.