Ann Rule was born on 22 October 1935 in Lowell, Michigan. She was born Ann Stackhouse. The introduction of Ann Rule to writing true crime stories reads like a very interesting story in itself.
She developed a love for true crime stories by reading True Detective and after this decided to start writing. In 1969 one editor decided to try her out on one story when a vacancy in the northwest became available. Her first story was accepted but she was told to take a male pseudonym because it was believed that readers would not believe that a woman would know anything about police investigations despite having had a short stint herself as a police officer within the Seattle Police Department. She then started writing for True Detective as Andy Stack and the name was chosen from her maiden name which is Stackhouse, people used to call her father, Stack and the Andy is from the name of her son which is Andy Stack Rule.
After proving herself by writing articles for a few magazines including Master Detective, Inside Detective, Front Page Detective and Office Detective she was invited to start writing under her own name which she refused as she was worried about her safety and the safety of her family as by then she was a single mother raising four children. During that time she also decided to add to her BA degree from University of Washington by getting a two year degree in police science. At this time she was only writing articles and then she found the subject which would facilitate her transition from article writing to books.
It was 1974 when several attractive young women had started to go missing in the Pacific Northwest. She decided to start researching this story and at that time the case was still unsolved. As time went by it became clear that the killer was Ted Bundy, a friend of Ann Rule and previous colleague on a suicide hotline at the King County Crisis Clinic. Hence came the book,The Stranger Beside Me, which is about Ted Bundy, the serial killer. This book started off her career as a true crime book writer.
One of her later books which she has described as the one book which has paid all the bills was named Small Sacrifices which is about the mother Diane Downs who tried to kill her three children because the man she was pursuing did not want children. She only succeeded in killing her one child Cheryl but left one paralyzed from the waist down and the other paralyzed on one side of her body.
Ann Rule was also part of the task force that created Vi-Cap which is a computer tracking system designed to identify serial killers. She has since then written many true crime books and also now teaches seminars to law enforcement groups. She prefers writing about cases which are not very prominently reported on in the media which she refers to as sleeper cases.