On June 25, 1980, Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were hitchhiking in West Virginia, headed to the Rainbow Family Gathering in the Monongahela National Forest. They accepted a ride from a soft spoken young man driving a Chevy Nova. They never made it to the Rainbow festival.<br>The young women made the mistake of admitting to Joseph Paul Franklin that they did not disapprove of interracial dating. Franklin, a racist serial killer, murdered Nancy and Vicki and left their bodies on a remote mountainside in Pocahontas County. He had committed 18 other murders before that, all of them racially motivated.<br>Twelve years later, despite repeated confessions from Franklin, a local man, Jacob Wilson Beard, was charged with the killings, which had come to be known as "The Rainbow Murders."<br>Beard was convicted of those killings and sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. "Life Without Mercy," as they call it in West Virginia.<br>Written with the cooperation of Jake Beard and Joseph Paul Franklin, Life Without Mercy is the story of the Rainbow murders, the perversion of justice and one man's five and a half year struggle to get out of prison and clear his name.<br>If it could happen to Jake Beard, it could happen to anyone.