truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Dean M. Shapiro is a journalist with more than 35 years of experience in his field.  He is also a publicist, copy editor and author with three published books and more than 1,000 newspaper and magazine articles to his credit.  His career as a journalist dates back to the late 1960s when, as a sophomore in college, he reported award-winning stories from the anti-war protests in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Shapiro co-authored The Blood Covenant with Rena Chynoweth, one of the 13 wives of polygamist cult leader Ervil LeBaron. Nicknamed the "Mormon Manson," LeBaron, ordered the murders of two dozen people, including members of his own family.  The book, released by Diamond Books/Eakin Press, was the subject of a 1993 CBS made-for-TV movie, Prophet of Evil: The Ervil LeBaron Story starring Brian Dennehy, William Devane and Tracey Needham.

Mr. Shapiro also co-authored the novelization of the critically acclaimed feature film, Belizaire the Cajun, a work of fiction set in the bayous of southern Louisiana in 1859.  The novel, co-written with the film's director, Glen Pitre, was published in hardcover and trade paperback by Pelican Publishing Company in 1988.

His third book, Blondin, is a biography of the first man ever to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope in the mid-19th century.  It was published by Vanwell Publishing Ltd. of St. Catherines, Ontario in 1990.

Mr. Shapiro also contributed 375 entries to The American Spectrum Encyclopedia, a 16,000-entry, single-volume desktop reference work, was contracted by the American Booksellers Association through Harkavy Publishing Service of New York and released in 1991. He has also been contracted to write for several junior and senior high school history and geography textbooks in recent years.

Mr. Shapiro is the author of nine screenplays, including Victim 341 which is loosely based on the Kim Groves murder he wrote about for the Crime Library Web site. He is working on a full-length nonfiction book on the same crime entitled Murder in the Lower Ninth.