Author of "Ugly Prey" and "This is Really War." Co-Author, “A Light in the Dark.”
My name is Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, PhD. I am a journalist and author in the Chicago area. I received my first assignment from the Chicago Tribune shortly after my twenty-fourth birthday. In the following decade, I wrote more than 800 stories for the esteemed paper. My work has also run in the Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Miami Herald, and dozens of other major metropolitan daily newspapers. More recently, I’ve become a regular contributor to Discover Magazine’s web site. My work for the site has included a series about Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease.
I’ve also contributed to TheAlantic.com with stories about the law and women who killed during postpartum psychosis; how pandemic isolation impacted memory loss patients; and how the pandemic worsened a caregiver shortage. I’ve also written multiple pieces for The New York Times including a story about nurses and PTSD. For USA Today, I wrote a piece on how Kathy Kleiner Rubin, a Ted Bundy survivor, recommends people speak with trauma survivors. Most recently, I wrote about a fascinating medieval map for National Geographic (online).
My first book, “Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence that Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago” (Chicago Review Press, 2017), investigated the 1923 conviction against Sabella Nitti, the first woman in Chicago sentenced to die for the murder of her missing husband. There was no evidence, motive, or positive identification on the decayed corpse fished from a suburban sewer. But prosecutors wanted an easy win and Sabella Nitti was a safe target. She did not speak English, she was a recent immigrant, and she was a member of an ethnic minority feared by Chicagoans in the early 1920s. The book was recommended by the New York Times and many other prestigious news outlets. The book was the first to investigate and tell Sabella’s full story.
My second book, “This is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines” (Chicago Review Press, 2019), investigated the ordeal of Dorothy Still and 11 other navy nurses during WWII. These women were imprisoned in a concentration camp for more than three years. They maintained rank and reported to the makeshift hospital each day to nurse ailing civilian inmates. All 12 nurses came home, all nursed until the end. The book released May 7, 2019 as an Amazon #1 new release in Philippines history as well as nursing and critical care. The book was named one of the best books of 2019 by the American Journal of Nursing.
My third book, “A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy,” is co-authored with Kathy Kleiner Rubin (Chicago Review, 2023). She survived an attack by Ted Bundy in 1978. Kathy is the first confirmed Bundy victim to write a memoir and her story of survival is inspiring. The book was a starred review by Booklist, recommended by Foreword Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, and The Denver Post.
AND…. I’m working on a new book: “Battle-Tested: A Journalist Investigates a Classmate’s Murder Conviction.” It’s about Antwaun Cubie, my classmate from grade school. In 1996, he was a high school senior with a basketball scholarship and realistic dreams of playing in the NBA. Then, he was convicted of a murder that he and his attorneys say he did not commit.
I hold a PhD in communication from the University of Illinois-Chicago. I am the third generation and fourth member of the Le Beau family to earn a doctorate from UIC.