ABOUT JOHN

John Leake studied history and philosophy with Sir Roger Scruton at Boston University. He then went to Vienna, Austria on a graduate school scholarship and ended up living in the city for over a decade, working as a freelance writer and translator. His first book, Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer (Sarah Crichton Books, FSG) was a New York Times Sunday Book Review “Editors’ Choice,” a Men’s Vogue “Best Book of 2007,” and the inspiration of The Infernal Comedy, starring John Malkovich. 

His second book, Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery, was winner of the 2012 Independent Publisher Award. The German translation, Eiskalter Tod, published by the Residenz Verlag was a bestseller in Austria. His investigative work for the Jack Unterweger, Duncan MacPherson, and Angelika Foeger stories has been the subject of numerous television documentaries produced by A&E Biography, Discovery, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Fifth Estate, and the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation’s Am Schauplatz Gericht.

In March 2020, when SARS-CoV-2 started to spread in the United States, he perceived that the pandemic response was illogical at best, and possibly criminal. He found it especially suspicious how quickly public health officials dismissed repurposed medications such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. In November of 2020, he watched a video of Dr. Peter McCullough’s U.S. Senate testimony about early treatment. He sensed from this performance that Dr. McCullough was likely to lead the way in developing a more rational, honest, and humane response to the crisis. He made contact with McCullough in Dallas, Texas, where both authors live, and together they wrote The Courage to Face COVID-19.

John grew up in Highland Park, Texas, down the street from a woman named Sandra Bridewell, and often visited her at her home to play with one of her children. In 1986, when Leake was sixteen years old, Bridewell fell under suspicion for murdering her third husband and possibly two other victims, though she was never arrested. Leake began his multi-year investigation of the three suspicious deaths in 2007, when Bridewell was arrested for aggravated identity theft. Assuming the guise of a Christian missionary, she ingratiated herself with an elderly lady in Southport, North Carolina (near Cape Fear) to steal the unsuspecting victim’s identity and to plunder her financial assets. Leake visited Bridewell in pretrial detention and began documenting her life and wanderings. His 2023 book, The Meaning of Malice, presents extensive evidence that Bridewell did indeed commit the three murders for which she has long been suspected. His book is the first in the true crime genre to make a forensic case against an officially undetected serial killer who is still alive and roaming free.

In 2025, Leake again teamed up with Dr. Peter McCullough to write their second book, Vaccines: Mythology, Ideology, and Reality. Their interest in the subject began in April 30, 2020—in the middle of COVID-19 lockdowns—when Bill Gates announced on his blog that the world would only be able to go back to normal “when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus.” Though a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine had not yet been developed, this theoretical technology was, according to Mr. Gates, humanity’s only hope. Getting a needle in every arm would, he explained, “require a global cooperative effort like the world has never seen.”

During the year that followed Mr. Gates’s declaration, the world’s governments acted in lockstep to inject all of humanity with a new generation of experimental mRNA gene therapy shots. Even after evidence emerged that these so-called “vaccines” did not prevent infection, governments continued to insist that everyone receive them. The injection was portrayed as the Savior and Liberator of humanity. Astute observers perceived that the vaccine—and the global movement to get all of humanity to receive it— resembled a proselytizing religion. The gospel of this new religion was that the new shot offered salvation. Those who rejected it were doomed to ostracism, disease, and death.

Vaccines: Mythology, Ideology, and Reality tells the history of humanity’s extraordinary veneration of vaccines, starting with an 18th century smallpox inoculation procedure called variolation. Vaccines is the story of man’s ambition to overcome the suffering and death that nature had always inflicted on him. The development of this technology is a monument of human ingenuity, but also of folly, hubris, and greed. Today, the most celebrated vaccine developers are revered for their achievements. Rarely if ever are their significant failures mentioned in most of the literature on vaccines.

In 2024, Leake took a break from his serious work as an author to produce and direct his first feature (documentary) film titled Double or Nothing.

The film details the true story of Andy McElroy—a pro bookie until his five-billion-dollar sports gambling ring was busted by the Feds in 2013. Since then, he has made a living from high stakes personal wagers. After losing a $1 million bet that his best friend, ‘G-Man’ couldn’t quit alcohol and drugs, Andy offers to run the Honolulu Marathon, even though he is 80 pounds overweight and hasn’t walked a mile since 2005. If he fails, he owes double. If he succeeds, he owes nothing. The plot thickens when it is revealed that Andy has a history of cheating. At stake are $2 million and a 30-year friendship.

Double or Nothing began as a story about friendship, high stakes gambling, kicking addiction, and beating the odds that stack ever more against us as we grow older. Midway into the production, it morphed into a mystery about possible cheating to avoid paying a $1 million double or nothing bet.