In 2009, two men were murdered at a residential property in Clemmons, North Carolina. Their bodies were buried in shallow graves in the backyard. They remained there for five years.
The man at the center of the case had legally changed his name to Pazuzu Algarad, after an ancient Assyrian demon. He had tattooed his face, built a following around occult ritual and identity, and maintained a household that law enforcement and neighbors had documented repeatedly for years before the bodies were ever found.
The Devil on Knob Hill Drive is a narrative nonfiction account of the Pazuzu Algarad murder case, told entirely from the documented record. Court records, search warrant affidavits, autopsy reports, and witness testimony form the foundation of every chapter. Nothing is reconstructed beyond what the sources support.
The book examines not only the crimes themselves but the years of institutional contact that preceded the discovery. It is a case study in how systems respond to what they do not want to see, told through the people who lived it, reported it, investigated it, and ultimately could not ignore it any longer.
Readers of narrative true crime and long-form investigative nonfiction will find this a carefully sourced and unsettling account of a case that remained hidden in plain sight.
