Murthy had killed 28 people when the Kerala government issued an order that he could be shot on sight. Within a week, the serial killer who'd been terrorizing the South Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu fled into deep forests nearby. When the forest department tracked him down that summer of 1998, they chose to spare his life … and convinced him to join the police force. Murthy, a 9-foot-tall Indian elephant, would soon go from a killer to a kumki, a trained pachyderm who helps capture and chase away wild elephants who wreak havoc on human settlements.