Best of
True-Crime

1980

The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story


Ann Rule - 1980
    With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually executed for three of those cases. Drawing from their correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.

The Burning Bed: The True Story of an Abused Wife


Faith McNulty - 1980
    Recounts the tragic story of Francine Hughes, a battered wife who in desperation murdered her abusive husband, detailing their marriage, the deterioration of their relationship, the murder, and the trial that followed.

Bundy:The Deliberate Stranger


Richard W. Larsen - 1980
    NOW REISSUED. Richard W. Larsen’s expose, based on first-hand conversations with the killer himself, remains the granddaddy Bundy book of them all – even inspiring a hit miniseries, starring Mark Harmon, that riveted America for weeks. Now BUNDY: THE DELIBERATE STRANGER returns to mark the 30th anniversary of the execution of America’s most famous serial killer. Between 1974 and 1978 a series of brutal sex slayings claimed the lives of nearly forty innocent young women and left a trail of blood that stretched from Seattle, Washington to Tallahassee, Florida...a trail that seemed to lead to Ted Bundy. But Theodore Robert Bundy is an unlikely looking murderer. A handsome, articulate former law student, Bundy looks more like a candidate for public office than for Death Row. But in July 1979, 32-year-old Bundy was sentenced to the electric chair for bludgeoning to death two Florida coeds. And Bundy is suspected by police of being responsible for as many as 36 murders, spanning four years and four states. Larsen, who knew Ted Bundy well before he ever fell under suspicion for murder – when Bundy was a rising star in Washington State politics helping to re-elect Governor Daniel Evans – interviewed Bundy extensively in writing the definitive account of his story. In 1975, when Bundy was released on bail after his first arrest – a kidnapping charge in Utah – it was Larsen who met him at the door of the police headquarters and spend the day with him, and Larsen who lent Bundy his car after dinner so he could go out on the town that night, catching himself on the verge of parting joke – “Ted, I’d just as soon not read in the morning paper that some girl mysteriously disappeared in a Gremlin” In BUNDY: THE DELIBERATE STRANGER, Larsen brings his masterful reporting and writing skills to bear on one of the most chilling, true crime stories in U.S. history. From the moment the first young woman disappears under mysterious circumstances, you are caught up in a cumulatively tense and gripping drama. Larsen has captured it all: the anguish of the parents, the frustration of the police, the horror of discovery, the growing suspicions and mounting evidence pointing to “all-American” Ted, the drama of his arrest, his incredible escapes – one from prison, one from a courthouse – his recaptures and the sensational, televised Florida murder trial at which Bundy conducted his own defense. And through it all, the enigmatic figure of Ted Bundy – the deliberate stranger – known by the author as well as he will ever be known by any person. At once an exciting, fast-paced thriller, and a dazzling, unsentimental dissection of a cold-blooded killer, BUNDY: A DELIBERATE STRANGER is a true crime classic

Mesrine: The Life and Death of a Supercrook


Carey Schofield - 1980
    

Women Who Kill


Ann Jones - 1980
    Through tales of crime and punishment from Lizzie Borden to Jean Harris, this international best seller explores how and why women have killed throughout American history--and what their cases reveal about social prejudices and legal practices that still prevail.

Master Index to the J. F. K. Assassination Investigation: The Reports and Supporting Volumes of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the


Sylvia Meagher - 1980
    

Off the Wall


Charles Willeford - 1980
    Off the Wall. Montclair: Pegasus Rex Press, [1980]. First edition, first printing. Octavo. 277 pages. Publisher's binding and dust jacket.

White Hoods: The Ku Klux Clan in Canada


Julian Sher - 1980
    Award-winning journalist and author Julian Sher traces the Canadian Ku Klux Klan from its birth in the early 1920s, through its powerful influence within Saskatchewan's Conservative party in the 1920s and 1930s, to its renaissance under James McQuirter in the 1980s. McQuirter led the Klan to new heights in the 1980s, until he was jailed for conspiracy to commit murder and his role in a bungled coup in the Caribbean. Sher uses personal investigations and candid interviews, as well as unpublished studies and the Klan's own publications to shed light on the KKK's links with the police, with neo-Nazi movements throughout the world, and with its American counterpart.

The Great Liquidator


John V. Grombach - 1980
    

Act of Vengeance


Trevor Armbrister - 1980
    The true story of the murder of labor leader Jock Yoblonski, masterminded by union president Tony Boyle.