Yet only 52 days after the gruesome triple-murder was discovered, frustrated authorities suspended the case indefinitely. Patrol Sergeant Truman Simons, who had been called to the scene that night, saw the carnage first-hand -- and vowed to find the ferocious killer or killers. He soon became a man with a mission, risking his career and his family's safety in search of evidence. Plunging himself into a netherworld of violence and evil, Simons finally got close enough to a murderous ringleader to hear his careless whispers--and ultimately, put him and his three accomplices behind bars for the brutal slayings.Now, in his Edgar Award-winning account of the Lake Waco killings, acclaimed true crime writer Carlton Stowers lays bare the facts behind the tragic crimes, the twisted predators, and the heroic man who broke the investigation--with important updated information based on new developments in the case.

    This is the story of Jane Stafford and her six-year ordeal of unimaginable abuse at the hands of her common-law husband, Billy Stafford--and of the night Jane killed Billy with a shotgun.

      Former rodeo cowboy Johnny France had been sheriff of Madison County, Montana, for three years when Kari Swenson, a Bozeman resident training for the World Biathlon Championship, went missing near Big Sky Resort in July 1984. Her friends feared that Kari had been attacked by a grizzly bear, but the truth was far scarier: She’d been kidnapped at gunpoint by father-and-son survivalists Don and Dan Nichols. The pair had been living in the wilderness off and on for years and hoped to make Kari a “mountain woman” and Dan’s bride. But the plan went horribly wrong from the start, and after a deadly firefight with rescuers, the kidnappers vanished into the rugged terrain of the Spanish Peaks.   As Montana’s summer froze into brutal winter blizzards, SWAT teams, forest rangers, and antiterrorist units searched the backcountry but sighted the mountain men only once. Then came the call about a strange campfire on a slope above the Madison River. Sheriff France decided to go into the forest to face the fugitives—alone. The resulting showdown made him “perhaps the most famous Western sheriff since Wyatt Earp . . . a modern legend” (Chicago Tribune).  Incident at Big Sky is the “exciting,” edge-of-your-seat account of a shocking crime that made headlines around the world (The New York Times Book Review). In a voice as distinctive and compelling as the Montana landscape, France takes readers on a high-stakes adventure so bizarre and unforgettable it could only be true.

    Reports of strange activities at the scene of the crime circulated soon after. When the police arrived, was the head of Paramount Studios burning a bundle of papers in the fireplace, and was a well-known actress searching the house for letters she claimed were hers? Despite a full-scale investigation, the case was never solved; for sixty years is has remained a lingering Hollywood scandal. In 1967, more than forty years after Taylor's death, the great King Vidor, whose directing credits include Northwest Passage, The Fountainhead, Duel in the Sun, and War and Peace, determined to solve the mystery, which had haunted him throughout his career, in order to make a film about it. Through his intimate knowledge of both the studios and the stars, he succeeded, where dozens of professional detectives had failed, in discovering the identity of the murderer. But because his findings were so explosive, he decided he could never go public and locked his evidence away. After Vidor's death in 1982, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, Vidor's authorized biographer, gained access to the evidence and reconstructed the amazing story of Taylor's murder and Vidor's investigation. With a cast of suspects that includes the actress Mabel Normand, a reputed drug addict; the beautiful ingénue, Mary Miles Minter; Mary's domineering mother, Charlotte Shelby; Taylor's homosexual houseman; and Taylor's secretary, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Taylor's mysteriously elusive brother, this true crime story has all the elements of a classic murder mystery. Covered up for more than half a century, the full story can now be told in all its riveting, shocking detail.

    16 pages of photos.

    A sexual sadist who taunted police with anonymous notes. A madman who was never apprehended. This is the first, complete account of Zodiac's reign of terror. Is he still out there?

    

    

    

    

    Made famous by a media frenzy fueled by the sensational newspaper reporting of 1906, this "crime of the century" seeped into the American culture. The story of Chester and Grace was the inspiration for Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy and the Hollywood movie A Place in the Sun. Brownell and Enos deliver a fascinating day-by-day account of the events leading to the death of Grace Brown, the media hyped, sensational trial of Chester Gillette, and the cultural immortalization of an Adirondack Tragedy. Adirondack Tragedy features 32 black and white photos, 16 maps and drawings, and the never before published reproduction of the original "last letter" of Grace Brown to Chester Gillette from the archives of the Hamilton College Library. Three chapters are devoted to Drieser's novel, the Hollywood versions of the story, and a comparison with the facts of the case.

    

    Mental health and legal professionals involved in insanity cases need a solid foundation in current concepts, legal standards, and clinical methods. This need is heightened by the substantial legal and clinical changes that have occurred in the field during the past decade. This text from two leading authorities brings forensic professionals up to date on key issues surrounding insanity evaluations. It provides explicit, research-based guidelines for interview-based assessments, psychological testing and other specialized procedures, and forensic reports and testimony. The volume explores how insanity is conceptualized under the law and differentiated from other standards of criminal responsibility. A range of clinical measures and techniques are examined, with special attention to such relevant phenomena as malingering and amnesia. Included in the appendices are invaluable databases on 413 defendants evaluated for criminal responsibility and 6,479 defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity. For clinicians, the volume provides the knowledge and skills needed to conduct ethical, legally defensible insanity evaluations and to present their findings effectively. Legal professionals will gain a basis for understanding the logic and clinical methods used by mental health experts and for evaluating the quality of their assessments.

    When, in 1832, a pregnant mill worker was found hanged, the investigation implicated a prominent Methodist minister. Fearing adverse publicity, both the industrialists of Fall River and the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church engaged in energetic campaigns to obtain a favorable verdict. It was also one of the earliest attempts by American lawyers to prove their client innocent by assassinating the moral character of the female victim. Fall River Outrage provides insight in American social, legal, and labor history as well as women's studies.