Best of
True-Crime

1989

Blind Faith


Joe McGinniss - 1989
    Rob Marshall was the big breadwinner, king of the country club set. Maria Marshall was his stunningly beautiful wife and the perfect mom to their three great kids. Then one night Rob, his head bloodied, reported Maria had been brutally slain. Sympathy poured in - until disquieting facts began to surface...and the true story of adultery, gambling, drugs and murder tore the mask off Rob Marshall and the blinders off the town that thought he could do no wrong...

"Please ... Don't Kill Me": The True Story of the Milo Murder


William C. Dear - 1989
     Dean Milo was a phenomenally successful businessman who had built a tiny family business into a 50 million-a-year corporation. Along the way he had established a lengthy list of enemies that began with his immediate family and stretched throughout the social and business community. His fast-track ride to the top came to a violent halt on August 11, 1980, when Milo was found dead in his luxurious Ohio home, shot twice in the head. A blank telegram form lay nearby. Four months after his death, the investigation remained a confusing collection of non sequiturs. Clues pointed toward Milo's involvement with the Mafia, the drug world, and the gay community. His own family refused to cooperate with the authorities. And time was ticking by … In desperation, Maggie Milo turned to Texas private eye Bill Dear. This is the gripping story of the remarkable collaboration between Dear and the police detectives of Akron, Ohio, that led to eleven convictions, an Ohio record. It is also a tale of the human weakness, desperation, and overwhelming greed that led to a sudden death.

Perfect Victim: The True Story of "The Girl in the Box" by the D.A. Who Prosecuted Her Captor


Christine McGuire - 1989
    . . most thought-provoking."--BooklistIn 1997 twenty-year-old Colleen Stan left home to hitchhike from Oregon to California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and extraordinary crime.This is Colleen's incredible true story, told by the determined young district attorney who prosecuted the man who had forced her to endure years of sexual perversion . . . and held her captive in a coffin-like box under his and his wife's bed. A story of riveting psychological intensity and gripping courtroom drama, Perfect Victim reveals the whole truth about Collen Stan's real-life nightmare . . . and the psychopath who enslaved her body and her mind."Horrifying!"--The Cincinnati Post"Hard to put down!"--Chicago Tribune"A gripping and disturbing story of the secret life of apparently normal people. At once, horrific and engrossing."--Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter

From Cradle to Grave: The Short Lives and Strange Deaths of Marybeth Tinning's Nine Children


Joyce Egginton - 1989
    She even worked as a nurse's aide in a pediatric ward. But this seemingly normal woman killed her ninth child by smothering it and is suspected of doing the same to her other eight children--while escaping suspicion for more than a decade.

The Blooding


Joseph Wambaugh - 1989
    Though a massive 150-man dragnet is launched, the case remains unsolved. Three years later the killer strikes again, raping and strangling teenager Dawn Ashforth only a stone's throw from where Lynda was so brutally murdered. But it will take four years, a scientific breakthrough, the largest manhunt in British crime annals, and the blooding of more than four thousand men before the real killer is found.

Kings of Cocaine


Guy Gugliotta - 1989
    They have saturated America and the world with cocaine. Here is the most complete and revealing investigative history of this infamous organization.

Poisoned Blood: A True Story of Murder, Passion, and an Astonishing Hoax


Philip E. Ginsburg - 1989
    But marriage to her high school sweetheart, a cushy secretarial job, and motherhood were not enough to satisfy Marie, and she soon began to act out in troubling ways. Only when her husband, Frank, became sick with a mysterious illness, did it seem that she was ready to put someone else’s needs ahead of her own. The truth was far more disturbing.   Four years after Frank died, Marie’s daughter, Carol, began to experience debilitating stomach pains. The young woman was near death when the horrifying reality finally emerged: Marie had poisoned her husband with arsenic and was attempting to do the same to her daughter. It was the first in a series of shocking twists that exposed Marie Hilley as a cold-blooded chameleon capable of the most sinister of crimes. From Alabama to Florida to New Hampshire, her trail of death and deceit included multiple identities, a second marriage, a false kidnapping, a fake death, several dramatic escapes, and a final act of desperation that brought the whole sordid saga to an astonishing end.

Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner


Michael Baden - 1989
    Michael Baden's first-person, no-holds-barred account of his distinguished career in forensic pathology. In determining the causes of tens of thousands of deaths, from those of presidents and rock stars to victims of serial killings, exotic sex rituals, mass disasters, child abuse and drug abuse, Baden has come to the unavoidable conclusion that the search for scientific truth is often sullied by the pressures of expediency. He produces dramatic evidence to demonstrate that political intrigue, influence peddling, and professional incompetence have created a national crisis in forensic medicine.

Alone With the Devil: Famous Cases of a Courtroom Psychiatrist


Ronald Markman - 1989
    Photographs.

The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer


Robert D. Keppel - 1989
    Now, read the true story of one man's attempt to get inside the mind of the Green River Killer July 15, 1982: a woman's strangled body was found, caught on the pilings of Washington state's Green River. Before long, the "Green River Killer" would be suspected in at least forty-nine more homicides, with no end in sight. Then the authorities received an unbelievable letter from the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy -- then on Florida's death row -- offering to help catch the Green River Killer. But he would only talk to one man: Robert Keppel, the former homicide detective who had helped track Bundy's cross-county killing spree. Now these conversations are revealed, in which Bundy speculates about the motive and methods of the Green River Killer -- and reveals his own twisted secrets as well. Now, as never before, we look into the face of evil...and into the heart of a killer.

The Moon is Always Full


David Hunter - 1989
    Hunter hired on with the the Knox County Tennessee sheriff's department rather late in life. The book is a non-fictional account of Hunter's observations, thoughts, and experiences.

Conspiracy of Silence


Lisa Priest - 1989
    Helen Betty Osbourne was only nineteen when she was whisked away from her small-town Manitoba community and stabbed to death with a screwdriver, after which her body was dumped at a nearby pump house. Finally the police decided to reopen the case despite locals pointing fingers at the Cree community - but the real killers, a gang of drunk hoodlums, were doing their best to get away with their crimes.

Written in Blood: Detectives and Detection


Colin Wilson - 1989
    From the invention of the microscope to the first undercover cop, the author chronicles the criminals and the lawmen who have used their instincts, their cunning, and the advances in the science of criminal detection to bring the guilty to justice.

For the Love of Lesley: The Moors Murders Remembered by a Victim's Mother


Ann West - 1989
    

Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool


Ronald M. Holmes - 1989
    New chapters cover criminal behavior theories and psychological profiling; autoerotic deaths, and occult crimes, plus two new chapters detailing infamous unsolved crimes/criminals: Jack the Ripper and the Jon Benet Ramsey case. The authors′ continuing research and activities in the field result in a multitude of new case studies for this book, often included as boxed inserts.

Conspiracy of Brothers


Mick Lowe - 1989
    It began on the night of October 18, 1978. Small-town biker Bill Matiyek was having a drink in a Port Hope, Ontario, bar. A gunman suddenly walked up and fired three shots point-blank into his head. Members of the motorcycle gang Satan's Choice, who were in the bar, quickly vanished.Was the murder a cold-blooded gangland-style execution as the Crown Attorney and police believed? Or was it, as the defense argued, the impulsive act of a single gunman? Were the convictions of the bikers the result of persistent police work--or a police frame-up? Did the bikers conspire to murder--or did the law conspire to convict them at any cost?Six bikers were sentenced to ninety years in prison, but many mysteries remain and many provocative questions are still unanswered, including: Who really killed Bill Matiyek? And why?

Topping: The Autobiography Of The Police Chief In The Moors Murder Case


Peter Topping - 1989
    

The Poisoned Life of Mrs. Maybrick


Bernard Ryan - 1989
    Maybrick was never brought to trial. Instead, his wife was tried, convicted, and sentenced to execution for her husband's murder. Born in America, eighteen-year-old Florence Elizabeth Maybrick met the forty-two-year-old Englishman in 1881 on board a ship. Despite the reprehensible treatment by James's family toward Florence, the two married, but their marriage was not a happy one. Mrs. Maybrick went so far as to spend a romantic weekend away with one of her husband's handsome business associates. Eventually, James Maybrick succumbed to arsenic poisoning. Before Florence even went to trial, the press found her guilty of his murder. Even though England's leading barrister proved her not guilty in the public mind, she was still convicted. Yet, she somehow managed to live a long life as a cat woman in Connecticut. In fact, Mrs. Maybrick's life might be even more mysterious than that of her purportedly murderous husband.

FBI Undercover: The True Story of Special Agent Mandrake


Larry Wansley - 1989
    Here is his fascinating and terrifying story, revealing the world of undercover agents as never before.

They Call Him Mr. Gacy: Selected Correspondence of John Wayne Gacy


John Wayne Gacy - 1989
    

Wicked London


Steve Jones - 1989
    

Roemer: Man Against the Mob


William F. Roemer Jr. - 1989
    Edgar Hoover's "Top Hoodlum Program." He masterminded the first electronic surveillance of a Mafia headquarters. Sam Giancana put a $100,000 contract on his life. Now, Bill Roemer, the FBI crime expert who's had more face-to-face confrontations with mobsters than anyone in law enforcement history, tells his electrifying life story. From his key role in the lives of John and Robert Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Phyllis McGuire, and Marilyn Monroe, to the run ins with Anthony "Tony Batters" Accardo, Murray "The Camel" Humphreys and Jackie Cerone that made him the nemesis of the Chicago mob, here is a chillingly authentic account that ranks as one of the finest chronicles in true crime.

The Mammoth Book of Murder


Richard Glyn Jones - 1989
    This outsized collection covers two centuries of murder from Jack the Ripper to Charles Manson's "helter-skelter" atrocities and the Son of Sam serial murders.

In the Line of Duty: The Story of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial


Constance Clark - 1989