From Jack the Ripper to Ted Bundy, the encyclopedia gives readers an overview of what is undoubtedly the most macabre and fascinating branch of crime and modern criminology.

    Until 1971, life was good for mild-mannered accountant John List. He was vice president of a Jersey City bank and had moved his mother, wife, and three teenage children into a nineteen-room home in Westfield, New Jersey. But all that changed when he lost his job. Raised by his Lutheran father to believe success meant being a good provider, List saw himself as an utter failure. Straining under financial burdens, the stress of hiding his unemployment, as well as the fear that the free-spirited 1970s would corrupt the souls of his children, List came to a shattering conclusion.   “It was my belief that if you kill yourself, you won’t go to heaven,” List told Connie Chung in a television interview. “So eventually I got to the point where I felt that I could kill them. Hopefully they would go to heaven, and then maybe I would have a chance to later confess my sins to God and get forgiveness.”   List methodically shot his entire family in their home, managing to conceal the deaths for weeks with a carefully orchestrated plan of deception. Then he vanished and started over as Robert P. Clark. Chronicling List’s life before and after the grisly crime, Death Sentence exposes the truth about the accountant-turned-killer, including his revealing letter to his pastor, his years as a fugitive with a new name—and a new wife—his eventual arrest, and the details of his high-profile trial.  Revised and updated, this ebook also includes photos.

    A gang of Irish-Americans, the Westies patrolled Manhattan's West Side throughout the '60s, '70s, and '80s. They ruled the tough blue-collar neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, where bodies were known to literally fall from the sky.

    Driven by fear and hate, she was going to make something terrible happen. Before the end of the day, Dann had blazed a murderous trail of poison, fire, and bullets through the unsuspecting town of Winnetka, Illinois, and other North Shore suburbs. She murdered an eight-year-old boy and critically wounded 5 other children inside an elementary school. It finally took a massed force of armed police to end the killing. The shocking story of innocence destroyed by a rich young babysitter inexplicably gone mad made headlines all across the nation and inspired at least two psychotic killers to follow her example. What lead her to do it? Could she have been stopped? The case raised a host of agonizing questions that have remained unanswered—until now. In this book, three Chicago Tribune reporters who covered the Laurie Dann tragedy have pulled together all the available police evidence, unearthed valuable psychiatric information, and interviewed at length scores of people who knew Dann, many of whom had never before spoken to the media about this case. Despite clear and ominous warning signs, a young woman of beauty and privilege was allowed to deteriorate and go slowly berserk—and no one stopped her. Her parents, her doctors, and the police officers who knew her pathological behavior all failed her at critical times. By its passivity and silence, a community comfortable and quiet on the surface, yet reluctant to admit its underlying flaws, became an unwitting accomplice to the final rampage of Laurie Dann. MURDER OF INNOCENCE is a searing portrayal of a family—and a society—unable to cope, and of a young woman who wanted all too desperately only to be loved.

    The autopsy report ruled peritonitis was the cause, but the startling photos of the boy suggested murder.How could the Jurgens kill a small child and get away with it? Determined to find answers, detectives Ron Meehan and Greg Kindle tracked down old witnesses and rebuilt the case brick by brick until they exposed the demons that drove an adopted parent to torture and eventually murder a helpless child. Just as compelling, they investigated why so many people watched and did absolutely nothing. A vivid portrait of an all-American town that harbored a killer, A Death in White Bear Lake is also the absorbing story of two detectives who refused to give up until they had the killer cold.

    She was also a three-bottle-a-day alcoholic, hopelessly in love with the IHOP’s manager, Allen Bryant. Bryant wanted his live-in lover, IHOP owner Art Venecia, dead. And Dee Casteel helped him to arrange it. After Venecia’s murder, Dee and Bryant moved into his house, forged checks, spent his money, and embezzled from the IHOP to buy gifts for Bryant’s boyfriends. But there was an even more gruesome killing to come … WITHOUT MERCY is an engrossing, bizarre true story that traces the twisted path to a loathsome crime. But it is also the story of middle-class citizens gone wrong, of an almost-perfect murder, the traumas of alcoholism, and a legal system that can be deadly in itself. Dee Casteel was an ordinary woman—who now stands convicted of one of the most cold-blooded crimes of this century.

    The custody battle over the couple's infant son makes this true story all the more tragic. 16 pages of photographs.

    For anybody who ever wondered what it's like behind a badge, this is the book.--San Francisco Chronicle.

    Journey inside the demented mind of Albert Fish--pedophile, sadist, and cannibal killer--and discover that bloodlust knows no time or place....On a warm spring day in 1928, a kindly, white-haired man appeared at the Budd family home in New York City, and soon persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Budd to let him take their adorable little girl, Grace, on an outing. The Budds never guessed that they had entrusted their child to a monster. After a relentless six-year search and nationwide press coverage, the mystery of Grace Budd's disappearance was solved--and a crime of unparalleled gore and revulsion was revealed to a stunned American public. What Albert Fish did to Grace Budd, and perhaps fifteen other young children, caused experts to pronounce him the most deranged human being they had ever seen.

    

    This dramatic piece of reportage draws on interviews with murderers to create stark, uncompromising portraits of people attempting to rebuild their lives.

    When Raffield's cover became suspect, word spread through a small circle of friends that the young officer would pay with his life. No one stopped it. On a rainy fall evening in 1987, Raffield was lured to an isolated field. Three bullets were fired-one unloaded into his skull. The baby-faced killer, Greg Knighten, stole eighteen dollars from Raffield's wallet, divided it among his two young accomplices, and calmly said, "it's done."With chilling detail, Carlton Stowers illuminates a dark corner of America's heartland and the children who hide there. What he found was an alienated subculture of drug abuse, the occult, and an unfathomable teenage rage that exploded at point blank range on a shocking night of lost innocence...

    8-page photo insert.

    

    

    

    With new chapters on serial killers, computer crime, cannibals, and conspiracy theories, the revised edition of this popular book presents hours of enthralling reading for the true-crime fans.

    It ranges from apparently innocent nude photographs to depictions of serious sexual assaults and sadistic torture. The author contends that those who buy child pornography are paedophiles. Without paedophilia there would be no child pornography, but without child pornography the myriad networks of active child abusers would collapse. Child pornography is the oil in the engine of paedophilia. The author also wrote "What's Wrong With Your Rights?"

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    Datz takes readers on an eye-opening journey into the side of stamp collecting and dealing that most have never hear about. Datz chronicles his first-hand encounters with philatelic con-men, crooks, and scammers. Meet a rogues gallery of shadowy characters, eccentrics and even murderers—all real people inhabiting the dark underside of philately. Absolutely spellbinding—you will not want to put the book down! The second in Datz’s trilogy about the stamp business.

    Grave doubts were expressed at the time about the extent to which she was responsible for her husband's murder in Ilford by her handsome young lover Frederick Bywaters. The Home Office files on the case were marked not to be opened for 100 years. The case against her rested largely on the evidence provided by 70 letters which she wrote to Bywaters. The truth is that these letters offer a unique insight into the workings of an overwrought romantic imagination, ultimately unable to free itself from the constraints of a suburban marriage and respectability. Through this correspondence and a painstaking reconstruction of the era, the author argues that Mrs Thompson was innocent.

    Why would a man who has everything kill himself?When his body was found early on the morning of September 5th 1932 in his Beverly Hills home everything seemed to point to suicide.Samuel Marx was the MGM story edition at the time. He knew both Bern and Harlow intimately. After years of investigation Marx, together with Joyce Vanderveen, had reconstructed this true-life detective story, ending with the revelation of Paul Bern's murder. With an extraordinary cast of characters that ranges from Louis B. Meyer to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'Murder Hollywood Style' rips the lid off the studio cover-up with compelling evidence that Bern was murdered - and why.

    Joyce, a young housewife, was arrested. Thus began a two-year nightmare for Joyce, who would see her calm world destroyed and buried beneath lies and deceit by her friends, her husband, and even the police and prosecutors who were supposed to protect her rights.

    Then he grabbed a cup of coffee and a buttered roll, checked on Diane's body in the back of the wagon, and headed north, toward the New York Thruway.Joe had spent an entire weekend trying to find a suitable burial spot and failed. He knew he was out of time. The car was starting to smell, the rug was loaded with wet sand, and the ice had melted. Most important he had to get rid of Diane before he picked up the kids...Once on the New York Thruway, it wasn't long until the Sawoska's exit. Now Joe was really out of time. With just a few minutes to go, He noticed a small pull-off, at milepost 56.5. He parked the car, opened the rear gate, grabbed Diane's tarp-covered corpse and carried it down the embankment to the edge of a culvert. This was it. After all those years of bickering and fighting, this was good-bye.A chronicle of violence, perversion, and corruption in the 1980s traces the rise and fall of Joseph Pikul--a wealthy man who, when faced with the prospect of a bitter divorce, bludgeoned his wife to death.

    The criminal became a public hero by evading the police and was acquitted of a crime he actually did commit. Photos.

    

    Bantam rp paperback vg++ In stock shipped from our UK warehouse