Book picks similar to
Under the Knife by Diane Fanning
true-crime
non-fiction
disturbing
tbr-true-crime
Always In Our Hearts: The Story Of Amy Grossberg, Brian Peterson, The Pregnancy They Hid And The Baby They Killed
Doug Most - 1999
But in November of their Freshman Year, the two young lovers spent a night in a Delaware motel room where, after hiding her pregnancy from her family and her friends for nine months, Amy gave birth to a baby boy. Only she and Brian knew the child even existed . . . until the next morning when the newborn's corpse turned up in the motel dumpster. The case caused a countrywide outrage, and the teenagers ended up in court, desperately fighting for their lives and ultimately against each other...
A Wife's Revenge
Eric Francis - 2005
She recounted a harrowing tale of domestic abuse-one that the raging mother of two finally brought to an end-her way.But prosecutors had a story of their own...Susan Wright was a seductress...who set the mood for kinky sex with her unsuspecting husband. After tying Jeffrey to the bed, Susan straddled him, stabbed him 193 times with a butcher knife, then buried his body in a makeshift grave in their backyard.Justice would not come easy. The fury was just beginning.The bloodstained theatrics that unfolded in the Houston courtroom would stun jurors, make national headlines, and brand Susan Wright as both a desperate martyr on the edge and a brutal killer who would be brought to justice.
True Crime Files: My Most Memorable Cases
Kathryn Casey - 2011
The pieces include: FIGHTING BACK: in 1993, a brutal serial killer terrorized Allentown, PA. On a warm, summer night, he attacked Denise Sam-Cali, raped her and left her for dead. She lived, and she fought back, helping to trap a serial killer. But Sam-Cali’s courageous battle didn’t end when the predatory monster was tried and convicted. THE MOTHER WHO LOVED TOO MUCH: Janet Ward, a teacher and mother, catered to her teenage daughter, Maggie. Yet in a jailhouse interview Maggie confessed to me in shocking detail why and how she raised a gun to her mother’s head and pulled the trigger. Every parent’s nightmare, this is a case that will leave you questioning.A FATHER’S MORTAL SIN: 2-year-old Renee Goode died mysteriously while on a court-ordered visitation with her father. Police said the seemingly healthy child had inexplicably succumbed to illness. Renee’s mother and grandmother mounted their own investigation, pulling together the elements that led to the conclusion that Renee had been murdered.
Kill For Me
M. William Phelps - 2010
After Rozzo refused the 'roided-up ex-con's advances, she described how he imprisoned, raped, and brutalized her for two days. When the courageous woman pledged to testify against him, Humphrey knew he had to silence her. . .His WeaponThat's when he turned to 19-year-old Ashley Laney. She had fallen in love with Humphrey, her personal trainer, and would do anything for him. On their wedding night, he made a strange request--one that would end with eight gunshot wounds and a dead body.His SchemeThe police knew Humphrey was the likely suspect, but he had an alibi for the time of the shooting. How could they prove that, even if he didn't pull the trigger, he was the manipulative psychopath behind Sandee's murder? It would all come down to a prison escape, a manhunt for a killer, and an explosive trial. . ."One of our most engaging crime journalists." --Dr. Katherine Ramsland"Phelps gets into the blood and guts of the story" --Gregg OlsenCase seen on 48 Hours Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos
Tormented
Lizzie Scott - 2012
No-one prepared us for this nightmare' The scream, when it came, was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was so piercing it made every hair on my body stand on end, and the memory of the terror I felt then, in that instant, has never gone away. I flew out of my bed and ran into the girls’ room, convinced that something truly, utterly devastating was happening to one of the children. It was.
Cold Storage
Don Lasseter - 1998
Its owner, Denise Huber, seemed to have vanished off the face ot the earth. For three years her disappearance remained a mystery, inspiring one of the most intensive missing-persons searches in history. All to no avail. Because the only man who knew what happened to Denise wasn't talking. He wasn't through with her yet. On July 3, 1994, in an affluent suburb of Prescott, Arizona, a padlocked truck parked in the driveway of 37-year-old John Famalaro provoked suspicion. When authorities finally pried open its doors, they found the nude, handcuffed corpse of Denise Huber stuffed into a freezer--preserved forever in the throes of death. Inside Famalaro's home were Denise's personal belongings along with neatly arranged "trophies" of other female prey. But it was the revelations at Famalaro's trial that would truly stagger the imagination, laying bare the terrifying details of Denise's final hours, and exposing the dark past of a merciless killer consumed by perversity and unfathomable evil.
Shannon: Betrayed from Birth
Rose Martin - 2009
The 999 call made by her mother, Karen, alerted the police to the nine-year-old's disappearance and sparked a massive search across the north of England. The story dominated newspaper headlines and television news for the weeks that followed and there was even an offer of a GBP 50,000 reward for the person who found Shannon. Twenty-four days later, Shannon was found, concealed in the base of a divan bed in a flat about a mile away from her home in West Yorkshire. The truth that unfolded over the subsequent weeks horrified the public, who had sympathized with the seemingly stricken mother and even helped in the search for Shannon. It transpired that the abduction of the innocent girl had been a wicked plan dreamed up by her own mother in league with an accomplice, her stepfather's uncle, Michael Donovan. Donovan lured Shannon into his car with the promise of a trip to the fair. For almost three weeks, she was kept hidden in his home and given temazepam and travel sickness tablets to subdue her. While Shannon suffered, her captors came up with a plan to release her in Dewsbury Market, and for Donovan to find her and claim the reward money. Shannon was finally discovered when neighbors told police that they had heard a child's footsteps coming from Donovan's flat.
A Family Business: A Chilling Tale of Greed as One Family Commits Unspeakable Crimes Against the Dead
Ken Englade - 1992
An unsettling look at the Sconce family from the acclaimed true crime author of Deadly Lessons. For sixty years, families in Southern California trusted the Sconce Family Funeral Home with their loved ones’ remains. That trust was betrayed in an extraordinary, horrifying fashion, as it was discovered that the family, seeing an opportunity, had been stealing gold fillings and harvesting the organs of the newly deceased, hiding the evidence by burning the bodies in their crematorium. When the shocking acts came to light, a trial brought every gruesome detail to the forefront, and Ken Englade has—with even-handed, clear-eyed reporting—chronicled every chilling detail.
Open Secrets
Carlton Stowers - 1994
True story of the murder in 1983 of Rozanne Gailiunas. Was the killer her husband, Dr. Peter Gailiunas? Her lover, Larry Aylor? Her lover's wife, Joy Aylor? Or was it someone totally unexpected? March 2002 printing of St. Martin's Paperback edition.
Deadly Dose: The Untold Story of a Homicide Investigator's Crusade for Truth and Justice
Amanda Lamb - 2008
For four months, arsenic consumed the body of promising young pediatric AIDS researcher Eric Miller. No one thought that his wife could be capable of such a horrible crime—except for veteran homicide investigator Chris Morgan, a man who would spend the next four years in his pursuit of justice.
A Need to Kill: Confessions of a Teen Murderer
Michael W. Cuneo - 2011
One night, he waited until they were asleep…then entered the house with a knife. Alec burst into the master bedroom and stabbed Tom and Lisa Haines first. Then he attacked Kevin, who fought for his life. Meanwhile, at the end of the hall, Kevin’s sister Maggie awoke to the sound of violence—and was the only one who made it out alive.
Clean-cut and academically gifted, Alec seemed to have no motives, no history of psychosis—and no remorse. Some believed he was a serial killer in the making, a soulless monster plagued by “demons.” Now, for the first time, acclaimed author Michael W. Cuneo shares the inside story—with shocking details of Alec’s confession to his father, disturbing messages to his classmates, and chilling excerpts from his diaries—and takes you inside the dark, troubled mind of this teenage killer.
Fear Came to Town: The Santa Claus, Georgia, Murders
Doug Crandell - 2009
The Christmas holiday spirit lives all year around. It?s also where Jerry Scott Heidler was raised. And where?in December 1997?he brutally slaughtered his former foster family in an act that devastated the town forever.
Masquerade
Lowell Cauffiel - 1988
Alan Canty, who led several different lives--including loving husband, renowned psychologist, and sugar daddy--at the hands of a pimp named John Lucky Fry and his girlfriend, teenage hooker Dawn Spens. Reprint.
Early Graves
Thomas H. Cook - 1990
Readers expecting both the keen sensitivity and the amazing detail with which Truman Capote imbued his In Cold Blood (to which the publisher compares Cook's account) will find this sadly lacking. However, this popular treatment of a sensational topic will have its own supporters among public library readers. Recommended where interest warrants.
Daddy's Girl: The Campbell Murder Case
Clifford Irving - 1988
With no witnesses and only allegations of family greed, incest, and sexual abuse, the murder remains unsolved for years. The most likely suspects, the victims' youngest daughter Cindy, and her ex-Marine boyfriend, David West, had an alibi the police could not crack. And then West fell in love with Kim Paris, a sexy ex-stripper turned private investigator. She coaxed a confession from him that led to a complex murder case exploding into national news. Clifford Irving wrote: "I started out in Houston as a writer on assignment . . . but I became an investigator, a friend to many of the dramatis personae, and a trial witness. As a result, to my discomfort, I helped to determine the outcome of events . . ." The story of Cindy, a tortured woman, and David, a man determined to do the right thing even if it required multiple murder, is as spectacular and thrilling a true-crime courtroom drama as you will ever read.