Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal’s own confession.After his conviction, however, a national anti-death penalty movement was started to “Free Mumia;” Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jesse Jackson rallied on his behalf, and led the charge.  For his part, while on death row, Abu-Jamal published several books, delivered radio commentaries, was a college commencement speaker, found himself named an Honorary Citizen of France, and had his defense coffers enhanced by ticket sales from a sold out (16,000-person) concert featuring Rage Against the Machine.Here, from Maureen Faulkner and acclaimed talk show host / journalist Michael Smerconish, is the first book to carefully and definitively lay out the case against Abu-Jamal, and those who’ve elevated him to the status of political prisoner. Smerconish, a lawyer, has provided pro bono legal counsel to Faulkner for over a decade and knows both the legal intricacies and personal subtleties of the case like no other person.  He’s personally acquainted himself with the more than five thousand pages of trial transcript.  “My reading starkly revealed that Abu-Jamal murdered Danny Faulkner in cold blood and that the case tried in Philadelphia in 1982 bore no resemblance to the one being home-cooked by the Abu-Jamal defense team.”As Abu-Jamal’s lawyers contemplate their final appeal, Faulkner and Smerconish weave a compelling, never-before-told account of one fateful night and the 25-year-long rewriting of history.

    Rick Porrello writes about the important connection with mega-mobsters Charles Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, the Cleveland mob's move to Las Vegas, and the first top-level national meeting of the Sicilian-American Mafia.

    That all changed when Eric Edgar Cooke launched his one-man crime wave, a spree of senseless killing that shocked Perth, changing the city and its inhabitants forever. Read the horrific account of Cooke's killings as well as the stories of many other Australian serial killers – doing it because they had the urge and ... because they enjoyed it too much to stop. Contents: Eric Edgar Cooke, William the Mutilator Macdonald, Paul Charles Denyer, Ivan Milat, The Snowtown Murderers, John Wayne Glover, Peter Dupas, Catherine and David Birnie

    

    Then it all went horribly wrong. In 1999 he was charged with being knowingly concerned with the importation of a commercial quantity of cocaine. Fraser pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing, trafficking a small quantity, and using cocaine over a period of time. He was sentenced to seven years in maximum security prison. Court in the Middle describes his early years—growing up in a family of lawyers, running hard to build a criminal law practice; his successful years with a national practice, and defending high profile, sometimes notorious, clients. He also discusses his relationship with cocaine, addiction and deals, crime and punishment, and the shocking details of his time spent in a maximum security prison.

    Now William F. Roemer, Jr., veteran FBI agent and scourge of the Cosa Nostra, tells the shocking story of how a teenage wiseguy grew up to become "the man" in Vegas. From the gritty streets of Chicago to the neon-lit Nevada wonderland, Roemer assembles a rogue's gallery of the highest-ranking capos and the lowest creeps of organized crime. As incredible as any work of fiction -- but it's all fact!

    This is one of them. Seven-year-old Samantha Zaldivar is reported missing in February 1997. Despite the best efforts of the community and law enforcement to find her, it seems the first grader has disappeared without a trace until the forensic evidence leads a multi-agency task force to an ugly possibility. Months later, an unlikely turn of events reveals the young girl’s fate, which rocks the rural county in Western New York. Dedicated and meticulous police work brings a murderer to justice, but not without a cost to those involved. Stephen C. Tarbell, a retired Wyoming County Sheriff’s investigator shares his personal account of the investigation into the disappearance and murder of Samantha Zaldivar.

     It ran for eight hundred miles, from San Antonio, Texas to Abilene, Kansas, and was instrumental in creating the famous image of the cowboy. But how was this trail created? Who devised its route? And why were the cattle drives across states so important for the economy of the southwest? Sam P. Riding’s fascinating book The Chisholm Trail: A History of the World's Greatest Cattle Trail gives an in-depth overview of the route was created, who rode along it and how it eventually superseded by the emergence of the railways. Through the course of the book Ridings provides details on many of the famous figures who were associated with the trail including the route’s founder Jesse Chisholm, famous ranchers like Joseph G. McCoy and Charles Goodnight, gunslingers such as Billy the Kid, and of course men who attempted to keep the peace like Charles A. Siringo. Sam P. Ridings rode the trail many times throughout his life during the trail’s golden era and so was able to gather information from the cowboys who knew the route better than anyone else. This work is full of fascinating stories of incidents that occurred along the length of the trail, from gunfights to religious revivals, Native American raids to cattle stampedes, during the short but vibrant years that the trail was in full use. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the southwest in the aftermath of the Civil War and how the image of the cowboy came into being. Sam P. Ridings was a frequent traveler on the Chisholm Trail and collected many of his stories from the men and women who had lived and worked on the trail during its golden years. His book The Chisholm Trail: A History of the World's Greatest Cattle Trail was first published in 1936. Ridings passed away in Kansas in 1942.

    A spasm of violence that took only a few minutes to play out leaves a community divided and searching for answers. From the author of newly released Boston Strong: A City s Triumph Over Tragedy, about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Bad Blood is the riveting account of the long-standing feud between Franconia, New Hampshire, police officer Bruce McKay, 48, and Liko Kenney, 24. In May 2007, Kenney shot and killed Officer McKay, following a dramatic chase that began with a routine traffic stop. Kenney, cousin of ski legend Bode Miller, was then shot and killed by a shadowy passerby. Almost immediately, the tragic incident revealed deep tensions within this otherwise quiet community in the White Mountains with charges that Kenney was a hell-raiser and mentally unstable and counter-charges that Officer McKay was a rogue cop who dispensed justice as a way to settle personal scores. Striving to get at the truth of the story, the author uncovers a complicated mix of personalities and motivations. Local and statewide interests clash while regional and national media and even YouTube viewers supply ready stereotypes to fit their agendas. Amid larger questions of the meaning of individual freedom we are, ultimately, helpless witnesses to an inevitable clash of characters."

    After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.

    On a sunny Sunday 29 years later, Carleen and Maurice Bryant's beloved first-born loaded the boot of his yellow Volvo with guns and ammunition and returned to Tasmania's historic Port Arthur settlement, scene of many idyllic childhood summers. There, the young man with the striking surfie hair and mesmeric eyes, calmly shot 35 people dead and injured another 21. His crime, the world's worst killing spree by a lone gunman, horrified the nation and changed Australia forever.Thirteen years on, Robert Wainwright and Paola Totaro, both senior news writers, delve backwards over five generations and across two hemispheres to unravel the complete story of Bryant's life and reveal why he committed this heinous crime. They have uncovered Bryant's family history, spoken to his mother, his psychiatrists, lawyer and others who knew him, to piece together the story of eccentric and disparate characters whose lives intersected – with catastrophic results. From Bryant's shocking behind-the-scenes confessions to his own 11th-hour attempt to turn back, this book asks if the Port Arthur massacre could have been prevented. And explains why it could happen again.

    . .- Martha Wise, Medina's not-so-merry widow, who poisoned a dozen relatives with arsenic--including her own husband, mother, brother, niece, and nephews--because she enjoyed attending funerals;- The legendary Torso Murders, which baffled Cleveland safety directory Eliot Ness, two Cuyahoga County coroners, and the entire Cleveland police force as they tried in vain to catch the perpetrator--whom newspapers dubbed the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run";- The unspeakably horrible Collinwood School Fire of 1908, in which 172 schoolchildren perished in panic because of obstructed fire exits;- Hammer-wielding Velma West, a big-city girl of Cleveland's Jazz Age driven to murder her small-town husband by the slow pace of life of Painesville--and her own obsession with another woman;- The Flats lumber fire of 1914, which leveled Cleveland's industrial Flats, melted bridges, and very nearly set the entire city ablaze;- The enduring mystery of ten-year-old Beverly Potts, whose puzzling disappearance from west-side Halloran Park in 1951 launched Cleveland's greatest manhunt;And many other local heroes and villains in these compelling tales of mayhem, melancholy, and mystery.

    This no-holds-barred biography chronicles the life of a career criminal who started out as a thug on the streets of Chicago and became a trusted lieutenant in Tony Spilotro’s gang of organized lawbreakers in Las Vegas. Cullotta’s was a world of high-profile heists, street muscle, and information—lots of it—about many of the FBI’s most wanted. In the end, that information was his ticket out of crime, as he turned government witness and became one of a handful of mob insiders to enter the Witness Protection Program. “Frank Cullotta is the real thing,” says Nicholas Pileggi in the book’s Foreword, and in these pages, Cullotta sets the record straight on organized crime, witness protection, and life and death in mobbed-up Las Vegas.

    Stoner and Peter A. Conway tell for the first time in full detail the twisted story of a pair of young, aspiring gay adult film producers whose quest for fame at any cost leads to the gruesome murder of the man who stands in their way, gay porn entrepreneur Bryan Kocis.News of the killing of the forty-four-year-old (stabbed twenty-eight times, his throat slashed to near decapitation) in his suburban home sends shock waves through the bucolic Pennsylvania town. Neighbors were horrified to hear about the murder but equally astonished to learn that Kocis ran a small but thriving online porn operation from his home.The murder investigation leads police and prosecutors to the far reaches of the country, from Virginia to New York City, to Las Vegas, and ultimately to a nude beach in San Diego, where investigators facilitate an incredible clandestine suspect surveillance. The manhunt nets Harlow Cuadra and his lover Joseph Kerekes, both former military men, turned male models, turned hustlers, turned porn producers, who finally land at the bottom of a deadly conspiracy.Cobra Killer takes readers into the sometimes alluring, sometimes dangerous and often surprising world of gay porn and the deceit, schemes, and ultimate betrayals lying underneath the fantasy.

    The chilling words are followed by a confession to a murder committed nearly 13 years earlier. The chance discovery of the letter on 31 March 2012 reawakens a case long considered to have run cold, and a hunt begins for the men who kidnapped and killed Betty Ketani – and were convinced they had gotten away with it. The investigation spans five countries, with a world-renowned DNA laboratory called in to help solve the forensic puzzle. The author of the confession letter might have feared death, but he is very much alive, as are others implicated in the crime.Betty Ketani, a mother of three, came to Johannesburg in search of better prospects for her family. She found work cooking at one of the city’s most popular restaurants, and then one day she mysteriously disappeared. Those out to avenge her death want to bring closure to Betty’s family, still agonising over her fate all these years later.The storyline would not be out of place as a Hollywood movie – and it’s all completely true. Written by the reporter who broke the story, Cold Case Confession goes behind the headlines to share exclusive material gathered in four years of investigations, including the most elusive piece of the puzzle: who would want Betty Ketani dead, and why?‘Wonderful, evocative and vivid writing. Eliseev is a very exciting new talent.’ – Peter James‘This case is like an Agatha Christie whodunnit: abduction, murder and a confession.’ – Carte Blanche‘A relentless search for truth and justice. Cold Case Confession is a story that inspires confidence in the system and affirms that, indeed, we are all equal before the law.’ – Thuli Madonsela