Book picks similar to
Gangland: New Zealand's Underworld of Organised Crime by Jared Savage
non-fiction
crime
new-zealand
nonfiction
Too Close to Home: The Samantha Zaldivar Case
Laurinda Wallace - 2017
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.
Fallen: The inside story of the secret trial and conviction of Cardinal George Pell
Lucie Morris-Marr - 2019
'Guilty' he pronounced five times. The third most senior Catholic cleric in the world had been found guilty of sex crimes against children, bringing shame to the Church on a scale never seen before in its history. Investigative journalist Lucie Morris-Marr was the first to break the story that Cardinal George Pell was being investigated by the police. In this riveting dispatch, she recounts how the cleric was trailed by a cloud of scandal as he rose to the most senior ranks of the church in Australia, all the way to his appointment by Pope Francis to the position of treasurer in the Vatican.Despite anger and accusations, it seemed nothing could stop George Pell. Yet in 2017 he was charged by detectives, returning to Australia to face trial.Take a front row seat in court with the author as she reveals the many intriguing developments in the secret legal proceedings which the media could not report at the time. Fallen reveals the full story of the brutal battle waged by the prince of the church as he fought to clear his name, including a ferocious bid to be freed from jail. The author also shares her own compelling personal journey investigating the biggest story of her career and the frequent attacks she endured from powerful Pell supporters. This book also charts how Pell's shocking conviction plunged the Vatican into an unprecedented global crisis after decades of clergy abuse cases. It is a vitally important story that will fascinate anyone interested in the failure of the Catholic Church to address the canker in its heart.
Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?
Ethan Brown - 2016
The women came to be known as the Jeff Davis 8, and local law enforcement officials were quick to pursue a serial killer theory, opening a floodgate of media coverage and stirring a wave of panic across Jennings’ class-divided neighborhoods. The Jeff Davis 8 had been among society’s most vulnerable—impoverished, abused, and mired with mental illness. They engaged in sex work as a means of survival. And their underworld activity frequently occurred at a decrepit no-tell motel called the Boudreaux Inn. As the cases went unsolved, the community began to look inward. Rumors of police corruption and evidence tampering, of collusion between street and shield, cast the serial killer theory into doubt. But what was really going on in the humid rooms of the Boudreaux Inn? Why were crimes going unsolved and police officers being indicted? What had the eight women known? And could anything be done do stop the bloodshed? Mixing muckraking research and immersive journalism over the course of a five-year investigation, Ethan Brown reviewed thousands of pages of previously unseen homicide files to posit what happened during each victim’s final hours.
Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society
Judy Christie - 2019
She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents--hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families.Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. In Before and After, Wingate and Christie tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art meeting life, long-silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with Wingate and Christie to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children's Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results.
Pull No Punches: Memoir of a political survivor
Judith Collins - 2020
Cold Heart
Kimberly Tilley - 2020
Ed Burdick, a wealthy manufacturer known for his kindness and generosity, and his wife Alice had a life few could imagine. The couple had three lovely daughters, a beautiful home, and they were fixtures in the elite Elmwood Avenue set. Despite rumors of trouble in the Burdick marriage, few believed it until Ed ordered his wife out of their home and filed for divorce. The whispers about their separation abruptly ended when Ed Burdick was found murdered in his den while his family slept upstairs. The police found a mosaic of conflicting clues at the crime scene. The investigation uncovered shocking information about the Buffalo tycoon’s life, and no shortage of suspects with a motive for murder.The murder of Ed Burdick is the true story of the great unsolved mystery of turn of the century Buffalo and a terrible wrong that was never put right.
The Missing Beaumont Children: 50 Years of Mystery and Misery
Michael Madigan - 2015
A crime so shocking that it has often been described as a defining moment in this country's history.After 50 years of intense police investigation the whereabouts of Jane (9), Arnna (7) and Grant Beaumont (4) is still a mystery; Australia's most famous unsolved crime.On the morning of January 26, 1966 the three children set off from their Somerton Park home to Glenelg Beach on a bus to enjoy a brief excursion at Adelaide's most popular beach only a few kilometres away. Apart from a brief sighting from the Beaumont family's postman early on that afternoon, there have been no other sightings of the children since.The 'mystery' of the children's disappearance has often overshadowed the 'misery' the Beaumont parents have had to endure. This book takes the reader inside the trauma of Nancy and Grant; from the panic and heartbreaking first few days to the utter despair in later years.Only seven years after the Beaumont disappearance, two girls Joanne Ratcliffe (11) and Kirste Gordon (4) were abducted from Adelaide Oval during a football match. Were the two abductions connected? How could they not be connected?Author Michael Madigan delves into the sordid world of the numerous 'persons of interest' who have at times been suspects in this case and forensically answers the question 'who could do such a thing?'
Loose Units
Paul F. Verhoeven - 2018
Well, an ex-cop. Long since retired, John spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. Paul, however, is something of an artsy, sensitive soul who can’t understand why he doesn’t have the same heroism and courage as his dad. One day, John offers Paul the chance of a lifetime: he'll spill his guts, on tape, for the first time ever, and try to get to the bottom of this difference between them.What unfolds is a goldmine of true-crime stories, showing John’s dramatic (and sometimes dodgy) experience of policing in Sydney in the 1980s. The crims, the car chases, the frequent brushes with death and violence, and the grey zone between what’s ethical and what’s effective: finally Paul gets real insight into what’s formed his father’s character.Thrilling, fascinating and often laugh-out-loud funny, Loose Units is a high-octane adventure in policing, integrity and learning what your father is really all about.
Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men
Harold Schechter - 2018
She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn’t merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. They’d been butchered.Hell’s Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter’s gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery—and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare.
If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation
Janine Latus - 2007
Today Ron Ball and I are romantically involved, it read, but I fear I have placed myself at risk in a variety of ways. Based on his criminal past, writing this out just seems like the smart thing to do. If I am missing or dead this obviously has not protected me... That same spring Janine Latus was struggling to leave her marriage -- a marriage to a handsome and successful man. A marriage others emulated. A marriage in which she felt she could do nothing right and everything wrong. A marriage in which she felt afraid, controlled, inadequate, and trapped. Ten weeks later, Janine Latus had left her marriage. She was on a business trip to the East Coast, savoring her freedom, attending a work conference, when she received a call from her sister Jane asking if she'd heard from Amy. Immediately, Janine's blood ran cold. Amy was missing. Helicopters went up and search dogs went out. Coworkers and neighbors and family members plastered missing posters with Amy's picture across the county. It took more than two weeks to find Amy's body, wrapped in a tarpaulin and buried at a building site. It took nearly two years before her killer, her former boyfriend Ron Ball, was sentenced for her murder. Amy died in silent fear and pain. Haunted by this, Janine Latus turned her journalistic eye inward. How, she wondered, did two seemingly well-adjusted, successful women end up in strings of physically or emotionally abusive relationships with men? If I Am Missing or Dead is a heart-wrenching journey of discovery as Janine Latus traces the roots of her own -- and her sister's -- victimization with unflinching candor. This beautifully written memoir will move readers from the first to the last page. At once a confession, a call to break the cycle of abuse, and a deeply felt love letter to her baby sister, Amy Lynne Latus, If I Am Missing or Dead is an unforgettable read.
The Prison Doctor
Amanda Brown - 2019
From miraculous pregnancies to dirty protests, and from violent attacks on prisoners to heartbreaking acts of self-harm, she has witnessed it all. In this memoir, Amanda reveals the stories, the patients and the cases that have shaped a career helping those most of us would rather forget.
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Book 2
Barbara W. Tuchman - 2005
The Sophie Lancaster Story
Catherine Smyth - 2016
The beatings and subsequent murder made international news. This book was written by an investigative journalist who became extremely close to the families of the victims. WITH PHOTOS
Family Secrets: The scandalous history of an extraordinary family
Derek Malcolm - 2017
The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’ Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passionel, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair. Derek Malcolm was chief film critic of the Guardian for thirty years and still writes for the paper. Educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he became first a steeplechase rider and then an actor after leaving university. He worked as a journalist in the sixties, first in Cheltenham and then with the Guardian where he was a features sub-editor and writer, racing correspondent and finally film critic. He directed the London Film Festival for a spell in the 80s and is now President of both the International Film Critics Association and the British Federation of Film Societies. He lives with his wife Sarah Gristwood in London and Kent and has published two books – one on Robert Mitchum and another on his favourite 100 films. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and a veteran of film festival juries all over the world.