Henry C. Lee is highly regarded throughout the law-enforcement community as one of the most talented and experienced forensic scientists in the world. He has also received widespread public recognition and media attention through his association with sensational criminal investigations, including the JFK assassination, the suicide of White House counsel Vincent Foster, the Chandra Levy homicide, the O.J. Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey cases, and, most recently, the Caylee Anthony case. In this new book, Dr. Lee and critically acclaimed mystery writer Jerry Labriola, MD, team up again to present another true-crime page-turner on five notorious incidents: - The Phil Spector case: Legendary music mogul Phil Spector was charged with murder in the death of actress Lana Clarkson, found slain in his mansion. But has Dr. Lee produced forensic evidence suggesting her death was a suicide? - The Brown's Chicken massacre: The savage murder of helpless employees of a restaurant in Palatine, Illinois, was left unsolved for over a decade until the painstaking forensic skills of Task Force and Dr. Lee eventually identified the killers. - Murder in the Sacristy: The brutal murder of a nun in a Toledo, Ohio, church had bizarre ritualistic overtones and remained unsolved until a priest was prosecuted twenty-six years later-the same priest who had conducted the nun's funeral service! Dr. Lee testified at the trial of the priest and here he demonstrates how the perseverance of law enforcement officials and forensic scientists eventually solved the crime. - The shooting of a Connecticut state trooper and the shooting death of a fourteen-year-old young man: Dr. Lee discusses the dual hazards of police work-being killed or injured in the line of duty and the accidental killing of innocent victims or suspects. In Hartford, while racial tensions threatened to spin out of control, Dr. Lee reconstructed the shooting of a young African American by a police officer. His diligent work defused hostilities that nearly led to a riot. - Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Dr. Lee discusses his role in the excavation and, in some cases, the identification of hundreds of bodies in the former Yugoslavia. The evidence he uncovered was later used to build a case against suspects indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal. Combining fascinating details of forensic science with a vivid narrative, Shocking Cases from Dr. Henry Lee's Forensic Files is must reading for true-crime readers and forensic science lovers.

    They brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder and companion Joey Odom built the "castle in the woods" in the Trion forest after Scudder left his position as professor at Loyola. He brought with him twelve thousand doses of LSD. Rumors of drug use and Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. The murders set the stage for a trial vibrant with local lore.

      On a cold December morning in 1768, thirty-one-year-old Ruth Blay approached the gallows for her execution. Standing on the high ground in the northwest corner of what is now Portsmouth’s old South Cemetery, she would have had a clear view across the pasture to the harbor and open sea.   The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth’s story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth’s life and the cruel injustice of colonial Portsmouth’s moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her readers come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.

    Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston’s West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor, and offered hefty rewards as leads put the elusive Dr. Parkman at sea or hiding in Manhattan. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never left the Medical School building alive.His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor’s laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment—of Harvard’s greatest doctors investigating one of their own, for a murder hidden in a building full of cadavers—it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. Paul Collins brings nineteenth-century Boston back to life in vivid detail, weaving together newspaper accounts, letters, journals, court transcripts, and memoirs from this groundbreaking case.Rich in characters and evocative in atmosphere, Blood Ivy explores the fatal entanglement of new science and old money in one of America’s greatest murder mysteries.

    Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot does for marijuana smuggling what Blow and Snowblind did for the cocaine trade.

     When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth's, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute—unless she does as he says. This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose, forever altering not only her life, but the lives of her family, friends, and those she meets along the way.

    When Betty Isaacs walked out on her twelve kids, the youngest were packed off to foster-homes--divided up, Carl Isaacs recalls, ""like sticks of firewood."" He was ten then and from the time when, a few years ... More later, his mother told him he couldn't come back and live with her (""Don't let's rock the boat""), he didn't care about anything. Foster-homes, reform schools, escapes--it all led at 19 to a Maryland prison where, lo and behold, there was his half-brother Wayne Coleman, 26, a shiftless and somewhat dim character with a violent streak. Wayne's prison sidekick was a surprise: a black convict named George Dungee, Wayne's homosexual lover (to Carl, the ""nigger fuck-boy""), doing time for non-support(!). The trio escaped, picked up 15-year-old Billy isaacs (himself a reform school runaway, but trying to go straight), and headed south. Aimless travel eventually brought them to a rural road near Donalsonville, Ga., where they tried to burglarize a house trailer belonging to Jerry and Mary Alday. Various Alday family members showed up unexpectedly, but Wayne had a solution--""Let's blow 'em away."" It was a challenge and, insane as it seems, Carl couldn't back down:he was the leader, and his status with his brothers was all he had. Five male Aldays murdered; Mary Alday gang-raped and murdered. Once it started, Carl made certain the woman was his ticket to the electric chair--he wanted it, anything but being raped again himself by the black studs in the general prison population. Carl, Wayne, and George all drew death sentences but, ten years later, still languish on Death Row amid legal appeals, while at least one Alday relative regrets not having accepted an offer of a lynching. Howard (American Saturday, Zebra) tries hard to elevate this senseless tragedy into something more than a simple horror story--where-did-they-go-wrong flashbacks to Carl's and Billy's childhoods, interspersed with scenes of the hard-working, God-fearing Aldays--but everything other than the gore here seems manufactured. - Kirkus

    David Hogg called out Adult America. The uprising had begun. Cameron Kasky immediately recruited a colorful band of theatre kids and rising activists and brought them together in his living room to map out a movement. Four days after escaping Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, two dozen extraordinary kids announced the audacious March for Our Lives. A month later, it was the fourth largest protest in American history.Dave Cullen, who has been reporting on the epidemic of school shootings for two decades, takes us along on the students’ nine-month odyssey to the midterms and beyond. With unrivaled access to their friends and families, meetings and homes, he pulls back the curtain to reveal intimate portraits of the quirky, playful organizers that have taken the nation by storm. Cullen brings us onto the bus for the Road to Change tour showing us how these kids seized an opportunity. They hit the highway to organize the young activist groups mushrooming across America in their image. Rattled but undeterred, they pressed on in gun country even as adversaries armed with assault weapons tailed them across Texas and Utah trying to scare them off. The Parkland students are genuinely candid about their experiences. We see them cope with shattered friendships and PTSD, along with the normal day-to-day struggles of school, including AP exams and college acceptances. Yet, with the idealism of youth they are mostly bubbling with fresh ideas. As victims refusing victimhood, they continue to devise clever new tactics to stir their generation to action while building a powerhouse network to match the NRA’s. This spell-binding book is a testament to change and a perceptive examination of a pivotal moment in American culture. After two decades of adult hand-wringing, the MFOL kids are mapping a way out. They see a long road ahead, a generational struggle to save every kid of every color from the ravages of gun violence in America. Parkland is a story of staggering empowerment and hope, told through the wildly creative and wickedly funny voices of a group of remarkable kids.

    This honest coming of age memoir begins in the late '60s and spans 30 years, showing how others who've experienced childhood trauma can stay true to themselves and use their pain to build a promising future.

    Fritz Pearson glanced out her window and saw something almost unimaginable: slumped on the front steps of the home across the street was a woman, partially clothed in a blue bathrobe and bloodied beyond recognition. The woman, Mrs. Pearson would come to learn, was her beloved neighbor Carol Thompson, wife and mother of four.   Earlier that morning, T. Eugene Thompson, known to friends as “Cotton,” dropped his son off at school and headed to the office, where he worked as a criminal attorney.  At 8:25 am, he phoned home, later telling police that he did so to confirm evening plans with Carol.  Mr. Thompson lied.   Through police records, court transcripts, family papers, and extensive interviews, William Swanson has recreated Middle America’s “crime of the century,” the deadly plot by a husband that made headlines around the world. But Dial M: The Murder of Carol Thompson also tracks the lives of the Thompsons’ children. Their journey from disbelief to acceptance culminates in a private family trial where they decide whether their father truly was responsible for the violent act that crushed their childhood and forever altered their views of the world.

    When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male.Eunice Hunton Carter, Stephen Carter’s grandmother, was raised in a world of stultifying expectations about race and gender, yet by the 1940s, her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous black women in America. But her triumphs were shadowed by prejudice and tragedy. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who ― together with his friend Dashiell Hammett ― would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed.Moving, haunting, and as fast-paced as a novel, Invisible tells the true story of a woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of her time. But Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson’s remarkable book, her long forgotten story is once again visible.

    Riots were erupting across the city as citizens demanded justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old black man who died in police custody. At the same time, drug and violent crime were once again surging.For years, Sgt Wayne Jenkins and his team of plain-clothed officers - the Gun Trace Task Force - were the city's lauded and decorated heroes. But all the while they had been skimming from the drug busts they made, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Because who would believe the dealers, the smugglers or people who had simply been going about their daily business over the word of the city's elite task force?Now, in light of their spectacular trial of late 2018, and in a work of astounding reportage and painstaking self-discovery, Justin Fenton has pieced together a shocking story of systemic corruption.

    Although Italian-American criminals are covered, this is not just another Italian mafia book. The book covers the Jewish gangsters as well (who truly were the pioneers of organized crime) and the Irish gangs, who were one of the first ethnic groups to run the New York City rackets. Joe even presents a few "lady gangsters" too.Most of all, “ Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1- New York City" is easy to read. The short-chapter format is a stroke of genius. It is interesting, informative, entertaining, and to the point. You won't be bored reading it. Joe Bruno has hit the mark in presenting Old New York the way it really was. Rough and bloody! Mathew J. Mari - Criminal Attorney

    Wescott does not promote a suspect but instead comprehensively investigates the murders of Polly Nichols and Elizabeth Stride, bringing to light new medical evidence, crucial new material on important witnesses, and – revealed for the first time – the name of a woman who may have met Jack the Ripper and survived to tell the tale. Also discussed in this book: Charles Lechmere, recently name as a suspect in the Jack the Ripper documentary, Conspiracy: The Missing Evidence, is restored to his proper place in history as an innocent witness. Walter Sickert, the subject of Patricia Cornwell’s Jack the Ripper books, was not the Ripper, but is revealed here to have been only one of several artists and poets who may have been acquainted with victim Mary Kelly. Bruce Robinson’s Jack the Ripper book, They All Love Jack, controversially endorsed the myth that fruiterer Matthew Packer sold grapes to Liz Stride which were later found on her hand. Around this was constructed an intricate police conspiracy. In Ripper Confidential the truth is exposed and these events are proved beyond doubt to have never taken place. Was Elizabeth Stride a Ripper victim? For the first time, all the myths are cleared away and the facts are looked at in great detail. The contemporary investigators speak out from the past and tell us what they thought of one of the Ripper’s most enigmatic and controversial clues – the chalk-written message on the wall in Goulston Street. Did the Ripper write it and what might it actually have said? A comprehensive look is taken at Berner Street witness, Israel Schwartz. Why did he disappear within weeks from the written record? Was or was he not a legitimate witness? This and much more is discussed, and for the first time it’s revealed why he did not give evidence at the inquest, why the two best known versions of his story are inconsistent, and – most crucially – that he was not the last person to see Liz Stride with a man who was probably her killer. From the author of the award-winning The Bank Holiday Murders: The True Story of the First Whitechapel Murders.

    Britain has always been a land of gallows, and every town had its hanging post and local 'turn off man.' First these men were criminals doing the work to save their own necks, and then later they were specialists in the trade of judicial killing. From the late Victorian period, the public hangman became a professional, and in the twentieth century the mechanics of hanging were streamlined as the executioners became adept at their craft. Britain's Most Notorious Hangmen tells the stories of the men who worked with their deadly skills at Tyburn tree or at the scaffolds in the prison yards across the country. Most were steeled to do the work by drink, and many suffered deeply from their despised profession. Here the reader will find the tale of the real Jack Ketch, the cases of neck-stretchers from the drunks like Curry and Askern, to the local workers of the ropes, Throttler Smith and the celebrated Billington and Pierrepoint dynasty. Along with some of the stories of famous killers such as William Palmer and James Bloomfield Rush, here are the bunglings, failures and desperate lives of the notorious hangmen, some who could entertain the vast crowds enjoying the show, and others who always faced the task as a terrible ordeal.