Book picks similar to
Death by Cyanide: The Murder of Dr. Autumn Klein by Paula Reed Ward
true-crime
non-fiction
crime
borrowed
The Good-Bye Door: The Incredible True Story of America's First Female Serial Killer to Die in the Chair
Diana Britt Franklin - 2006
When the State of Ohio strapped its first woman into the electric chair, Hahn gained a place in the annals of crime as the nation's first female serial killer to be executed in the chair.Told here for the first time in riveting detail is Anna Marie's gripping story, an almost unbelievable tale of multiple murders, deceit, and greed.Born in Bavaria in 1906, Anna Marie brought shame to her pious family when, as a teenager, she gave birth to an illegitimate son, Oscar. She was shipped off to America in 1929 where she initially lived with elderly relatives in Cincinnati. A year later she married Philip Hahn, a Western Union telegrapher, with whom she bought a new house and opened a delicatessen/bakery.Pressed economically by the Great Depression, the ever-resourceful Anna Marie found other ways to get the money to support her passionate pasttime--betting on horses. She tried burning down the house, then the deli, for the insurance; and she tried killing her husband, also for the insurance. Then she took to befriending the neighborhood elderly, latching on to their life savings before feeding them arsenic with deadly results.For weeks her Cincinnati trial for "the greatest mass murder in the history of the country" was a front-page sensation across the nation. A thousand or more curiosity seekers came daily to the courthouse to try to get just a glimpse of her. Nearly 100 witnesses gave damning testimony against her, and the jury's guilty verdict put her on the path to the electric chair. Finally, after a year, all appeals were exhausted, and Anna Marie, age 32, was executed on December 7, 1938, at the state penitentiary in Columbus.True crime buffs, historians, legal professionals, and others seeking an extraordinary story will find The Goodbye Door a compelling addition to true crime literature.
Escape from Dannemora: Richard Matt, David Sweat, and the Great Adirondack Manhunt
Michael Benson - 2017
After months of planning, Ricky Matt and David Sweat cut, chopped, coerced, and connived their way out of a maximum-security prison in the wilderness of upstate New York and managed to elude police for three weeks, sending the region into lockdown and keeping the entire country on edge. The media called it “a bold escape for the ages,” and veteran true-crime writer Michael Benson leads us along the story’s every wild path to dig out a tale of adventure, psychology, sex, and brutality. Escape from Dannemora examines the strange case of Joyce Mitchell, the long-time prison employee who had a sexual relationship with at least one of the killers, and who smuggled them tools and aided in the escape, while they cooked up a plan to kill her husband. In the end, Benson looks closely at conditions at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY, a crumbling Gothic pile now under investigation for charges of drug trafficking and brutality.
Dying for Daddy: The True Story of a Family's Worst Nightmare
Carlton Smith - 1998
On a picturesque street in Sacramento County, California, three healthy saplings stand side by side. But what they symbolize are the deaths of three innocent people—two of them children. The man who took their lives, then planted trees in their honor, was their own husband and father. Hearts went out to Jack Barron when his wife, Irene, died mysteriously in her sleep. Soon after, his two young children were also found dead in their beds. Barron claimed they suffered from the same rare genetic disorder as their mother. But when his fifty-two-year-old mother died, also of asphyxiation in her sleep, law enforcement officials finally took action: The fatal pattern was impossible to ignore. Was this “devoted” father really a heartless murderer? Did he suffer from a bizarre syndrome known as Munchausen by proxy, whereby a parent kills a child to gain sympathy? With firsthand interviews and exclusive inside information, author Carlton Smith paints a chilling portrait of a man driven to commit the most unspeakable of acts.
Ted Bundy: America's Most Evil Serial Killer
Al Cimino - 2019
Bundy was an exceptionally evil, well-organized and calculating criminal who used his knowledge of law enforcement techniques to elude capture for years. The crime scenes, where he murdered women, were scattered over such wide geographic areas that it took police a very long time to recognize it was the work of one man. His fingerprints were never found at the scenes of the crimes and he had a strange chameleon-like ability to change his appearance at will. As one person said, 'Ted lured females the way a lifeless silk flower can dupe a honey bee.' All of Bundy's victims were white females, mainly college students aged between 15 and 25. He confessed to 30 killings but the real figure could have been 100 or more.
Mr. Big: The Investigation into the Deaths of Karen and Krista Hart
Colleen Lewis - 2015
Big is the shocking true story of a murder investigation in Newfoundland and Labrador that forever changed the face of the Canadian justice system.On August 4, 2002, three-year-old twin girls Karen and Krista Hart drowned in Gander Lake. They had gone there with their father. He said it was an accident, but the police were convinced Nelson Hart had killed his daughters that day.With not enough evidence to make an arrest, the RCMP launched a $500,000 “Mr. Big” sting operation to try to get a confession. This book examines the dramatic events that unfolded over the four-month period when Nelson was flying back and forth across the country working in what he believed to be an organized crime syndicate.Central to this story is Jennifer Hicks, who reveals for the first time her life with her now ex-husband, Nelson Hart, and the events surrounding the deaths of her daughters. Together with television journalist Colleen Lewis, who closely followed Hart’s murder trial, Jennifer has reconstructed the tragic story of an abusive relationship and a mother’s worst nightmare.Finalist for the 2016 Arthur Ellis Awards, Best Nonfiction Book Category#10 on the Globe and Mail (Canadian Non-Fiction) Bestseller List (October 10, 2015)#6 on the Globe and Mail (Canadian Non-Fiction) Bestseller List (October 17, 2015)#6 on the Globe and Mail (Canadian Non-Fiction) Bestseller List (October 24, 2015)#10 on the Globe and Mail (Canadian Non-Fiction) Bestseller List (October 31, 2015)
The Strange Case Of Dr. H.H. Holmes
John Borowski - 2005
H.H. Holmes" contains three fully illustrated, unabridged primary source books, plus Holmes' published confession as originally documented shortly before his execution. For the first time in over a century, these materials are again available - and all in one book. HOLMES' OWN STORY by Herman W. Mudgett - 1895 In this autobiography, Holmes recounts his childhood years, and life's trials and tribulations. THE HOLMES-PITEZEL CASE by Detective Frank Geyer - 1896 Included are rare court transcripts, expert witness testimony, and in-depth criminal and legal detection methods utilized in the trial against Holmes. THE HOLMES CASTLE by Robert Corbitt - 1895 Robert Corbitt entered the Holmes "castle" when the investigation into the horrors first began. Learn what made Corbitt believe that Holmes was innocent. THE CONFESSION OF H.H. HOLMES - 1896 Holmes gives the media what they want...a confession. UNABRIDGED - ILLUSTRATED
Murder in the Graveyard: A Brutal Murder. A Wrongful Conviction. A 27-Year Fight for Justice.
Don Hale - 2019
Wendy was attacked in broad daylight in Bakewell Cemetery. Stephen Downing, the 17-year-old groundskeeper with learning difficulties and a reading age of 11, was the primary suspect. He was immediately arrested, questioned for nine hours, without a solicitor present, and pressured into signing a confession full of words he did not understand.21 years later, local newspaper editor Don Hale was thrust into the case. Determined to take it to appeal, as he investigated the details, he found himself inextricably linked to the narrative. He faced obstacles at every turn, and suffered several attempts on his life. All of this merely strengthened his resolve: why should anyone threaten him if Downing had committed the crime?In 2002, Stephen Downing was finally acquitted, having served 27 years in prison.Immerse yourself in this masterful account of Hale’s long, dedicated and often dangerous campaign to rescue a long-forgotten victim of the British legal system; the longest miscarriage of justice in British history.The typewritten letters in this ebook are set in a sans-serif font to make it easier to distinguish between the different types of content in the book. It may not be possible to change the font for these pieces of text.
Captive: The Story of the Cleveland Abductions
Allan Hall - 2013
Using interviews with witnesses, psychologists, family, friends, and the police, he shows how these girls remained undetected for ten years in a home just three miles from the block where they all went missing, and the extraordinary moment when they triumphed over their tormentor.
Into the Darkness: The Mysterious Death of Phoebe Handsjuk
Robin Bowles - 2016
So began the so-called investigation into the sudden death of a young woman called Phoebe Handsjuk.From then, the case became weirder and weirder. Phoebe, it turned out, was a beautiful but damaged young woman who'd been in a fraught relationship with a well-connected and wealthy lover almost twice her age, who was related to the elite of Melbourne‘s judiciary. The police botched their investigation, so Phoebe‘s grandfather, a former detective, decided to run one of his own. And in December 2014, after a 14-day inquest, the Coroner delivered a finding that excluded both suicide and foul play, a ruling that shocked her family and many others who had been following the case.How did Phoebe Handsjuk fall to her death? In 'Into the Darkness', Robin Bowles uses her formidable array of investigative and forensic skills to tell a tale that is stranger than fiction.
A Death in Belmont
Sebastian Junger - 2006
Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim's house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the Belmont murder, but the terror of the Strangler continues.On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvo—the man who would eventually confess in lurid detail to the Strangler's crimes—is also in Belmont, working as a carpenter at the Jungers' home. In this spare, powerful narrative, Sebastian Junger chronicles three lives that collide—and ultimately are destroyed—in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.
A Killer's Confession: And a mother's fight to bring her daughter, Becky Godden-Edwards', murderer to trial
Karen Edwards - 2019
On what would have been my daughter's 29th birthday, Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher knocked on the door and told me my beautiful Becky was dead. Found buried in a shallow grave in a remote field, Becky had been brutally murdered.'When Becky Godden-Edwards was killed, her mother Karen awoke to a world where the truth was never guaranteed; where taxi driver Christopher Halliwell got away with murder and the police officer who found her daughter was punished instead. This is Karen's story. Despite unimaginable tragedy, her love for her daughter has been unbreakable: from her despair through Becky's troubled teenage years, to the agonising eight years when Becky was missing, and then the dramatic story of how a killer's confession led to a terrible discovery. The one constant has been Karen's determination to fight for Becky, tirelessly campaigning for the truth about what happened to be heard and for Halliwell to face the consequences of his evil actions.
*The murders of Becky Godden-Edwards and Sian O'Callaghan will soon be the focus of major new ITV series A Confession starring Martin Freeman as Stephen Fulcher and Imelda Staunton as Karen Edwards*
Sole Survivor: The Inspiring True Story of Coming Face to Face with the Infamous Railroad Killer
Holly Dunn - 2017
After her boyfriend is beaten to death in front of her, Holly is stabbed, raped, and left for dead. In this memoir of survival and healing from a horrific true crime, Holly recounts how she lived through the vicious assault, helped bring her assailant to justice, and ultimately found meaning and purpose through service to victims of sexual assault and other violent crimes, working as a motivational speaker and activist and founding Holly's House, a safe and nurturing space in her hometown of Evansville, Indiana.
The Shadow of Death: The Hunt for a Serial Killer
Philip E. Ginsburg - 1993
It is the definitive account of how police and forensic psychologists work to track a killer, and it is the harrowing story of bucolic innocence lost when murder becomes a fact of small-town life. In this brilliant work of true-crime reportage, Philip E. Ginsburg, acclaimed author of the bestselling Poisoned Blood, re-creates for us the terror of the small communities unnerved by inexplicable murders that begin to occur with horrifying regularity. Ginsburg takes us deep into the lives of the women who died, so that we share the pain of their families and friends as the connections among the several deaths become chillingly clear. He introduces us to the most up-to-date methods today's police use to bring a serial killer to justice, making real the close-knit world of the small-town policemen for whom there is no distinction between the personal and professional when their own families are in danger. And, most harrowing of all, Ginsburg paints an indelible portrait of the psychologist who must burrow inside the mind of the unknown serial killer, and who must identify with the murderer even as he works with the police to capture him. Philip E. Ginsburg's new book is imbued with the same unerring sense of dramatic pacing and "bang-up investigative reporting" that made Poisoned Blood "one of the most riveting true-crime stories in memory," according to Publisher's Weekly. The Shadow of Death is superb and mesmerizing true-crime writing.
Killer Cop: The Deviant Deputy Who Kidnapped, Raped and Killed
Ryan Green - 2018
He told them it was illegal to hitchhike in the area and that he would take them back to safety. He lied.Schaefer took them to a remote wooded area where he drew his gun, tied them up, gagged them and looped nooses around their necks. Schaefer received a call on his police radio and had to leave the girls but he vowed to return and finish what he
Kadian Journal: A Father's Story
Thomas Harding - 2014
Shortly afterwards Thomas began to write. This book is the result.Beginning on the day of Kadian's death, and continuing to the year anniversary, and beyond, Kadian Journal is a record of grief in its rawest form, and of a mind in shock and questioning a strange new reality. Interspersed within the journal are fragments of memory: jewel-bright everyday moments that slowly combine to form a biography of a lost son, and a lost life.It is an extraordinary document, and several things at once: a lucid, raw, and startlingly brave book: a powerful and moving account of a father's grief, and a beautiful tribute to an exceptional son.