The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy


Elizabeth Kendall - 1981
    However, very rarely do we hear from the women he left behind—the ones forgotten as mere footnotes in this tragedy. This updated and expanded reissue of Elizabeth Kendall’s 1981 book The Phantom Prince chronicles her intense, six-year relationship with Ted Bundy and its eventual unraveling. Featuring a new introduction and a new afterword by the author, never-before-seen photos, and a new chapter from the author’s daughter, Molly, this gripping account presents a remarkable examination of obsession, intrigue, and the darkness that love can mask.

Love as Always, Mum xxx


Mae West - 2018
    Police arrive on the doorstep of your house, 25 Cromwell Street, with a warrant to search the garden for the remains of your older sister you didn't know was dead. Bones are found and they are from more than one body. And so the nightmare begins. You are the daughter of Fred and Rose West.'Mae, I mean this ... I'm not a good person and I let all you children down ...' Rose West, HM PRISON DURHAMIt has taken over 20 years for Mae West to find the perspective and strength to tell her remarkable story: one of an abusive, violent childhood, of her serial killer parents and how she has rebuilt her life in the shadow of their terrible crimes.Through her own memories, research and the letters her mother wrote to her from prison, Mae shares her emotionally powerful account of her life as a West. From a toddler locked in the deathly basement to a teen fighting off the sexual advances of her father, Mae's story is one of survival. It also answers the questions: how do you come to terms with knowing your childhood bedroom was a graveyard? How do you accept the fact your parents sexually tortured, murdered and dismembered young women? How do you become a mother yourself when you're haunted by the knowledge that your own mother was a monster? Why were you spared and how do you escape the nightmare?

Witness: For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson


Amber Frey - 2005
    And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."Amber Frey's life was full of blessings: an exciting new business, a beautiful home, and most of all, her infant daughter, Ayiana. But Amber had been through some unhappy relationships, and she longed for a true and loving partner. In November 2002, she went on a blind date with Scott Peterson. He was handsome, charming, thoughtful, and romantic. Best of all, he was single and ready to settle down . . . or so he said.Their connection was immediate. Over the next few weeks, Amber and Scott grew closer and closer. Scott won her over with his warmth, humor, and intelligence, and he even won the heart of little Ayiana. Before long, he began to speak of the beautiful future the three of them were destined to share as a family.Soon enough, however, Amber began to suspect that Scott Peterson might not be the man he claimed to be. On December 9, he broke down in tears and told her that he had been married, but had "lost" his wife. This was weeks before Laci Peterson, eight months pregnant at the time, was even reported missing. Scott Peterson hadn't lost her, but clearly he was planning to.Suddenly a relationship that seemed full of promise was turning into Amber's worst nightmare.Amber launched an investigation of her own. The moment she was able to confirm her worst suspicions, she contacted the Modesto Police Department, in northern California, and offered to do whatever she could to help. She began secretly taping her conversations with Scott, pressing him for information but never letting on that she had heard the news of Laci's disappearance. Those conversations became the basis for the prosecution's case against Scott Peterson for the murder of his wife and unborn child.Amber's whole world was turned upside down in the process. She lost her privacy, as every detail of her life was scrutinized by the media, who couldn't seem to get enough of this tragic, heart-wrenching story. But she soldiered on, looking deep inside herself and drawing strength from her faith.Witness is the chilling story of how a young woman became ensnared in Scott Peterson's web of lies, then risked everything to seek justice for Laci Peterson and her unborn child, Conner. It is also a story of forgiveness and faith, and of one woman's struggle to live with an open and honest heart.

For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago


Simon Baatz - 2008
    Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectual--too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state's attorney Robert Crowe was certain that no defense could save the ruthless killers from the gallows. But the families of the confessed murderers hired Clarence Darrow, entrusting the lives of their sons to the most famous lawyer in America in what would be one of the most sensational criminal trials in the history of American justice.Set against the backdrop of the 1920s--a time of prosperity, self-indulgence, and hedonistic excess in a lawless city on the brink of anarchy—For the Thrill of It draws the reader into a world of speakeasies and flappers, of gangsters and gin parties, with a spellbinding narrative of Jazz Age murder and mystery.

The Yosemite Murders


Dennis McDougal - 2000
    . . and killing themThey were crimes that grabbed headlines around the world and stunned America. Four women dead, their bodies charred and horribly mutilated. Now Dennis McDougal, acclaimed author of the spellbinding true crime tour de force Mother's Day, brings his considerable investigative and narrative skills to the Yosemite murders to give you the most complete account of what really happened. Drawing on several personal conversations with the confessed killer and interviews with the victims' families, McDougal presents the definitive story, and answers many lingering questions. What demons drove this quiet handyman and nudist colony habitue to burn, mutilate, and murder four women he didn't even know?  How did he overpower a woman and two teenaged girls?  And most disturbing, did the glory-seeking FBI actually hinder the investigation, leaving the killer free to kill once more before he was caught?THE YOSEMITE MURDERS offers valuable insight into these savage and senseless murders in the heart of America's most beautiful wilderness.

Innocence Lost


Carlton Stowers - 1990
    When Raffield's cover became suspect, word spread through a small circle of friends that the young officer would pay with his life. No one stopped it. On a rainy fall evening in 1987, Raffield was lured to an isolated field. Three bullets were fired-one unloaded into his skull. The baby-faced killer, Greg Knighten, stole eighteen dollars from Raffield's wallet, divided it among his two young accomplices, and calmly said, "it's done."With chilling detail, Carlton Stowers illuminates a dark corner of America's heartland and the children who hide there. What he found was an alienated subculture of drug abuse, the occult, and an unfathomable teenage rage that exploded at point blank range on a shocking night of lost innocence...

Who Killed These Girls?: The Twenty-Five-Year History of Austin's Yogurt Shop Murders


Beverly Lowry - 2016
    On December 6, 1991, the naked, bound-and-gagged bodies of four girls--each one shot in the head--were found in an "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt!" shop in Austin, Texas. Grief, shock, and horror spread out from their families and friends to overtake the city itself. Though all branches of law enforcement were brought to bear, the investigation was often misdirected, and after eight years only two men (then teenagers) were tried; moreover, their subsequent convictions were eventually overturned, and Austin PD detectives are still working on what is now a very cold case. Over the decades, the story has grown to include DNA technology, false confessions, and other developments facing crime and punishment in contemporary life, but this story belongs to the scores of people involved, and from them Lowry has fashioned a riveting saga that reads like a Russian novel, comprehensive and thoroughly engrossing.

Righteous Carnage: The List Murders in Westfield


Timothy B. Benford - 1991
    She was still in her nightgown and slippers. John List came up behind her and put a 9mm German-made Steyr automatic pistol to the side of her head and fired once. She died instantly. The bullet smashed into the opposite wall. John made his way up the stairs to the third floor where his 85-year old mother, Alma, wearing a housedress, was preparing breakfast in her efficiency kitchen. She was standing near the storage room that adjoined her kitchen when a 9mm bullet ripped through the side of her scull. Alma List was dead before her body crumpled in a heap on the floor. The Righteous Carnage had begun.

Cellar of Horror: The Story of Gary Heidnik


Ken Englade - 1989
    What police found there was an incredible nightmare made real. Four young women had been held captive--some for four months--half-naked and chained. They had been tortured, starved, and repeatedly raped. But more grotesque discoveries lay in the kitchen: human limbs frozen, a torso burned to cinders, an empty pot suspiciously scorched...This is not a story for the faint-hearted. Cellar of Horror is a shocking true account of the self-proclaimed minister with a long history of mental illness, who preyed upon the susceptible and the retarded in a bizarre plan to create his own "baby factory." It is a macabre web spun around money, power, and religion, tangled with courtroom drama and lawyers' tactics, sure to send a chill into your very soul.

Abandoned Prayers: The Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession and Amish Secrets


Gregg Olsen - 1990
    The residents of Chester, Nebraska, buried him as "Little Boy Blue," unclaimed and unidentified—until a phone call from Ohio two years later led authorities to Eli Stutzman, the boy's father.Eli Stutzman, the son of an Amish bishop, was by all appearances a dedicated farmer and family man in the country's strictest religious sect. But behind his quiet façade was a man involved with pornography, sadomasochism, and drugs. After the suspicious death of his pregnant wife, Stutzman took his preschool-age son, Danny, and hit the road on a sexual odyssey ending with his conviction for murder. But the mystery of Eli Stutzman and the fate of his son didn't end on the barren Nebraska plains. It was just beginning. . .Gregg Olsen's Abandoned Prayers is an incredible true story of murder and Amish secrets.

The Cases That Haunt Us


John E. Douglas - 2000
    Provocative. Shocking. Call them what you will...but don't call them open and shut. Did Lizzie Borden murder her own father and stepmother? Was Jack the Ripper actually the Duke of Clarence? Who killed JonBenet Ramsey?America's foremost expert on criminal profiling and twenty-five-year FBI veteran John Douglas, along with author and filmmaker Mark Olshaker, explores those tantalizing questions and more in this mesmerizing work of detection. With uniquely gripping analysis, the authors reexamine and reinterpret the accepted facts, evidence, and victimology of the most notorious murder cases in the history of crime, including the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the Zodiac Killer, and the Whitechapel murders.Utilizing techniques developed by Douglas himself, they give detailed profiles and reveal chief suspects in pursuit of what really happened in each case.The Cases That Haunt Us not only offers convincing and controversial conclusions, it deconstructs the evidence and widely held beliefs surrounding each case and rebuilds them -- with fascinating, surprising, and haunting results.

Blind Faith


Joe McGinniss - 1989
    Rob Marshall was the big breadwinner, king of the country club set. Maria Marshall was his stunningly beautiful wife and the perfect mom to their three great kids. Then one night Rob, his head bloodied, reported Maria had been brutally slain. Sympathy poured in - until disquieting facts began to surface...and the true story of adultery, gambling, drugs and murder tore the mask off Rob Marshall and the blinders off the town that thought he could do no wrong...

The Murders at White House Farm: Jeremy Bamber and the killing of his family. The definitive investigation.


Carol Ann Lee - 2014
    The murder weapon was found on Sheila's body; a bible lay at her side. All the windows and doors of the farmhouse were secure, and the Bambers' son, 24-year-old Jeremy, had alerted police after apparently receiving a phone call from his father, who told him Sheila had 'gone berserk' with the gun. It seemed a straightforward case of murder-suicide, but a dramatic turn of events was to disprove the police's theory. In October 1986, Jeremy Bamber was convicted of killing his entire family in order to inherit his parents' substantial estates. He has always maintained his innocence. Drawing on interviews and correspondence with many of those closely connected to the events - including Jeremy Bamber - and a wealth of previously unpublished documentation, Carol Ann Lee brings astonishing clarity to a complex and emotive case. She describes the years of rising tension in the family that culminated in the murders, and provides clear insight into the background of each individual and their relationships within the family unit.Scrupulously fair in its analysis, The Murders at White House Farm is an absorbing portrait of a family, a time and a place, and a gripping account of one of Britain's most notorious crimes.

On Chapel Sands: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child


Laura Cumming - 2019
    There were no screams when she was taken, suggesting the culprit was someone familiar to her, and when she turned up again in a nearby village several days later, she was found in perfect health and happiness. No one was ever accused of a crime. The incident quickly faded from her memory, and her parents never discussed it. To the contrary, they deliberately hid it from her, and she did not learn of it for half a century. This was not the only secret her parents kept from her. For many years, while raising her in draconian isolation and protectiveness, they also hid the fact that she’d been adopted, and that shortly after the kidnapping, her name was changed from Grace to Betty. In Five Days Gone, Laura Cumming brilliantly unspools the tale of her mother’s life and unravels the multiple mysteries at its core. Using photographs from the time, historical documents, and works of art, Cumming investigates this case of stolen identity with the toolset of a detective and the unique intimacy of a daughter trying to understand her family’s past and its legacies. Compulsive, vivid, and profoundly touching, Five Days Gone is a masterful blend of memoir and history, an extraordinary personal narrative unlike any other.

Alcatraz from Inside: The Hard Years, 1942-1952


Jim Quillen - 1991
    In this fascinating autobiographical account, Jim Quillen tells the amazing story of his decade incarcerated in America's most infamous prison -- how he got there, how he stayed alive inside, and, most important, how he found the inspiration and courage to get out.