My Stolen Son: The Nick Markowitz Story


Susan Markowitz - 2010
    Now she tells her own gripping story-the unbelievable motive for the murder, the shocking identity of the accused, and her own nine-year battle to bring her son's killers to justice.

Unholy Messenger: The Life and Crimes of the BTK Serial Killer


Stephen Singular - 2006
    Behind a facade of Midwestern normalcy, Dennis Rader hid a life of bloodlust, sadism, and murder beyond imagining.The upstanding family man, Scout leader, and church board president was well liked and trusted by his Wichita community.Kansans -- and all of America -- would never recover from the truth: He was BTK, the madman who bound, tortured, and killed ten victims over the course of three decades.Drawing on extensive interviews, including exclusive access to Rader's pastor and congregation, bestselling author Stephen Singular chronicles the horrific crimes, the investigation, the capture, and confession of BTK -- and, more deeply than any other account, reveals how his 2005 arrest shattered and challenged those in a circle of faith who thought they knew him best.

Serial Killer Investigations: The Story of Forensics & Profiling Through the Hunt for the World's Worst Murderers


Colin Wilson - 1993
    Wilson's thorough tome covers the tried-and-true methods from the beginning of the 20th century to the cutting-edge, innovative processes now featured on shows such as CSI. The illustrated book includes 15 black-and-white images of victims, killers, and crime scenes. This is an exceptional book for a society morbidly fascinated by this unsettling topic.

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?

A Need to Kill: The True-Crime Account of John Joubert, Nebraska's Most Notorious Serial Child Killer


Mark Pettit - 1990
    Now, dramatic and chilling new evidence comes to light exposing the sinister thoughts running through the mind of John Joubert--the man behind the Nebraska killings. Former TV news anchorman, investigative reporter and three time Emmy winner Mark Pettit returns to the case to write the final chapter in his best-selling, and now newly updated book: A Need to Kill: The True-Crime Account of John Joubert, Nebraska’s Most Notorious Serial Child Killer. In the spirit of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” Pettit delves into the Joubert case to tell the dramatic story from all angles as a non-fiction novel. In a series of exclusive, face-to-face interviews with Pettit, Joubert admits to a string of violent crimes and another killing that sends investigators into a frenzy ending with Joubert being convicted for a third murder and ultimately executed in Nebraska’s electric chair. Now, 30 years after the murders in Nebraska, Pettit uncovers shocking new evidence from Joubert’s prison records that proves the killer was fantasizing about committing more violent crimes. Never-before-seen death row drawings made by Joubert while he waited to be executed once again send a chill through Nebraska and those touched by Joubert’s horrific crimes. In the updated version of his book, Pettit opens his investigative files to the public and for the first time, shares handwritten letters Joubert wrote to the journalist while in prison. Pettit also reveals aspects of Joubert’s personality gleaned during the exclusive interviews and details from the death row discussions that have never been shared publicly.

Serial Killers and Mass Murderers: Profiles of the World's Most Barbaric Criminals


Nigel Cawthorne - 2007
    Harold Shipman • Son of Sam • The Columbine Killers • The Yorkshire Ripper • Ted Bundy • Charles Starkweather • The Boston Strangler Serial Killers & Mass Murderers takes you into the minds of the criminals who committed the world's most notorious and horrifying crimes. Each of the sadistic murderers profiled here was once known simply as someone's neighbor, co-worker or child. What turned them into killers? In one chilling chapter after another, this book profiles a terrifying succession of homicidal maniacs and asks the question, "What makes them tick?" "The refrigerator contained meat, including a human heart, in plastic bags. There were three human heads in the freezer. Two more skulls were found in a pot on the stove. Another pot contained male genital organs and severed heads, and there were the remains of three male torsos in the trash."

Criminal Minds: The Science and Psychology of Profiling


David L. Owen - 2000
    The page on how to decipher lifestyle and information of a criminal through obeservation of their crime scene is worth the money of the book alone.

Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist


William R. Maples - 1994
    William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer.  In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.

The Man in the Monster: An Intimate Portrait of a Serial Killer


Martha Elliott - 2015
    His crimes were horrific, and he paid the ultimate price for them.When journalist Martha Elliott first heard of Ross, she learned what the world knew of him—that he had been a master at hiding in plain sight. Elliott, a staunch critic of the death penalty, was drawn to the case when the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned Ross's six death sentences. Rather than fight for his life, Ross requested that he be executed because he didn't want the families of his victims to suffer through a new trial. Elliott was intrigued and sought an interview. The two began a weekly conversation—that developed into an odd form of friendship—that lasted over a decade, until Ross's last moments on earth.Over the course of his twenty years in prison, Ross had come to embrace faith for the first time in his life. He had also undergone extensive medical treatment. The Michael Ross whom Elliott knew seemed to be a different man from the monster who was capable of such heinous crimes. This Michael Ross made it his mission to share his story with Elliott in the hopes that it would save lives. He was her partner in unlocking the mystery of his own evil.In The Man in the Monster, Martha Elliott gives us a groundbreaking look into the life and motivation of a serial killer. Drawing on a decade of conversations and letters between Ross and the author, readers are given an in-depth view of a killer's innermost thoughts and secrets, revealing the human face of a monster—without ignoring the horrors of his crimes. Elliott takes us deep into a world of court hearings, tomb-like prisons, lawyers hell-bent to kill or to save—and families ravaged by love and hate. This is the personal story of a journalist who came to know herself in ways she could never have imagined when she opened the notebook for that first interview.Praise for The Man in the Monster:"Elliott's harrowing story pulls off something brilliant and new. Elliott peered into the mind of a serial killer by becoming his friend. A narrative that is riveting, honest, and devastating." —Jack Hitt, author of Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character"Martha Elliott takes us inside the mind of serial killer and rapist Michael Ross. Elliott spent ten years getting to know the man behind the monster, and the pace of her book is as fast and merciless as a thriller." —Rebecca Tinsley, author of When the Stars Fall to Earth

Criminal Minds: Sociopaths, Serial Killers, and Other Deviants


Jeffrey J. Mariotte - 2010
    This book tells the story of those examples.Published to coincide with the release of season five of Criminal Minds on DVDOrganized by type of criminal, including solo serial killers, sexual predators, and killers with famous victims; and tells the stories of many famous murderers, including David Berkowitz, Jeffrey Dahmer, Mark David Chapman, and the Zodiac killerFeatures photographs from the showCriminal Minds: Sociopaths, Serial Killers, and Other Deviants is a fascinating, terrifying book about the criminal minds who live among us.

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.

Murder in the Family


Burl Barer - 2000
    In a modest downtown apartment, they found Nancy Newman's brutally beaten corpse sprawled across her bed. In other rooms were the bodies of her eight-year-old daughter, Melissa, and her three-year-old, Angie, whose throat was slit from ear to ear. Both Nancy and Melissa had been sexually assaulted. After an intense investigation, the police narrowed the principle suspect down to 23-year-old Kirby Anthoney a troubled drifter who had turned to his uncle, Nancy's husband John, for help and a place to stay. Little did John know that the nephew he took in was a murderous sociopath capable of slaughtering his beloved family. This true story, shocking and tragic, stunned Anchorage's residents and motivated the Major Crimes Unit of the Anchorage Police Department to do everything right in their investigation. Feeling the heat as the police built their case, Kirby bolted for the Canadian border. But the cops were on to him. First they hunted him down; then the cops and a tenacious prosecutor began their long, bitter battle to convict him up against an equally tough defense lawyer, as well as the egomaniacal defendant himself. This shocking tale reached its climax in a controversial trial where for the first time an FBI profiler was allowed to testify and the controversial, pre-DNA science of allotyping was presented to a jury. But justice would not be served until after the psychopathic Kirby Anthoney took the stand in his own defense - and showed the world the monster he truly was.

Catch Me a Killer: Serial Murders: A Profiler's True Story


Micki Pistorius - 2001
    I am familiar with his feelings of emptiness, loneliness, depression, death, omnipotence and fear. I dive deeply to get a grip on his torment..." A profiler who wants to understand the mind of the serial killer must have been prepared by life experiences before he or she can dare to venture into the abyss. A person who has led a protected life will not survive.

Milwaukee Massacre: Jeffery Dahmer and the Milwaukee Murders


Robert J. Dvorchak - 1991
    When he led officers back to his captor's lair, they made a gruesome discovery - torsos stuffed in a barrel, severed heads piled up in the fridge and skulls stacked neatly in the filing cabinet. Tacked to the freezer were photographs of the mutilated corpses and in the middle, 31-year-old Jeffery Dahmer, serial killer. This book tells the story of this case of true crime. This book tells the story of Jeffrey Dahmer - a deranged and savage sex killer- going beyond the grisly details to reconstruct events that led up to the murders of at least 17 young men.

The Snow Killings: Inside the Oakland County Child Killer Investigation


Marney Rich Keenan - 2020
    The Oakland County Child Murders spawned panic across southeast Michigan, triggering the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history. Yet after less than two years, the task force created to find the killer was shut down without naming a suspect. The case "went cold" for more than 30 years, until a chance discovery by one victim's family pointed to the son of a wealthy General Motors executive: Christopher Brian Busch, a convicted pedophile, was freed weeks before the fourth child disappeared.Veteran Detroit News reporter Marney Rich Keenan takes the reader inside the investigation of the still-unresolved murders—seen through the eyes of the lead detective in the case and the family who cracked it open—revealing evidence of a decades-long coverup of malfeasance and obstruction that denied justice for the victims.