Dark Ambition: The Shocking Crime of Dellen Millard and Mark Smich


Ann Brocklehurst - 2016
    The story of the Hamilton man's strange disappearance in May 2013 captured headlines across the country and took over social media, resonating with everyone who had ever taken a test drive or bought and sold goods online. When Dellen Millard and Mark Smich were eventually arrested and charged with Bosma's murder, the mystery only deepened. Millard was the wealthy heir to an aviation business. Smich was his ne'er-do-well best friend from a middle-class family. There was no obvious reason why the pair had made it their deadly mission to steal a truck, murder its owner, and incinerate the body. Tim Bosma was their randomly chosen "thrill kill" target. Veteran journalist and private investigator Ann Brocklehurst had a front-row seat at Millard's and Smich's 2016 trial, where many of the questions about their shocking crime were finally answered. Others still linger, waiting to be further explained at two more murder trials set for 2017. Both Millard and Smich have been charged with the first-degree murder of Laura Babcock, who disappeared in summer 2012. And Millard alone faces murder charges in the death of his father, which previously has been ruled a suicide. Compelling and suspenseful, Dark Ambition chronicles an unfathomable crime and its chilling perpetrators.

Almost the Perfect Murder: The Killing of Elaine O’Hara, the Extraordinary Garda Investigation and the Trial That Stunned the Nation: The Only Complete Inside Account


Paul Williams - 2015
    But after her remains were found gardaí discovered that Elaine was in thrall to a man who had spent years grooming her to let him kill her. That man was Graham Dwyer, a married father of three and partner in a Dublin architecture practice.>Almost the Perfect Murder details the exhaustive investigation - one of the most complex and chilling in Irish criminal justice history - that allowed gardaí to build a case against Dwyer. And it outlines the twists and turns - both in the courtroom and behind the scenes - during the dramatic trial that followed.This book includes fresh insights into the garda investigation and background information on Graham Dwyer.

Frozen Tears: The Fort Leonard Wood MP Murders


J.B. King - 2019
    Only one survived. This true crime book is written by Missouri State Highway Patrol Trooper J.B. King, the first law enforcement officer on the scene. He recounts the events from the moment of the crime until the conviction of Military Police Game Warden Johnny Lee Thornton.

Ladykiller


Donna Fielder - 2012
    But the answer wasn't really so simple...

The CBS Murders: A True Account of Greed and Violence in New York's Diamond District


Richard Hammer - 1987
      On a warm spring evening in 1982, thirty-seven-year-old accountant Margaret Barbera left work in New York City and walked to the West Side parking lot where she kept her BMW. Finding the lock on the driver’s side door jammed, she went to the passenger’s side and inserted her key. A man leaned through the open window of a van parked in the next spot, pressed a silenced pistol to the back of Margaret’s head, and fired. She was dead before she hit the pavement.   It was a professional hit, meticulously planned—but the killer didn’t expect three employees of the nearby CBS television studios to stumble onto the scene of the crime. “You didn’t see nothin’, did you?” he demanded, before shooting the first eyewitness in the head. After chasing down and executing the other two men, the murderer sped out of the parking lot with Margaret’s lifeless body in the back of his van.   Thirty minutes later, the first detectives arrived on the scene. Veterans of Midtown North, a sprawling precinct stretching from the exclusive shops of Fifth Avenue to the flophouses of Hell’s Kitchen, they thought they’d seen it all. But a bloodbath in the heart of Manhattan was a shocking new level of depravity, and the investigation would unfold under intense media coverage. Setting out on the trail of an assassin, the NYPD uncovered one of the most diabolical criminal conspiracies in the city’s history.   Richard Hammer’s blow-by-blow account of “the CBS Murders” is a thrilling tale of greed, violence, and betrayal, and a fascinating portrait of how a big-city police department solved the toughest of cases.

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.

Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America


Les Standiford - 2011
    In the aftermath of that six-year old's abduction and slaying in 1981, everything about the nation's regard and response to missing children changed.The shock of the crime and the inability of law enforcement to find Adam's killer put an end to innocence, and altered our very perception of childhood itself - gone forever are the days when young children burst out the doors of American homes with a casual promise to be home by dark. And, due in large part to the efforts of Adam's parents, John and Reve Walsh, the entire mechanism of law enforcement has transformed itself in an effort to protect our children.Before Adam went missing, there were no children's faces on milk cartons and billboards, no Amber Alerts, no national Center for Missing and Abused Children, no national databases for crimes against children, no registration of pedophiles - in fact, it was easier to mobilize the FBI to search for a stolen car or missing horse than for a kidnapped child. Such facts may be sad testimony to the weariness of a modern world, but there is also an uplifting aspect to Adam's story - the 27 years of undaunted effort by decorated Miami Beach Homicide Detective, Joe Matthews, to track down Adam's killer and bring justice to bear at long last.Bringing Adam Home tells the story - the good, the bad, and the ugly - of what it took for one cop to accomplish what an entire system of law enforcement could not. Matthews' achievement is a stirring one, reminding us that such concepts as hard work, dedication, and love, survive, and that goodness can prevail.

Fire Lover: A True Story


Joseph Wambaugh - 2002
    government profilers, "the most prolific American arsonist of the twentieth century."Growing up in Los Angeles, John Orr would watch in awe as firefighters scrambled to put out blazes with seeming disregard for their own lives. One day he would become a fireman himself, and a good one. As a member of the Glendale Fire Department, he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a fire captain and one of southern California's best-known and most-respected arson investigators, as well as a writer of firefighting articles and finally of a fact-based novel. But there was another, unseen life, one that included many women, a need for risk, and a hunger for recognition. While Orr busted a string of petty arsonists, there was one serial criminal he could not track down. The fire lover used the same simple yet devastating device and was unerring in his execution. His lethal handiwork led to the death of four innocent people and countless millions of dollars worth of property damage. Homes, retail stores during business hours, fields of dry brush in stifling summer heat -- little was safe from his obsession to see them burn.But after years of terror and destruction, he would make a mistake. He would leave behind a precious clue that investigators would use to lead them to the true identity of the fire lover, to the shock and disbelief of the firefighting community.Chilling, colorful, and vivid, Fire Lover is Joseph Wambaugh at his best. He explores the making of a deviant personality, the fascinating intricacies of fire science, the uneasy relationship between firefighting and law-enforcement communities, and a legal system gone haywire. Based on his trademark meticulous research, interviews, case records, and thousands of pages of court transcripts, Wambaugh fashions a powerful narrative. You will never look at fire the same way again.