Book picks similar to
Savage Vengeance by Gary C. King


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The Blackpool Rock


Steve Sinclair - 2008
    

Marked: An Irish paranormal thriller (The Kerry Horrors Book 1)


B.E. Balfinny - 2017
    Set high up a hillside overlooking the ocean, even David, her architect husband, falls in love with it. Determined that they should swap city for country, Dubliner Kate decides to try living her dream. Curiosity draws her to the ancient circle of standing stones at the end of the lane – stones that her elderly neighbour is strangely yet fiercely determined to keep everyone well away from. Little realising the grave danger she faces, Kate visits the stones at sunset and her life is set on a terrifying course that will bring her face to face with an ancient evil. As her dream of the country life rapidly turns into a nightmare, events at the cottage become more and more sinister. Why is the old lady so determined to keep people away? What does the Parish priest know that he isn’t telling her? Will Kate discover the secret to her personal haunting before it’s too late? Set in the ancient and atmospheric surrounds of rural Ireland in the winter time, this paranormal thriller will leave you reluctant to turn out the lights.

Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Faelz and the Search for Justice


Josh Suchon - 2015
    About an hour later, she was found in a ditch, brutally stabbed to death. The murder shook the quiet East Bay suburb of Pleasanton and left investigators baffled. With no witnesses or leads, the case went cold and remained so for nearly thirty years. In 2011, the investigation finally got a break. Improved forensics recovered DNA from a drop of blood found at the scene matching Tina’s classmate, Steven Carlson. Through dusty police files, personal interviews, letters and firsthand accounts, journalist Joshua Suchon revisits his childhood home to uncover the story of a disturbing crime and the controversial sentencing that brought long-awaited answers to a city tormented by questions.

Cold Fury: The Cannock Chase Murders


David J. Cooper - 2020
    Why would a man, married to an attractive young woman, want to sexually assault and murder innocent little girls?In the late 1960s, Cannock Chase in Staffordshire became the centre of the biggest murder hunt in Britain.The bodies of five year old Diane Tift, six year old Margaret Reynolds, and seven year old Christine Darby were found dumped there.The killer thought he was cleverer than the police and slipped through the net four times.He would have continued with the killings but he made a big mistake.Find out what happened and how the police eventually caught up with him.

Every Mother's Nightmare: The Murder of James Bulger


Mark Thomas - 1993
    The discovery that the killers were but boys themselves forced a national (and international) self examination: what kind of society could breed such a monstrous act?

Beyond All Evil: Two Monsters, Two Mothers, A Love That Will Last Forever


June Thomson - 2011
    On the same day, a few miles apart, their estranged husbands slaughtered their children. The murders were not driven by rage, or committed in moments of madness. They were planned, and carried out with chilling precision, to inflict the worst pain imaginable.June and Giselle did not know each other. Tragedy is all that binds them; they were destined to come together as ‘sisters’, united by pain, grief and a sense of loss so immense that it would drive both to the brink of madness.June’s life with Rab Thomson had been a dark and turbulent existence, characterised by mental torture, physical violence and rape. Giselle’s relationship with Ashok Kalyanjee had been a strange and distant affair, of lives spent apart before, during and after marriage.But both relationships had produced two beautiful children, and the women believed that their misery was in the past. Both mothers believed it was important to allow the fathers’ access to their children. On that fateful Saturday in May 2008, neither could have conceived that the men they had once loved would do anything to harm their children. But they were wrong, so terribly wrong.Nothing can bring their children back. But June and Giselle have one solitary comfort: they are no longer alone. Their lives may have been torn apart, but they have each other. Together, they are stronger.This is the story of their parallel journeys: of the dreadful days before, during, and after the murders of their children. Told in their own words, with searing honesty of their pain, and guilt, it is a story of endurance, friendship, and survival against the odds. It is not a story for the faint hearted, but it is a story that must be told, for in the end, it is a testament to the human spirit.

Prescription for Murder: The True Story of Mass Murderer Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman


Brian Whittle - 2004
    He pleaded Not Guilty. Each of Shipman's alleged victims was middle-aged or elderly and each was his patient and neighbour. The macabre exhumations of some of the bodies devastated the suburban community of Hyde in Greater Manchester, and it is the authors' inside knowledge of the region that provides the context for their investigation of the case.

The Paradiso Files: Exposing an Unknown Serial Killer


Timothy M. Burke - 2008
    Burke makes his case against one Leonard Paradiso. Lenny “The Quahog” was convicted of assaulting one young woman and paroled after three years, but Burke believes that he was guilty of much more – that Paradiso was a serial killer who operated in the Boston area, and maybe farther afield, for nearly fifteen years, assaulting countless young women and responsible for the deaths of as many as seven. Burke takes the reader inside the minds of prosecutors, police investigators, and one very dangerous man who thought he had figured out how to rape and murder and get away with it. The Paradiso Files generated headlines when first published in February 2008. Nine days later, Paradiso died at the age of sixty-five without commenting on any of Burke’s accusations, including that he murdered Joan Webster, a Harvard graduate student who disappeared from Logan Airport in 1981. Boston-area prosecutors announced in September 2008 that Burke’s revelations had led them to reopen the unsolved murder cases of three young women – Melodie Stankiewicz, Holly Davidson, and Kathy Williams. There were “too many similarities between the individual cases to ignore,” a prosecutor involved in the new investigation said. Burke’s account leaves little doubt that Paradiso’s deeds should go down in infamy, alongside those of the Boston Strangler.

No One Can Hurt Him Anymore


Carol J. Rothgeb - 2005
    But how could he have drowned when the water level was only four feet deep? And why was his body covered with cuts and bruises from head to toe?Wicked StepmotherSuspicion soon fastened on the dead boy's stepmother, Jessica Schwarz, who boastfully described herself as "loud and crude." She was a brute and a bully--but was she a torturer and child killer? Investigators unearthed a pattern of nightmarish physical and mental abuse that she had inflicted on the boy, one that left even hardened police sleuths sickened.Day Of ReckoningDuring her trials, Jessica Schwarz was smugly defiant, until convictions for criminal child abuse and second degree murder wiped the smirk off her face. She is now serving a seventy-year prison term. Carol J. Rothgeb, author of Hometown Killer, and Scott H. Cupp, the prosecutor who successfully convicted Jessica Schwarz, now tell the riveting inside story of how a brutal killer's reign of terror was finally brought to an end.

Deadly Goals: The True Story of an All-American Football Hero Who Stalked and Murdered


Wilt Browning - 1995
     A star athlete with a winning smile, Pernell Jefferson had no trouble attracting women. But beneath his immaculate exterior lurked a beast that left nothing but battered women and broken dreams in his path. Addicted to steroids and nearly destitute after walking away from a football career with the Cleveland Browns, Pernell set his sights obsessively on Jeannie Butkowski. Calling her at every hour of the day, showing up to her home unannounced, and battering her when she turned her attention toward other men, Pernell made Jeannie a prisoner of her own home and her own mind. After Jeannie’s sudden disappearance, the Butkowski family and Jeannie’s friends could name the man responsible. But police, despite subsequently discovering Jeannie’s charred remains in a small Virginia town, refused to question the man most likely linked to the brutal crime. Deadly Goals explores the devastating details of Pernell Jefferson’s past, the disturbing nature of his crimes, and the impassioned cries for justice from Jeannie’s family at a pace so compelling that True Crime fans won’t be able to set down this must-read from seasoned author Wilt Browning.

The Piano Teacher: The True Story of a Psychotic Killer


Robert K. Tanenbaum - 1989
    For aspiring actress Suzanne Reynolds, her dream ended in a gruesome encounter with eccentric New York artist Charles Yukl. Fooled by his choirboy looks, Reynolds had no idea the man who taught her the piano was a woman-hating recluse who spent his days lost in fantasies of perversion. As a result of the plea bargain for SuzanneAs brutal murder, Yukl soon gained his freedom due to a shocking series of legal errors -- and killed again.A riveting dramatization of two horrific crimes and their aftermath, The Piano Teacher brilliantly portrays a madman set on fulfilling his own sadistic and homicidal dreams...and the flawed justice system that gave him the opportunities to do so.

Rites Of Burial


Tom Jackman - 1992
    Written by Tom Jackman, the local investigative journalist who covered the story, and Troy Cole, the chief investigating officer, "Rites Of Burial" tells the gruesome true story of Robert Berdella, a serial killer whose inhuman crimes of murder and dismemberment might have served to inspire Jeffrey Dahmer's Milwaukee slaughter.

Suddenly Gone: The Terrifying True Story of a Serial Killer's Grisly Kidnapping-Murders of Three Young Women


Dan Mitrione - 1995
    One smart Wichita detective suspected the legal secretary's murder might be the first in a string of depraved sexual slayings. He would be right on the mark.A spree of torture and murder...Six days later Michelle Katf was badly beaten and barely escaped with her life. Twenty-year old Joan Butler was not so lucky. She soon disappeared without a trace. But when Richard Grissom, a handsome onetime college student, started driving the dead girl's red Corsica, the cops were hot on his trail. By then the twisted thrill killer, now a desperate fugitive, was already looking foe fresh victims.Nothing could satisfy his lust for death...Attractive roommates, Theresa Brown and Christine Rusch were only too happy to have a handsome guy like Grissom at their Saturday night party. They never suspected that 48 hours later they would be trapped in a horrifying nightmare. For days, Grissom terrorized them, before finally snuffing out their young lives, and sending police on one of the most exhaustive manhunts in Kansas history.Former FBI agent Dan Mitrione follows the dark, twisted path of a man with all the cunning, sexy good looks, sexy good looks and deadly charm of Ted Bundy, exposing Grissom's secret bloody past that shocked even the most jaded detectives.

On Father's Day, Cindy Gambino's Shattering Account Of Her Children's Revenge Murders


Megan Norris - 2013
    A heartbreaking account of love and loss."When newly separated mum, Cindy Gambino, dropped her boys off to spend Father's Day 2005 with her estranged husband, she had no idea she would never see them alive again.Now, the 'triple dam drowing mum', who was the true target of Robert Farquharson's festering rage, relives the unspeakable revenge which shocked Australia, and left her with the legacy of life-long suffering - her punishment for ending their marriage."

The Nations


Ken Farmer - 2012
    It is the year 1885. A notorious band of outlaws, known as the "Larson Gang", has been terrorizing Arkansas, Missouri and the Nations for years. Judge Issac Parker, the Hanging Judge, orders an all-out concerted effort to capture the gang and bring them to justice. "If they will not respect the law; then, by God, we will make them fear it." Marshal Bass Reeves, the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi, along with his partner Jack McGann, two other deputies and two Indian Lighthorse are tasked to take the youngest member of the gang, Ben Larson, on the treacherous journey to Fort Smith with their prisoner shackled to the bed of the Tumbleweed Wagon. "It is not the severity of the punishment that is the deterrent… but the certainty of it." - Judge Issac C. Parker. The Nations blends historical and fictional characters to create a fast-paced action western.