When she “accidentally” shot her husband, popular high school coach, Russ, the police were inclined to believe her—until they learned that ten years earlier, her first husband had died in a strangely similar way. Sgt. Rick Buchanan’s relentless investigation into Stager’s life revealed a stunning vortex of compulsive lying, obsessive spending, and sexual promiscuity. With every new discovery, more of Barbara’s impeccable image unraveled. But the greatest shock—a damning piece of evidence Russ Stager left behind—revealed the nightmare truth about Barbara. With “the fine-toothed-comb reporting of [an] ace crime journalist,” this book takes us deep into a spellbinding case of double life, lethal lust, and almost perfect murder (Kirkus Reviews).“A shocking and well-written portrait of a dangerous woman.” —The New York Times“Mesmerizing.” —Ann Rule, New York Times–bestselling author of The Stranger Beside Me “This account of manipulation, compulsive spending, lying, promiscuity, and murder is made even more chilling by the fact that appearances are often deceiving.” —Library Journal“A profile of evil . . . Fascinating.” —The Baltimore Sun“Jerry Bledsoe is the master of true crime, the conclusion to what Truman Capote began. . . . Another stunning success.” —Patricia Cornwell, New York Times–bestselling author of Chaos

    But seven months later, investigators found Jennifer’s remains in a Mesa County landfill, and things took a darker turn… Jennifer had been shot in the head, investigators discovered, and Abby was nowhere to be found.  While Michael, a respected prayer-group leader, played the part of grieving survivor, authorities became increasingly suspicious. There was blood evidence in the back of the family’s van. Was Blagg a cold-blooded killer? A religious fanatic? This is the terrifying true story of what happened when Jennifer and Abby Blagg were…

    But her youngest daughter, 16-year-old Terry, told police another story: one almost too terrible to believe.But accused of imprisoning her children in a house of horrors...According to Terry, Theresa - no longer the petite brunette she once was - had turned insanely jealous of her pretty eldest daughters and enlisted the help of her two teenaged sons in a vicious campaign against their sisters.Of beating, torturing and killing her own flesh and blood...Terry's gruesome tale told how Theresa had drugged, handcuffed and shot 16-year-old Suesan, allowing her wounds to fester, until the day she ordered her sons to burn their sister alive. Next, Terry said Theresa severely beat 20-year-old Sheila and then locked her in a stifling broom closet, so that when the girl finally starved to death, her brothers dumped her body in the same desolate mountain range where they had cremated Suesan.She could be one of the most evil murderesses of our time...It took Terry five agonizing years to convince authorities to investigate her grisly accounts of burning flesh, starvation and torture...of a mother from hell, so sadistic and so deranged, she had become her children's own executioner.

    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.

    . . victims. Barry and Honey Sherman appeared to lead charmed lives. But the world was shocked in late 2017 when their bodies were found in a bizarre tableau in their elegant Toronto home. First described as murder-suicide -- belts looped around their necks, they were found seated beside their basement swimming pool -- police later ruled it a staged, targeted double murder. Nothing about the case made sense to friends of the founder of one of the world's largest generic pharmaceutical firms and his wife, a powerhouse in Canada's charity world. Together, their wealth has been estimated at well over $4.7 billion.There was another side to the story. A strategic genius who built a large generic drug company -- Apotex Inc. -- Barry Sherman was a self-described workaholic, renowned risk-taker, and disruptor during his fifty-year career. Regarded as a generous friend by many, Sherman was also feared by others. He was criticized for stifling academic freedom and using the courts to win at all costs. Upset with building issues at his mansion, he sued and recouped millions from tradespeople. At the time of his death, Sherman had just won a decades-old legal case involving four cousins who wanted 20 percent of his fortune.Toronto Star investigative journalist Kevin Donovan chronicles the unsettling story from the beginning, interviewing family members, friends, and colleagues, and sheds new light on the Shermans' lives and the disturbing double murder. Deeply researched and authoritative, The Billionaire Murders is a compulsively readable tale of a strange and perplexing crime.

    He would be the final victim of John Wayne Gacy's horrifying compulsion. Then, ten days after the boy's disappearance. Detectives, finding a human bone in the crawl space of Gacy's house, dug into the lime-covered ground. With mounting horror, they pulled bone after bone from Gacy's suburban home until finally they had gathered the remains of twenty-eight more youths who had fallen prey to the killer clown. 16 Pages of Shocking Photos! "An unnerving true story of murder, terror and justice." –The Dallas Morning News

    As they lay sleeping in the central Oregon desert, a man in a pickup truck deliberately ran over their tent and proceeded to attack them with an axe. The horrific crime was reported in newspapers across the country, but no one was ever arrested. Fifteen years later, Jentz returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered and makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Shockingly, many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst.Powerful, eloquent, and paced like the most riveting of thrillers, Strange Piece of Paradise is a startling profile of a psychopath, a sweeping reflection on violence and the myth of American individualism, and a moving record of Jentz's brave inner journey from violence to hope.

    One of the couple's three adopted children, he was shy and emotionally undemonstrative. His background and the circumstances leading to murder are the thrust of this searching study by Baltimore Evening Sun reporter Walker, less a true-crime re-creation than the story of a tortured being. Larry was given up by his birth mother when he was two and shunted from family to family, none of them willing to cope with his increasing insecurity and alienation. At age six, he was adopted by Bob and Kay Swartz, a model church-going Catholic couple but severe and demanding of their children, the father's temper sometimes growing into physical abuse.

    Everyone thought it was the perfect place to live....until two local doctors made headlines.Two DoctorsOn a chilly January night, Dr. Eugene Turner hastened the death of a three-day-old baby boy who had been pronounced brain-dead. Six weeks later, ER physician Dr. Bruce Rowan hacked his wife to death with an axe, then tried to kill himself--claiming he snapped after witnessing Dr. Turner's euthanasia.A Small Town Rocked by A Shocking FatalityWhat really happened? What drove Dr. Bruce Rowan--a man who was entrusted to heal the sick--to so savagely take the life of his own wife? Acquitted by reason of insanity, Dr. Rowan was committed to a mental institution. And thought the trial is over, some fascinating ethical and legal questions have been raised by its outcome.Now, bestselling true crime writer Carlton Smith reveals the never-before-told facts and the stunning truth behind two doctors, two deaths, a surprising trial, and the picturesque town standing in the shadow of a ghastly killing.

     Dean Milo was a phenomenally successful businessman who had built a tiny family business into a 50 million-a-year corporation. Along the way he had established a lengthy list of enemies that began with his immediate family and stretched throughout the social and business community. His fast-track ride to the top came to a violent halt on August 11, 1980, when Milo was found dead in his luxurious Ohio home, shot twice in the head. A blank telegram form lay nearby. Four months after his death, the investigation remained a confusing collection of non sequiturs. Clues pointed toward Milo's involvement with the Mafia, the drug world, and the gay community. His own family refused to cooperate with the authorities. And time was ticking by … In desperation, Maggie Milo turned to Texas private eye Bill Dear. This is the gripping story of the remarkable collaboration between Dear and the police detectives of Akron, Ohio, that led to eleven convictions, an Ohio record. It is also a tale of the human weakness, desperation, and overwhelming greed that led to a sudden death.

    As Lisa and Kosta Fotopoulos lay sleeping in their home, a burglar broke in and shot Lisa at point-blank range in the head. Miraculously, she survived to learn the sobering truth about her would-be assassin—and about her sociopathic husband's deadly agenda.

    A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named "BTK"—for "bind them, torture them, kill them"—he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader—a friendly neighbor . . . a devoted husband . . . a helpful Boy Scout dad . . . the respected president of his church.Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than twenty years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning. With newly released documents, evidence, and information—and with the full cooperation, for the very first time, of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force—the authors have put all the pieces of the grisly puzzle into place, thanks to their unparalleled access to the families of the killer and his victims.

    Starting at the age of five, he recalls being sexually curious and began placing items in his anus at the age of eight. He'd sexually assault hundreds of little girls before committing his first murder. Sadly, as law enforcement stumbled along with no leads or evidence, Robert Black would strike repeatedly destroying families and preying on innocent little girls in the United Kingdom.

    Jewelry and valuables were left in plain sight, bodies were piled together, faces covered with cloth. Some of these cases, like the infamous Villasca, Iowa, murders, received national attention. But few people believed the crimes were related. And fewer still would realize that all of these families lived within walking distance to a train station.When celebrated baseball statistician and true crime expert Bill James first learned about these horrors, he began to investigate others that might fit the same pattern. Applying the same know-how he brings to his legendary baseball analysis, he empirically determined which crimes were committed by the same person. Then after sifting through thousands of local newspapers, court transcripts, and public records, he and his daughter Rachel made an astonishing discovery: they learned the true identity of this monstrous criminal. In turn, they uncovered one of the deadliest serial killers in America.Riveting and immersive, with writing as sharp as the cold side of an axe, The Man from the Train paints a vivid, psychologically perceptive portrait of America at the dawn of the twentieth century, when crime was regarded as a local problem, and opportunistic private detectives exploited a dysfunctional judicial system. James shows how these cultural factors enabled such an unspeakable series of crimes to occur, and his groundbreaking approach to true crime will convince skeptics, amaze aficionados, and change the way we view criminal history.

    Louis, in 1986, someone murdered Jude Govreau's 15-year-old daughter and Mari Winzen's 3-year-old son. It would take five years of investigation to bring the killer to trial. This is the story of two determined mothers and a tireless young prosecutor who helped them achieve justice. The killer is now serving a life sentence in prison.