Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family's Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice


Alisa Statman - 2012
    More than forty years later, the gruesome barbarity of the “Manson Family” still fascinates and horrifies.This true crime memoir by Alisa Statman, a 20-year Tate family friend, and Brie Tate, the daughter of Sharon Tate’s niece, includes interviews with the Tate family, accounts from personal letters, tape recordings, home movies, and private diaries.Complete with color photographs and personal insights, Restless Souls is the most revealing, riveting, and emotionally raw account of the gruesome slayings, the hunt and capture of the killers, and the behind-the-scenes drama of their trials, as well as a touching view of the torment that the victims families’ have endured for years after such tragedy.

Perfect Victim: The True Story of "The Girl in the Box" by the D.A. Who Prosecuted Her Captor


Christine McGuire - 1989
    . . most thought-provoking."--BooklistIn 1997 twenty-year-old Colleen Stan left home to hitchhike from Oregon to California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and extraordinary crime.This is Colleen's incredible true story, told by the determined young district attorney who prosecuted the man who had forced her to endure years of sexual perversion . . . and held her captive in a coffin-like box under his and his wife's bed. A story of riveting psychological intensity and gripping courtroom drama, Perfect Victim reveals the whole truth about Collen Stan's real-life nightmare . . . and the psychopath who enslaved her body and her mind."Horrifying!"--The Cincinnati Post"Hard to put down!"--Chicago Tribune"A gripping and disturbing story of the secret life of apparently normal people. At once, horrific and engrossing."--Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter

Find Me


J.S. Monroe - 2017
    Sometimes what we see changes the way we look at everything.Jarlath "Jar" Costello's girlfriend, Rosa, committed suicide when they were both students at Cambridge, and Jar has thought about her every day since. It's been five years, yet Jar is still obsessed with the idea that Rosa, the one true love of his life, is alive. He's tormented by visions of her and has disturbingly real sightings of her in unexpected places experiences the psychologist treating him describes as "post-bereavement hallucinations."When Jar receives a message from Rosa's aunt telling him that she's just found Rosa's diary, he embarks on a frantic quest to finally make sense of the highly suspicious circumstances surrounding her death. But the deeper he digs, the more confused he becomes as he is pressed into a dark underworld where nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. When a startling discovery convinces him more than ever that these are not just hallucinations that Rosa really is alive Jar is thrust into the heart of a larger intrigue that may finally shed some light on Rosa's death even as it dangerously threatens his own."

The Pale-Faced Lie


David Crow - 2019
    But as time passed, David discovered the other side of Thurston Crow, the ex-con with his own code of ethics, one that justified cruelty, violence, lies—even murder. Intimidating David with beatings, Thurston coerced his son into doing his criminal bidding. David’s mom, too mentally ill to care for her children, couldn’t protect him.Through sheer determination, David managed to get into college and achieve professional success. When he finally found the courage to refuse his father’s criminal demands, he unwittingly triggered a plot of revenge that would force him into a deadly showdown with Thurston Crow. David would have only twenty-four hours to outsmart his father—the brilliant, psychotic man who bragged that the three years he spent in the notorious San Quentin State Prison had been the easiest time of his life.Raw and palpable, The Pale-Faced Lie is an inspirational story about the power of forgiveness and the strength of the human spirit.

Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias


Jane Velez-Mitchell - 2013
    The grisly nature of his death made instant headlines: with twenty-nine knife wounds, his throat slit, and a gunshot to the head, Travis was left to die. The prime suspect in the case was Alexander’s ex-girlfriend, the attractive and soft-spoken Jodi Arias. Though Arias initially said that she was nowhere near the scene of crime, little about this case was as it seemed, and before long she had been caught lying to police. As the investigation progressed, her lies evolved multiple times before finally resting on an appalling claim: she had killed Travis in self-defense. Along the way, startling details emerged about the Mormon couple’s relationship, and soon graphic stories of their lurid sexual encounters and jealousy-driven blowouts revealed a dark side to their life together. These revelations launched a trial filled with sex and deception but also raised substantial questions about Arias’s deceit, as people from across the country struggled to understand the bizarre world of Jodi Arias.Now, award-winning broadcast journalist and bestselling author Jane Velez-Mitchell, a veteran of some of the most storied court cases in recent memory, goes behind the scenes of the trial and into the mind of a killer. Using insider accounts from friends who knew Travis and Jodi, Velez-Mitchell turns her sharply-focused lens on Arias and offers her seasoned perspective on the case’s most pressing questions. Separating fact from fiction, she reports on the bizarre and explicit stories that have both shocked and fascinated the American public—from Jodi’s romantic history before meeting Travis, to their torrid sex life together, to the complicated role their Mormon faith played in the relationship’s demise. With unbridled access to the evidence and the case’s key players, Velez-Mitchell unearths Jodi’s contentious life with those closest to her, examining the paranoid and erratic behavior behind each relationship and illustrating the disturbing pattern of a murderer in the making.Complete with photos from the case and Jane Velez-Mitchell’s fresh insights on the crime, Exposed takes readers behind closed bedroom doors to uncover the truth behind the secret and sordid life of Jodi Arias.

The Mammoth Book of New CSI


Nigel Cawthorne - 2012
    Most of the cases are modern or have recently been reopened, often as a result of advances in forensic science.

Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland


Amanda Berry - 2015
    . . . I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for ten years.”   A horrifying story rapidly unfolded. Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight to his home, where he kept them chained. In the decade that followed, the three were raped, psychologically abused, and threatened with death. Berry had a daughter—Jocelyn—by their captor.   Drawing upon their recollections and the diary kept by Amanda Berry, Berry and Gina DeJesus describe a tale of unimaginable torment, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan interweave the events within Castro’s house with original reporting on efforts to find the missing girls. The full story behind the headlines—including details never previously released on Castro’s life and motivations—Hope is a harrowing yet inspiring chronicle of two women whose courage, ingenuity, and resourcefulness ultimately delivered them back to their lives and families.

Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation


Dean Jobb - 2015
    It was a time of unregulated madness. And nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. Speakeasies thrived, gang war shootings announced Al Capone’s rise to underworld domination, Chicago’s corrupt political leaders fraternized with gangsters, and the frenzy of stock market gambling was rampant. Enter a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz, who enticed hundreds of people (who should have known better) to invest as much as $30 million--upwards of $400 million today--in phantom timberland and nonexistent oil wells in Panama. When Leo’s scheme finally collapsed in 1923, he vanished, and the Chicago state’s attorney, a man whose lust for power equaled Leo’s own lust for money, began an international manhunt that lasted almost a year. When finally apprehended, Leo was living a life of luxury in Nova Scotia under the assumed identity of a book dealer and literary critic. His mysterious death in a Chicago prison topped anything in his almost-too-bizarre-to-believe life.Empire of Deception is not only an incredibly rich and detailed account of a man and an era; it’s a fascinating look at the methods of swindlers throughout history. Leo Koretz was the Bernie Madoff of his day, and Dean Jobb shows us that the dream of easy wealth is a timeless commodity.

Beneath This Mask


Meghan March - 2014
    Son of a congressman. Successful businessman in my own right. With a résumé like mine, women have never been a challenge.Until I met her. This sexy, tatted-up bad girl wasn’t part of my plans, but that punch to my gut every time I see her tells me I have to know more.She’s a mystery. An enigma. A challenge. I’m going to figure her out — and then I’m going to make her mine. We’ll find out what she’s hiding... beneath this mask.

3,096 Days


Natascha Kampusch - 2010
    Hours later she found herself in a dark cellar, wrapped in a blanket. When she emerged eight years later, her childhood had gone. In "3,096 Days" Natascha tells her incredible story for the first time: her difficult childhood, what exactly happened on the day of her abduction, her imprisonment in a five-square-metre dungeon, and the mental and physical abuse she suffered from her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil. "3,096 Days" is ultimately a story about the triumph of the human spirit. It describes how, in a situation of almost unbearable hopelessness, she slowly learned how to manipulate her captor. And how, against inconceivable odds, she managed to escape unbroken.

Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed


Robert Graysmith - 2002
    Claiming responsibility for thirty-seven murders, he manipulated the media with warnings, dares, and bizarre cryptograms that baffled FBI code-breakers. Then as suddenly as the murders began, Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog.After painstaking investigation and more than thirty years of research, Robert Graysmith finally exposes Zodiac's true identity. With overwhelming evidence he reveals the twisted private life that led to the crimes, and provides startling theories as to why they stopped. America's greatest unsolved mystery has finally been solved.INCLUDES PHOTOS AND A COMPLETE REPRODUCTION OF ZODIAC'S LETTERS

The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir


Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich - 2017
    The child of two lawyers, they are staunchly anti-death penalty. But the moment convicted murderer Ricky Langley’s face flashes on the screen as they review old tapes—the moment they hear him speak of his crimes -- they are overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. Shocked by their reaction, they dig deeper and deeper into the case. Despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.Crime, even the darkest and most unsayable acts, can happen to any one of us. As Alex pores over the facts of the murder, they find themself thrust into the complicated narrative of Ricky’s childhood. And by examining the details of Ricky’s case, they are forced to face their own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, and reckon with a past that colors their view of Ricky's crime.But another surprise awaits: They weren’t the only one who saw their life in Ricky’s.An intellectual and emotional thriller that is also a different kind of murder mystery, THE FACT OF A BODY is a book not only about how the story of one crime was constructed -- but about how we grapple with our own personal histories. Along the way it tackles questions about the nature of forgiveness, and if a single narrative can ever really contain something as definitive as the truth. This groundbreaking, heart-stopping work, ten years in the making, shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe -- and the truth more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.

Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties


Dianne Lake - 2017
    Over the course of two years, the impressionable teenager endured manipulation, psychological control, and physical abuse as the harsh realities and looming darkness of Charles Manson’s true nature revealed itself. From Spahn ranch and the group acid trips, to the Beatles’ White Album and Manson’s dangerous messiah-complex, Dianne tells the riveting story of the group’s descent into madness as she lived it.Though she never participated in any of the group’s gruesome crimes and was purposely insulated from them, Dianne was arrested with the rest of the Manson Family, and eventually learned enough to join the prosecution’s case against them. With the help of good Samaritans, including the cop who first arrested her and later adopted her, the courageous young woman eventually found redemption and grew up to lead an ordinary life.While much has been written about Charles Manson, this riveting account from an actual Family member is a chilling portrait that recreates in vivid detail one of the most horrifying and fascinating chapters in modern American history.Member of the Family includes 16 pages of photographs.

The Hillside Stranglers


Darcy O'Brien - 1985
    But it would take more than another year and the mysterious disappearance of two young women in Seattle before the police would arrest one man—the handsome, charming, fast-talking Kenny Bianchi—and discover that the strangler was actually two men. Like Truman Capote in In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, Darcy O'Brien weds the narrative skill of an award-winning novelist with the detailed observations of an experienced investigator to bring the story of Bianchi and his animally magnetic cousin Angelo Buono vividly to the page. First exploring the symbiotic relationship between these two men who shared a lust as insatiable as their hate for women, O'Brien goes on to examine the crimes themselves and the lives of the victims.

Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed


Patricia Cornwell - 2002
    Now updated with new material that brings the killer's picture into clearer focus.In the fall of 1888, all of London was held in the grip of unspeakable terror.  An elusive madman calling himself Jack the Ripper was brutally butchering women in the slums of London’s East End.  Police seemed powerless to stop the killer, who delighted in taunting them and whose crimes were clearly escalating in violence from victim to victim.  And then the Ripper’s violent spree seemingly ended as abruptly as it had begun.  He had struck out of nowhere and then vanished from the scene.  Decades passed, then fifty years, then a hundred, and the Ripper’s bloody sexual crimes became anemic and impotent fodder for puzzles, mystery weekends, crime conventions, and so-called “Ripper Walks” that end with pints of ale in the pubs of Whitechapel.  But to number-one New York Times bestselling novelist Patricia Cornwell, the Ripper murders are not cute little mysteries to be transformed into parlor games or movies but rather a series of terrible crimes that no one should get away with, even after death.  Now Cornwell applies her trademark skills for meticulous research and scientific expertise to dig deeper into the Ripper case than any detective before her—and reveal the true identity of this fabled Victorian killer.In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, Cornwell combines the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation with forensic techniques undreamed of during the late Victorian era to solve one of the most infamous and difficult serial murder cases in history.  Drawing on unparalleled access to original Ripper evidence, documents, and records, as well as archival, academic, and law-enforcement resources, FBI profilers, and top forensic scientists, Cornwell reveals that Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the world’s finest museums: Walter Richard Sickert.It has been said of Cornwell that no one depicts the human capability for evil better than she.   Adding layer after layer of circumstantial evidence to the physical evidence discovered by modern forensic science and expert minds, Cornwell shows that Sickert, who died peacefully in his bed in 1942, at the age of 81, was not only one of Great Britain’s greatest painters but also a serial killer, a damaged diabolical man driven by megalomania and hate.  She exposes Sickert as the author of the infamous Ripper letters that were written to the Metropolitan Police and the press.  Her detailed analysis of his paintings shows that his art continually depicted his horrific mutilation of his victims, and her examination of this man’s birth defects, the consequent genital surgical interventions, and their effects on his upbringing present a casebook example of how a psychopathic killer is created.New information and startling revelations detailed in Portrait of a Killer include:- How a year-long battery of more than 100 DNA tests—on samples drawn by Cornwell’s forensics team in September 2001 from original Ripper letters and Sickert documents—yielded the first shadows of the 75- to 114 year-old genetic evid...