The chafing restrictions of a typical upbringing in upper-class, small town Alabama simply did not apply to Zelda, who was described as an unusual child and permitted to roam the streets with little supervision. Zelda refused to blossom into a typical 'Southern belle' on anyone's terms but her own and while still in high school enjoyed the status of a local celebrity for her shocking behavior. Everybody in town knew the name Zelda Sayre. Queen of the Montgomery social scene, Zelda had a different beau ready and willing to show her a good time for every day of the week. Before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda's life was a constant pursuit of pleasure. With little thought for the future and no responsibilities to speak of, Zelda committed herself fully to the mantra that accompanied her photo in her high school graduation book: "Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow." But for now Zelda was still in rehearsal for her real life to begin, a life she was sure would be absolutely extraordinary. Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 3rd of April 1920 and left sleepy Montgomery behind in order to dive headfirst into the shimmering, glamourous life of a New York socialite. With the publication of Scott's first novel, This Side of Paradise, Zelda found herself thrust into the limelight as the very epitome of the Flapper lifestyle. Concerned chiefly with fashion, wild parties and flouting social expectations, Zelda and Scott became icons of the Jazz Age, the personification of beauty and success. What Zelda and Scott shared was a romantic sense of self-importance that assured them that their life of carefree leisure and excess was the only life really worth living. Deeply in love, the Fitzgeralds were like to sides of the same coin, each reflecting the very best and worst of each other. While the world fell in love with the image of the Fitzgeralds they saw on the cover of magazines, behind the scenes the Fitzgerald's marriage could not withstand the tension of their creative arrangement. Zelda was Scott's muse and he mercilessly mined the events of their life for material for his books. Scott claimed Zelda's memories, things she said, experiences she had and even passages from her diary as his possessions and used them to form the basis of his fictional works. Zelda had a child but the domestic sphere offered no comfort or purpose for her. The Flapper lifestyle was not simply a phase she lived through, it formed the very basis of her character and once the parties grew dull, the Fitzgeralds' drinking became destructive and Zelda's beauty began to fade, the world held little allure for her. Zelda sought reprieve in work and tried to build a career as a ballet dancer. When that didn't work out she turned to writing but was forbidden by Scott from using her own life as material. Convinced that she would never leave her mark on the world as deeply or expressively as Scott had, Zelda retreated into herself and withdrew from the people she knew in happier times. The later years of Zelda's life were marred by her detachment from reality as, diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zelda spent the last eighteen years of her life living in and out of psychiatric hospitals. As Scott's life unraveled due to alcohol abuse, Zelda looked back on the years they had spent together, young and wild and beautiful, as the best of her life. She may have been right but she was wrong about one thing, Zelda did leave her mark on the world and it was a deep and expressive mark that no one could have left but her. Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography

    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.

    In this volume the stories reveal the complexity of abnormal human behaviour. In some cases the reason appears to be psychosis or demonic voices, for others, overpowering compulsions with deep psychological roots and for some killing is better than sex and the only way they can achieve total gratification. Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Chase, Andrei Chikatilo and many more.Part One: Children who Kill - what makes them kill? including Mary and Norma Bell, Jessie Holtmeyer, Larry SchwartzPart Two: Men who Kill - these men are monsters including The Yorkshire Ripper, The Cannibal Killer, The Boston Strangler, The Ultimate Psycho, The Real Dracula.Part Three: Women who Kill - can women be a cold-blooded as men? including Elizabeth Bathory, Lizzie Borden, Velma Barfield, Mary Ann Cotton, Florida's Black Widow.Part Four: Couples who Kill - torturous teams including Fred and Rosemary West

    He announced to the public his grandiose plans for the thousands of acres he had secretly purchased.For the eighteen months prior to the announcement, Walt entrusted a small group of men to covertly make these purchases. Next, they were tasked with drafting a legislative act to submit to the state of Florida that would allow Disney to wield nearly absolute legal control over the property under a quasi-government municipality.Staying true to its storytelling roots, Disney wove a tale of mystery centered around a high-ranking CIA operative, who was rumored to have been, just a few short years before, the paymaster behind the Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba.This savvy and well-connected CIA agent became the de facto leader for the group of Disney executives and attorneys who orchestrated and executed a nearly perfect plan to keep Disney’s identity a secret from the public by utilizing aliases, shell corporations, and meandering travel itineraries, all in an effort to protect the company’s identity during the land acquisition process.As told through the personal notes and files from the key figures involved in the project, Buying Disney’s World details the story of how Walt Disney World came to be, like you’ve never heard before.From conception to construction and everything in between—including how a parcel of land within Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort was acquired during a high-stakes poker game—explore how the company most famous for creating Mickey Mouse acquired central Florida’s swamps, orange groves, and cow pastures to build a Disney fiefdom and a Magic Kingdom.

    But when the killer is never captured, a family's paralyzing grief only compounds. Years pass. Pain grows. Time heals nothing. Parents, spouses, and children of the victims never find peace. Investigators continue to lie awake night after night, year after year, thinking, "If only..." Cold cases fascinate us because of the endless possibilities. What if Alice Hochhausler hadn't driven her daughter home from work while a strangler was running loose? What if Oda Apple's wife hadn't sent him to the corner drugstore? What if Linda Bricca hadn't been so beautiful - and her husband not a workaholic? J. T. Townsend takes us on a sinister journey through thirteen cases, which took place in Cincinnati, Ohio, between 1904 and 1971. You'll meet Frances Brady, a pretty bride-to-be gunned down at her own front door. Tommy Coby, age eight, who arrived home to an empty house, and learned later his parents were lying dead in their car. Patty Rebholz, a popular cheerleader, who was bludgeoned in a neighbor's backyard while walking to break up with her teenage boyfriend. What do these cases have in common? A fleeting, irrational act of violence with no resolution. Somebody literally got away with murder. Each episode took place in sheer moments--but hundreds of innocent people still remember, still mourn, and are still haunted by horrible, unbearable images. Townsend's riveting accounts include never-before-published details from police files and insights from both investigators and witnesses. Finally someone has managed to put all of the pieces together. Whodunit? We'll never know for sure--but we can certainly make some informed, calculated guesses. Meanwhile, on these pages, each victim returns to vibrant life, becomes as real to us as to those loved ones they left behind--and still cries out for justice.

     In the vein of In Cold Blood, Closing Time is the stunning story of good and evil colliding in the most tragic of ways, both for the victims and their loved ones left behind to re-live their horror. Kenneth Staton was the well-respected owner of a jewelry store in Van Buren, Arkansas. Although crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and unable to walk without crutches, he had built his business through excellent watch repair work, fine quality jewelry sold at fair prices, and a dedication to his customers that surpassed all other merchants. He was the quintessential gentleman in all aspects of his life, and a beloved father. Unknown to him, two men—a seasoned criminal with a propensity for violence and a younger man, handsome, but broke and with an obsessive thirst for alcohol—plotted to rob the jewelry store at closing time on September 10, 1980. The thugs had only met each other days before, and it was the younger one's first venture into armed robbery. When Staton and his daughter Suzanne didn't show up for supper, his other two daughters became alarmed and went to the store. There they found the bodies of their father and youngest sister lying in pools of blood, gagged, hogtied, and shot twice in the head. Close to $100,000 dollars in diamonds and other jewelry had been stolen. This senseless, bloody crime rocked the town of Van Buren and set its lawmen, sworn to find the killers, on a fiercely determined hunt that led from Rogers, Arkansas to Jacksonville, Florida, and all the way to Vancouver, Canada. Seventeen years later, was justice served? Praise for Closing Time “Anita Paddock is the newest and strongest voice in true crime writing. Closing Time makes you feel as if you are there, seeing what happened, and feeling the terror and sorrow of those felled by these brutal crimes.” – Marla Cantrell, Editor of Do South Magazine and an Arkansas Art Council Fellow “Anita Paddock delivers again. Closing Time reveals an unvarnished truth that will, at times, leave her readers breathless. Those familiar with her work will quickly conclude that Closing Time is a worthy successor to her previous best seller, Blind Rage. Get ready for some late nights because you won’t be able to put this one down.” – Greg Shepard, author of Earthstains, the story of Matt and George Kimes who came of age in the Roaring Twenties with a string of sensational bank robberies.

     So what's different about this book, "The Assassination of JFK - Who Really Did It And Why"? Written by a lawyer, it cuts through all the misinformation surrounding the Kennedy assassination and focuses only on the evidence available. Something the Warren Commission strangely failed to do. It also reveals how the assassination went wrong and why the subsequent cover-up was so important for the perpetrators. This is something that almost all other studies into the John F Kennedy assassination overlook. And it takes us back to the early days of the Kennedy family business empire, in the 1920s, and throws light on aspects ignored by other Kennedy assassination investigators. Such as the activities and boundless ambition of Joe Kennedy, the family patriarch and father of the president. Talking of boundless ambition, how did Johnson, JFK's Vice-President, feel at the 1960 Democratic Party Convention, when JFK won the nomination in the first round? Why did he accept the comparatively menial post of Vice-President under Kennedy? Especially when throughout much of the preceding Eisenhower administration he had been more senior in rank to JFK as Senate Majority Leader? And at 52 years of age he wasn't getting any younger. Did he know something even then? Since 1978 the official version of the Kennedy assassination acknowledges that it took place "probably as the result of a conspiracy". So there WAS a Kennedy conspiracy! Who, then, were the conspirators and why did they plan and carry out this murder? Who benefited? How did US policy towards certain foreign countries change after November 1963? What happened with domestic and financial policy? The clues are there. Craig Newman takes us behind the scenes for a glimpse of who really makes the decisions, and who has the power to murder the President of the United States and then order an "investigation" that covers up their crimes? This is one book that no-one remotely interested in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy should be without. This Second Edition contains some new material, including an additional Appendix on the Warren Whitewash/Report.

    Black Mass Film Tie In

    The first time the killer thought he had succeeded, and he left Stacy bleeding in her bed. But a few minutes later he must have heard her moaning and returned to her upstairs bedroom. This time he approached the bed, pointed a .22 caliber rifle at her young face, and pulled the trigger again. Then he left.Later that morning, Memorial Day, May 25, 2005, the Logan County Sheriff would declare it a rampage. According to Sheriff Henry, 18-year-old Scott Moody lived on a family farm with his mother and sister; his grandparents lived nearby. The night before his high school graduation something snapped, and Scott went on a shooting spree. He murdered his two grandparents, his mother, a high school classmate who had spent the night after a graduation party, his girlfriend, and then he turned the rifle on himself, committing suicide. He thought he had killed his 15-year-old sister, but she was life-flighted to a hospital in Columbus where she remained in critical condition. Sheriff Henry declared the mystery solved: “It was horribly tragic, a murder/suicide case.”Three days later, Stacy woke up in intensive care. When asked by the county coroner to explain what happened – clearly expecting her to say that her brother, Scott, had shot her – Stacy, in a weak, distressed voice said something else. It was an older man with gray hair, wearing a blue shirt, someone she had never seen before. And then, once again – what everyone suspected but were afraid to publicly talk about – was the Logan County Sheriff’s Office really corrupt?After Stacy was released from the hospital, Detective Jon Stout wanted to interview her in private, away from the influence of her father and stepmother. On a Sunday afternoon he took 15-year-old Stacy in his unmarked cruiser to a shaded parking lot behind the county children services building. It was there he coerced her into taking off her clothes, playfully handcuffing her to the steering wheel, and then forcibly having sex with her. It was only a matter of time before wrongful death actions were filed against Scott’s estate. That’s when Scott’s father, wanting to remove the stigma of his son’s reputation, hired outside experts, who easily refuted the idea that Scott had been the shooter. People in the community knew all along what had happened. The sheriff’s office was corrupt. Underage sex and illicit drugs had finally raised their ugly heads.

    Mary was found guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility and was sentenced to 'detention' for life. What would induce a young child to murder two other young children? In this short book, Sylvia Perrini, looks at Mary’s tragic life, her years in prison and life since prison. This short book follows in the tradition of great true crime writers such as Ann Rule, M. William Phelps and R J Parker.

    Eventually uncovered and arrested, Boyce was convicted of espionage in Los Angeles, California, on June 20, 1977, and sentenced to forty years in a maximum-security federal penitentiary. Soon after his imprisonment, Boyce--the man prosecutors said had done more harm to the security of the United States than any Soviet agents since the Rosenbergs--escaped. Boyce was to become America's most wanted fugitive and the focus of an unprecedented, massive manhunt for eighteen months. Scores of FBI agents and U.S. Marshals sifted through hundreds of false leads. They traveled countless miles back and forth across America, to South Africa, through the isolated jungles of Central America. They were called on the carpet by Congressional committees for the often-publicized and embarassing lack of reults. Although THE FLIGHT OF THE FALCON is a thrilling chase and suspense story, it is also a fine study of character and psychological drama--the metamorphosis of an idealistic young man into a coarse and violent criminal fugitive.

    military occupation, a soldier emerged from the outskirts of a small town to report that he had just shot and killed two policemen and an outspoken Catholic priest. It’s the opening scene in a mystery that, forty years later, compels writer J.B. MacKinnon—the priest’s nephew, born five years after the incident—to visit the island nation for himself. Beginning with scant official information, he embarks on a chilling investigation of what many believe was a carefully plotted assassination—and on a search for the uncle he never knew.Winner of Canada’s highest award for literary nonfiction, Dead Man in Paradise takes MacKinnon to corners of the country far from the Caribbean paradise seen by millions of tourists; he meets with former revolutionaries and shadowy generals from the era of dictatorship, family members of the slain policemen, and struggling Dominicans for whom the dead priest is a martyr, perhaps even a saint. Along the way, he uncovers a story inseparable from the brutal history of the New World, from the fallout of American invasion, and from the pure longing for social justice that once touched a generation. Part memoir, part travelogue, part mystery thriller, Dead Man in Paradise is “a testament to the enduring virtues of literary journalism” (The Georgia Straight).

    This is a man who stole a machine gun before he was seven and lost his left eye when a good friend shot him in the face. As a member-and then president-of the infamous Los Valientes Motorcycle Club, he broke more laws and had more fun that any six of the coolest guys you know. One of the last true Outlaw Bikers, Deadeye knows what it means to be a man, take shit from no one, and have tattoos that actually say something. Riding, drug dealing, and sending men to the hospital with his bare hands, Deadeye made himself a legend among bikers- all the while making sure his daughters never got mixed up with guys like him. In his own words, Deadeye tells it all. From earning his colors with an outlaw motorcycle club to his steady diet of drugs, sex, violence, and crime, this is his story: true to life, yet larger than life, and full throttle all the way.

    But when Mae’s beaten and mutilated corpse was found the next day in an abandoned house, her throat slashed and her face battered beyond recognition, the small town of Vandling was thrust into one of the most intensive police investigations in the history of Pennsylvania.The murder sent shock waves through the small town and surrounding area, holding residents hostage in the grips of a paralyzing fear. Who could have committed such a brutal crime against a child who was walking home from church? What kind of animal would discard a little girl like nothing more than trash?As police doggedly investigated the horrific murder, long before the use of DNA, computers, or modern forensic science, one key piece of evidence would lead them to 13-year-old Myron Semunchick. Brilliant, good looking, and extremely popular, Myron projected the image of the all American boy. He was also a cunning killer who murdered sadistically and almost got away with it.Little Girl Lost is the true story of one of the most notorious crimes in history. A case that made headlines across the United States and into Canada, it is also the story of the youngest person ever charged with 1st degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in the state of Pennsylvania.

    Acting legend Colm Feore (Bon Cop Bad Cop, Trudeau) dramatically weaves together “in the moment” storytelling with interviews with those with deep knowledge of the heists themselves, including law enforcement officers, writers and the criminals themselves. All capped off with a soundscape designed to keep the listener on the edge of their seat.