Book picks similar to
Death Cruise by Don Davis
true-crime
don-t-have-yet
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KILLING WOMEN: The True Story of Serial Killer Don Miller's Reign of Terror
Rod Sadler - 2020
As a former youth pastor, he seemed a devout Christian. No one would have ever suspected that the recent graduate of the Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice was a serial killer.However, when Miller was arrested for the attempted murder of two teenagers in 1978, police quickly realized he was probably responsible for the disappearances of four women. Offered a still-controversial plea bargain, he led police to the bodies of the missing women.Now, after forty years in prison, Miller has served his time and is due to be released into an unsuspecting population. In KILLING WOMEN, author Rodney Sadler examines the crimes, the “justice” meted out, and the impending freedom of a man nationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. Frank Ochberg wrote:“… is a member of a small, deadly, dangerous population: murderers who stalk, capture, torture and kill; murderers who derive sexual and narcissistic gratification from their predation; murderers who maintain a ‘mask of sanity’ appearing normal and harmless.”
Smooth Talker: Trail of Death
Steve Jackson - 2016
Thirty years of dead ends. Until one rookie investigator began piecing it all together. One morning in July 1974, Anita Andrews, the owner and bartender at Fagiani’s Cocktail Lounge in Napa, California was found dead in her bar–raped, beaten, and stabbed to death in a bloody frenzy. She’d last been seen alive the night before talking to a drifter who sat at the end of the bar, playing cards and flirting with her. But the stranger, along with Anita’s Cadillac, had disappeared. Unable to locate a suspect, police investigators sadly watched the case grow cold over the years. "Jackson writes with muscle and heart.--New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen Meanwhile a month after Anita’s murder, young Michele Wallace, was driving down a road in the mountains near Crested Butte, Colorado, when she gave two stranded motorists, Chuck Matthews and a man named Roy, a ride. Dropping Matthews off at a bar in Gunnison, she agreed to take “Roy” to his truck. She was never seen alive again, nor could a massive search of the mountains locate her remains. The trail leading to her killer also ran into deadends. Fourteen years later, Charlotte Sauerwin, engaged to be married, met a smooth-talking man at a Laundromat in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. The next evening, her body was found in the woods; she’d been raped, tortured, and her throat slashed. The police suspected her fiance, Vince LeJeune, though he proclaimed his innocence to anyone who would listen. Meanwhile, the man from the Laundromat couldn’t be located. The three murders would remain unsolved, eating at the hearts, minds and lives of the women’s families, friends and communities. Then in the early 1990s, a rookie Gunnison County sheriff’s investigator named Kathy Young began looking into the Wallace case and identified a suspect named Roy Melanson, a serial rapist from Texas. It would lead her and other investigators looking into murders and rapes in other states to a serial killer who struck again and again with seeming impunity. SMOOTH TALKER is the story of Melanson, his depredations, and the intrepid police work that went into bringing him to justice not just in Colorado, but California and Louisiana.
Where the Bodies Are Buried
Fannie Weinstein - 1998
The piles of dismembered skeletons belonged to young men who has disappeared from the gay bars and cruising sites of this Midwest city.Their killer was Herb Baumeister, a beloved father and successful businessman who led a deadly double life. And until the day his son dug up a buried skull, Herb's pretty wife Julie never dreamed he was Indian's worst serial killer. She didn't know about the bizarre sexual encounters Herb held at the house when she went away with their kids...or about the brutal cravings that led him to kill.In this riveting account, two veteran journalists tell the uncensored story of Herb Baumeister--taking you into a psychopath's dark obsession to meet his victims, to witness the rituals of sex and death he forced his victims to perform, and to find out how this gruesome killing sprees finally--shockingly--came to an end...
A Need to Kill: The True-Crime Account of John Joubert, Nebraska's Most Notorious Serial Child Killer
Mark Pettit - 1990
Now, dramatic and chilling new evidence comes to light exposing the sinister thoughts running through the mind of John Joubert--the man behind the Nebraska killings. Former TV news anchorman, investigative reporter and three time Emmy winner Mark Pettit returns to the case to write the final chapter in his best-selling, and now newly updated book: A Need to Kill: The True-Crime Account of John Joubert, Nebraska’s Most Notorious Serial Child Killer. In the spirit of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” Pettit delves into the Joubert case to tell the dramatic story from all angles as a non-fiction novel. In a series of exclusive, face-to-face interviews with Pettit, Joubert admits to a string of violent crimes and another killing that sends investigators into a frenzy ending with Joubert being convicted for a third murder and ultimately executed in Nebraska’s electric chair. Now, 30 years after the murders in Nebraska, Pettit uncovers shocking new evidence from Joubert’s prison records that proves the killer was fantasizing about committing more violent crimes. Never-before-seen death row drawings made by Joubert while he waited to be executed once again send a chill through Nebraska and those touched by Joubert’s horrific crimes. In the updated version of his book, Pettit opens his investigative files to the public and for the first time, shares handwritten letters Joubert wrote to the journalist while in prison. Pettit also reveals aspects of Joubert’s personality gleaned during the exclusive interviews and details from the death row discussions that have never been shared publicly.
Hoods: The Gangs of Nottingham, A Study in Organised Crime
Carl Fellstrom - 2006
The slaughter of Joan and John Stirland revealed an evil empire of powerful ganglords, contract killings and police corruption. At its dark heart was the East Midlands city of Nottingham. A prosperous centre of business, education and leisure, Nottingham had fallen under the shadow of vicious gangsters. Eventually its police were investigating so many murders that their boss had to appeal to other forces for help, and the influx of drugs and weapons saw the city labelled "Gun Capital UK".HOODS traces the roots of the gangs, revealing how economic dislocation and the clash of cultures between working-class white residents and black immigrants from the 1950s onwards created an alienated underclass. In the 1990s, a more malignant breed of organised criminal emerged. Crime families who had been involved in armed robbery, protection rackets and extortion now sought to control the recreational drugs trade and forged links across Europe to import wholesale quantities of cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines. By 2002, shootings were running at one a week. HOODS uncovers how outlaw Yardies pioneered the sale of crack cocaine and imported the ruthless violence of the Jamaican ghettos; how young black gangs from the so-called NG Triangle of the Meadows, St Ann’s and Radford areas clashed in a series of turf wars; how the shadowy Dawes Cartel built a lucrative international drugs empire; and how the Bestwood Cartel and its terrifying leader, Colin Gunn, corrupted police officers and left dead and maimed in its wake. As local police struggled to cope with the mayhem, MI5 and the National Crime Squad launched a massive undercover investigation into the Nottingham ‘untouchables’. It led ultimately to the dismantling of some of the UK’s most powerful crime networks. HOODS is a stark account of what happens when the rule of the gun supplants the rule of law and fear stalks the streets.
Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam: Inside Dalia Dippolito’s Plot to Kill
Elizabeth Parker - 2014
Days later, it seemed as if all had gone according to plan. The beautiful, young Dalia came home from her health club to an elaborate crime scene, complete with yellow tape outlining her townhome and police milling about. When Sgt. Frank Ranzie of the Boynton Beach, Florida, police informed her of her husband Michael’s apparent murder, the newlywed Dippolito can be seen on surveillance video collapsing into the cop’s arms, like any loving wife would—or any wife who was pretending to be loving would. The only thing missing from her performance were actual tears.... And the only thing missing from the murder scene was an actual murder.Tipped off by one of Dalia’s lovers, an undercover detective posing as a hit man met with Dalia to plot her husband's murder while his team planned, then staged the murder scenario—brazenly inviting the reality TV show Cops along for the ride. The Cops video went viral, sparking a media frenzy: twisted tales of illicit drugs, secret boyfriends, sex-for-hire, a cuckolded former con man, and the defense’s ludicrous claim that the entire hit had been staged by the intended victim for reality TV fame.In Poison Candy, case prosecutor Elizabeth Parker teams with bestselling crime writer Mark Ebner take you behind and beyond the courtroom scenes with astonishing never-before-revealed facts, whipsaw plot twists in the ongoing appellate process, and exclusive photos and details far too lurid for the trial that led to 20 years in state prison for Dalia Dippolito.
Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer
Maureen Boyle - 2017
In Shallow Graves, investigative reporter Maureen Boyle tells the story of a case that has haunted New England for thirty years. The Crimes: The skeletal remains of nine of the women, aged nineteen to thirty-six, were discovered near highways around New Bedford. Some had clearly been strangled, others were so badly decomposed that police were left to guess how they had died. The Victims: All the missing women had led troubled lives of drug addiction, prostitution, and domestic violence, including Nancy Paiva, whose sister was a hard-working employee of the City of New Bedford, and Debra Greenlaw DeMello, who came from a solidly middle-class family but fell into drugs and abusive relationships. In a bizarre twist, Paiva’s clothes were found near DeMello’s body. The Investigators: Massachusetts state troopers Maryann Dill and Jose Gonsalves were the two constants in a complex cast of city, county, and state cops and prosecutors. They knew the victims, the suspects, and the drug-and-crime-riddled streets of New Bedford. They were present at the beginning of the case and they stayed to the bitter end. The Suspects: Kenneth Ponte, a New Bedford attorney and deputy sheriff with an appetite for drugs and prostitutes, landed in the investigative crosshairs from the start. He was indicted by a grand jury in the murder of one of the victims, but those charges were later dropped. Anthony DeGrazia was a loner who appeared to fit the classic serial-killer profile: horrific childhood abuse, charming, charismatic, but prone to bursts of violence. He hunted prostitutes in the city by night and served at a Catholic church by day. Which of these two was the real killer? Or was it someone else entirely? Maureen Boyle first broke the story in 1988 and stayed with it for decades. In Shallow Graves she spins a riveting narrative about the crimes, the victims, the hunt for the killers, and the search for justice, all played out against the backdrop of an increasingly impoverished community beset by drugs and crime. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, along with police reports, first-person accounts, and field reporting both during the killings and more recently, Shallow Graves brings the reader behind the scenes of the investigation, onto the streets of the city, and into the homes of the families still hoping for answers.
Murder Most Vile Volume 20: 18 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Murder Books)
Robert Keller - 2018
Ultimately, it would lead her to murder.The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: When bodies start bobbing to the surface in Tampa Bay, the police fear that they have a serial killer on their hands. Will they catch him before he kills again?The Ripper’s Wife: Convicted murderer Florence Maybrick may have done the world a great service. She may have killed Jack the Ripper.Bad to the Bone: Willie’s grandfather had done time for murder, so too had his dad. Why break with family tradition?Granny Ripper: She was 68 years old and she was a serial killer. Not only that but she hacked her victims apart and may have snacked on the corpses.Kill, Keys, Money, Jewelry: Tired of her grandparents’ strict discipline, a teenager decides that there is only one way out – bloody murder.Fatal Beauty: He was a man used to getting his own way and woe betide the woman who crossed him. Still, few could have predicted that he’d sink to such depravity.Dead End Road: Call it teenage curiosity if you will. Gary desperately wants to know how it feels to kill someone. Today he’s going to find out.˃˃˃˃˃˃˃˃˃
Plus 10 more riveting true crime cases. Scroll up to get your copy now.
Book Series by Robert Keller
Most of my works are about serial killers, while the “Murder Most Vile” series covers individual true crime stories. These are the main collections;
American Monsters
50 American Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Murder Most Vile
Human Monsters
British Monsters
Australian Monsters
Canadian Monsters
German Monsters
Cannibal Killers
Plus various other standalone books, including the The Deadly Dozen, which is available as a free download on Amazon, and Serial Killers Unsolved, which you can get for free when signing up to my mailing list.
Robert Keller’s True Crime eBook Categories:
Serial Killers
True Crime
Serial Killer Biographies
Murder and Mayhem
True Murder Cases
Serial Killer Case Files
True Crime Short Stories
Generation Oxy: From High School Wrestlers to Pain Pill Kingpins
Douglas Dodd - 2017
This teenage criminal enterprise ultimately shipped hundreds of thousands of OxyContins and other prescription painkillers throughout the country, making millions in the process.This true crime memoir details the three-year-long rise and collapse of the Barabas Criminal Enterprise, an opiod-pill trafficking ring founded by Douglas Dodd and his best friend on the wrestling team, Lance Barabas. Raised by an alcoholic mother and surrounded by drug-abusing relatives, Dodd got involved in narcotics at an early age. Their scheme to sell the drugs he was already consuming coincided with the explosion of prescription addicts who were traveling the “Oxy Express” to Florida for easy access to the pills they dubbed “hillbilly heroin.” Soon they were shipping forty thousand pills a month, with tens of thousands of dollars returning in hollowed-out teddy bears.In Generation Oxy, Dodd recounts his time as a wannabe Scarface: bottle service at clubs, an arsenal of weapons that would make Dillinger blush, narrow escapes from the law, hordes of young women, and as many pills as he could swallow. And this was all before he was legally able to drink a beer, while still living with his grandmother. The good times came to an end when the DEA closed in and the twenty-year-old Dodd faced life in federal prison.
Witch: The True Story of Las Vegas' Most Notorious Female Killer
Glenn Puit - 2005
Drawing on extensive interviews with the accused herself, here is the sordid, twisted, and surprising story of Brookey Lee West--a successful technical writer from Silicon Valley who went on a twenty year crime and killing spree.
Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave
Deanne Stillman - 2001
One girl was about to turn sixteen, the other twenty-one.Exquisitely and inexorably, Deanne Stillman uses this tragedy as a prism through which she explores not only the murders and the families involved but a rootless culture of fatherless families, shattered dreams, and relentless violence. In haunting, vivid prose, she creates a farreaching story of America itself, carrying us into the empty white heart of the Mojave, as we meet and come to know the modern nomads who turn to the West for salvation only to be devoured by its false promise.
"I'm just an ordinary girl." The Sharon Kinne Story
James C. Hays - 1997
husband, her boyfriend's wife and a man in Mexico. All this before her twenty-fifth birthday.Sentenced to thirteen years in Mexican prison, she escaped and is still at large with an active murder warrant biting at her ass.This story has been featured on Unsolved Mysteries and Discovery I.D.'s Deadly Women series. (Episode-"Born Bad").
Three Bodies Burning: The Anatomy of an Investigation into Murder, Money, and Mexican Marijuana
Brian Bogdanoff - 2010
the inside story of the investigation.When two worlds collide-the illegal transportation of tons of Mexican cartel marijuana to inner city gang members in a Midwestern city's "hood"-three bodies end up burning, caught in a web of greed as a major international drug deal goes very bad.The chilling trail of evidence from a remote wooded area where three bodies are set on fire leads homicide detectives across the country chasing down witnesses and conspirators in a two-year search for cold-blooded killers. This case has it all: murder, piles of cash stashed in the most unlikely of places, a blood-soaked crime scene, the remote dump site for bodies, luxury cars, flashy jewelry, and hundreds of pounds of illegal dope.An unbelievable break takes detectives down the rabbit hole where CSI meets Law & Order and where good old gumshoeing and meticulous forensic procedures bring down a mega-million-dollar drug conspiracy and lock up the bad guys for life.Follow the case through the eyes of the gritty homicide/narcotics detective. A handbook for the amateur criminologist, this book is for true crime fans, prosecutors and defense attorneys, and cops and robbers.Warning: This book contains graphic crime scene photos and adult language.
"She Must Have Known" The Trial Of Rosemary West
Brian Masters - 1996
Was this a sign of overwhelming guilt? Was West criminally insane or merely a sexual sadist of the worst kind? Brian Masters sets out to answer these questions.Attending the Rosemary West trial on a daily basis, Masters has come up with a penetrating study of the sexual obsession that led to the measured killing of twelve women and girls. In the wake of the horrific detail of murder, sadism and torture that has come to light in the last few months, Masters, from his privileged courtroom vantage point, looks closely at how and why ordinary human beings were driven to serial killing of the most devious kind, and how an evil psychopath was able to ensnare so many in a web of unseeing complicity. He unravels with particular precision the legal means used to bring the whole matter to trial and weighs the evidence coolly and objectively.Brian Masters has established his reputation as an authority on the criminal and psychopathic mind. This is his highly reasoned and psychologically acute look at what has become Britain's serial-killer trial of the century.
Darkness Descending: The Murder of Meredith Kercher
Paul Russell - 2010
On 4 December 2009, twenty-two-year-old American, Amanda Knox, and her twenty-five-year-old Italian former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty of murdering British student, Meredith Kercher, and were sentenced to twenty-six and twenty-five years in jail, respectively. Meredith was brutally stabbed to death in November 2007, in the apartment in Perugia that she shared with Amanda and two other girls. The details of the killing caught the world's attention with far-fetched rumour, and cold-hearted butchery, taking centre stage.The subject of intense speculation, 'Foxy Knoxy' was pilloried for her hard-partying, promiscuous lifestyle, while her well-dressed lover, Sollecito, collected knives, and was obsessed with violent comics. But that alone did not make them killers. Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, twenty-two, was found guilty of murder, and sexual assault, in a separate trial in October 2008, and sentenced to 30 years in jail. But evidence shows he could not have acted alone.In Darkness Descending TV producer, Paul Russell, and critically acclaimed crime writer, Graham Johnson, team up with leading Italian forensics expert, General Luciano Garofano, to reveal the full truth behind this sensational murder, and its trial. They skilfully unravel all the details, and study all the personalities, in this case that has stunned the world. Complex, and some say controversial, DNA evidence is explained in simple language and, bit by bit, a story emerges of brutality and jealousy in a university town where all was not what it seemed. Their findings make gripping reading.