Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez


Philip Carlo - 1996
    The shocking true story behind the serial killer case that inspired the hit Netflix series!Painstakingly researched over three years, based on nearly one hundred hours of exclusive interviews with Richard Ramirez on California's Death Row, The Night Stalker is the definitive account of America's most feared serial murderer.From Ramirez's earliest brushes with the law to his deadliest stalking expeditions to the unprecedented police and civilian manhunt that resulted in one of the most sensational trials in California history, The Night Stalker is an eerie and spellbinding descent into the very heart of human evil.It is more than epic nonfiction at its most brutally real - it is true crime masterpiece.

A Checklist for Murder: The True Story of Robert John Peernock


Anthony Flacco - 1995
      Robert Peernock appeared to have the ideal life. Working as a pyrotechnics engineer and computer expert and coming home to his wife and daughter, Peernock projected the American dream. Even when he and his wife separated, it seemed amicable, just a small bump for the well-to-do family. But there was madness in his house: in private, Peernock was violent, subtly manipulative, and bordering on psychotic. But the horrifying details of his home life would only come to light after Peernock finally lost all control.   Peernock had come home, brutally beat both his wife and daughter, force fed them alcohol, and deliberately sent them to their death behind the wheel, staging it to look like a drunk driving accident. He didn’t foresee that his daughter would survive, and even with years of abuse, her attempted murder, and horrendous injuries, he never anticipated that she would speak so powerfully against him.   Throughout his trial, Peernock claimed a massive government conspiracy against him. He hired and fired lawyers multiple times, deadlocking juries and spinning a web of lies. New York Times bestselling author Anthony Flacco chronicles the sensational trial and all the terror that preceded it, looking deep into the mind of a deranged killer whose American dream was a waking nightmare for those trapped within it.

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery


Robert Kolker - 2013
    Lost Girls is a portrait of unsolved murders in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them.

A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story


Jeremy Grimaldi - 2016
    The ideal child, the one her immigrant parents saw, was studying to become a pharmacist at the University of Toronto. But there was a dark, deceptive side to the angelic young woman.In reality, Jennifer spent her days in the arms of her high school sweetheart, Daniel. In an attempt to lead the life she dreamed of, she would do almost anything: lie about her whereabouts, forge school documents, and invent fake jobs and a fictitious apartment. For many years she led this double life. But when her father discovered her web of lies, his ultimatum was severe. And so, too, was her revenge: a plan that culminated in cold-blooded murder. And it almost worked, except for one bad shot.The story of Jennifer Pan is one of all-consuming love and devious betrayal that led to a cold-hearted plan hatched by a group of youths who thought they could pull off the perfect crime.

Murder in Little Egypt


Darcy O'Brien - 1988
    Fusing the narrative power of an award-winning novelist and the detailed research of an experienced investigator, Darcy O'Brien unfolds the story of Dr. John Dale Cavaness, the southern Illinois physician and surgeon who in December 1984 was charged with the murder of his son Sean. Outraged by the arrest of the skilled medical practitioner who selflessly attended to their needs, the people of Little Egypt rose to his defense. In the trial, however, a radically different, disquieting portrait of Dr. Cavaness would emerge. For throughout the three decades that he enjoyed the admiration and respect of his community, Cavaness was privately terrorizing his family, abusing his employees, and making disastrous financial investments as well as brawling and womanizing. What was not revealed in the trial, however, was that seven years earlier, in a homicide that had never been solved, the body of Cavaness's firstborn son, Mark, had been found shot dead in the woods of Little Egypt. In addition to a compelling chronicle that uncovers the truth behind two ghastly crimes and lays bare the Jekyll–Hyde psyche of their perpetrator, Murder in Little Egypt brings into stark midwestern light the hidden, gothic underside of an America bred on violence and bathed in blood. "Stunning material,"—Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney "A meticulous account ... an implicit indictment of a culture that condones and encourages violent behavior in men."—The New York Times Book Review

No, Daddy, Don't!: A Father's Murderous Act of Revenge


Irene Pence - 2003
    The horrifying true story of an abusive husband who committed the ultimate act of violence and betrayal by murdering his two young daughters, as their mother helplessly listened on the telephone.

A Death in White Bear Lake: The True Chronicle of an All-American Town


Barry Siegel - 1990
    The autopsy report ruled peritonitis was the cause, but the startling photos of the boy suggested murder.How could the Jurgens kill a small child and get away with it? Determined to find answers, detectives Ron Meehan and Greg Kindle tracked down old witnesses and rebuilt the case brick by brick until they exposed the demons that drove an adopted parent to torture and eventually murder a helpless child. Just as compelling, they investigated why so many people watched and did absolutely nothing. A vivid portrait of an all-American town that harbored a killer, A Death in White Bear Lake is also the absorbing story of two detectives who refused to give up until they had the killer cold.

In Colder Blood


J.T. Hunter - 2016
    One was memorialized in Truman Capote’s classic novel, In Cold Blood. The other was all but forgotten. Dick Hickock and Perry Smith confessed to the first: the November 15, 1959 murder of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas. Despite remarkable coincidences between the two crimes, they denied committing the second: the December 19 murder of a family of four in Osprey, Florida. Over half a century later, a determined Florida detective undertakes exceptional efforts to try to bring closure to the long-cold case.

Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of


Harold Schechter - 2012
    But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the hugely acclaimed author of The Serial Killer Files and The Whole Death Catalog gives them their dark due in this absolutely riveting true-crime treasury. Among America’s most cold-blooded you’ll meet   • Robert Irwin, “The Mad Sculptor”: He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved—but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead.   • Peter Robinson, “The Tell-Tale Heart Killer”: It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim, but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan.   • Anton Probst, “The Monster in the Shape of a Man”: The ax-murdering immigrant’s systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later.   • Edward H. Ruloff, “The Man of Two Lives”: A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality, and his oversized brain gave new meaning to “mastermind.”   Spurred by profit, passion, paranoia, or perverse pleasure, these killers—the Witch of Staten Island, the Smutty Nose Butcher, the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell, and many others—span three centuries and a host of harrowing murder methods. Dramatized in the pages of penny dreadfuls, sensationalized in tabloid headlines, and immortalized in “murder ballads” and classic fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and Theodore Dreiser, the demonic denizens of Psycho USA may be long gone to the gallows—but this insidiously irresistible slice of gothic Americana will ensure that they’ll no longer be forgotten.

Everybody's Best Friend: The True Story of a Marriage That Ended In Murder (St. Martin's True Crime Library)


Ken Englade - 1999
    With no sign of a break-in, no history of marital problems, and the naïve belief that these things sometimes just happen, Stefanie Rabinowitz's family prepared to bury the 29-year-old wife and mother. But at the eleventh hour, because Stefanie was so young, and because there were no witnesses to her death, an autopsy was ordered. And what it revealed was unthinkable: Stefanie had been murdered-strangled in her home, then dragged into the tub to stage a fake drowning. Even more shocking was the suspected killer-Stefanie's 34-year-old husband, Craig: devoted family man, loyal husband, and "everybody's best friend."When the astounding truth began to emerge, so did the tawdry double life of Craig Rabinowitz, a man so obsessed with a two-thousand-dollar-a-week exotic dancer, that his habit caused him to look to the insurance money he would get from murdering his wife. Now, with exclusive interviews and startling inside details, bestselling author Ken Englade blows wide open the shocking true account of a storybook marriage that ended in bone-chilling murder.

Mother's Day


Dennis McDougal - 1995
      In June 1985, Theresa Cross Knorr dumped her daughter Sheila’s body in California’s desolate High Sierra. She had beaten Sheila unconscious in their Sacramento apartment days earlier, then locked her in a closet to die. But this wasn’t the first horrific crime she’d committed against her own children.   The previous summer, Knorr had shot Sheila’s sister Suesan, then ordered her son to dig the bullet out of the girl’s back with a knife to hide the evidence. The infection that resulted led to delirium—at which point Knorr and her two sons drove Suesan into the mountains, doused her with gasoline, and set her on fire.   It would be almost a decade before her youngest daughter, Terry Knorr Graves, revealed her mother’s history of unfathomable violence. At first, she was met with disbelief by law enforcement and even her own therapist. But eventually, the truth about her monstrous abuse emerged—and here, an award-winning journalist details the jealousy, rage, and domineering behavior that escalated into homicide and shattered a family.    A former reporter for the New York Times and Los AngelesTimes and the author of true-crime classics including Angel of Darkness, about serial killer Randy Kroft, and Blood Cold, about Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley, Dennis McDougal reveals the shocking depths of depravity behind a case that made headlines across the nation.

The Billionaire Murders: The Mysterious Deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman


Kevin Donovan - 2019
    . . 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.

Evil Eyes


Corey Mitchell - 2006
    Only hours before, he'd killed another woman by drowning her in her bathtub. As Watts attempted to do the same to 20-year-old Lori Lister, her roommate Melinda Aguilar, 18, made a daring escape, leading to Watts's arrest.Justice DeferredWatts was a sadistic slayer with a lust for killing in a variety of ways: strangulation, suffocation, drowning, and stabbing. He confessed to thirteen murders, but with no direct evidence to link him to the crimes, he managed to plea bargain his sentence down to 60 years for burglary.A Fiend ThwartedDue to a legal flaw in the Texas criminal justice system, Watts was supposed to be released from prison in 2006. Through the ceaseless efforts of investigators and the mother of one of the victims, Watts was finally tried and convicted to life in prison for a murder he'd committed in Michigan in 1979. He remains the prime suspect in approximately 90 other slayings. Experts theorize that Watts may have slain more than Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy. . .combined! Here is the chilling story of how he almost got away with murder.16 Pages Of Shocking Photos

The Bayou Strangler: Louisiana’s Most Gruesome Serial Killer


Fred Rosen - 2009
    In 1997, the bodies of young African American men began turning up in the cane fields of the quiet suburbs of New Orleans. The victims—many of them transient street hustlers—had been brutally raped and strangled, but police had no leads on the killer’s identity. The murders continued, leaving southeast Louisiana’s gay community rattled and authorities desperate for a break in the case. Then, Detectives Dennis Thornton and Dawn Bergeron came together as task force partners, indefatigable in their decade-long effort to track down the killer.   In 2006, DNA evidence finally linked the murders to a suspect: the unassuming Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for years, working as a pizza deliveryman and meter reader. But who was Ronald Dominique and what led him to commit such heinous crimes?   With direct access to the investigation, Dominique’s confession, and all of the killer’s body dump sites in throughout the state, author Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of a murderer and captures a troubled, disturbing, and broken life. As with the many other serial killers he has covered, including Jeffrey Dahmer (the Milwaukee Cannibal) and Dennis Rader (the BTK Killer), Rosen provides a horrifying and fascinating account of the lengths to which a bloodthirsty monster will go to lure and brutalize his victims.

Kidnapped by a Client: An Attorney's Fight for Justice at Any Cost


Sharon R. Muse - 2019
    I believed him. If I wanted justice, I had to fight both him and the courts...maybe kill him first. If I didn’t do something, I was going to die.” This is not a manufactured dialogue from a thriller but the words of attorney Sharon Muse. They came after she survived an attempted kidnapping, rape, and murder at the hands of Larry Morrison, a former client. On April 7, 2006, Muse miraculously escaped from the sociopathic Morrison, only to find that the threat to her life was just beginning. Ineptitude in the justice system threatened to release Morrison and allow him the opportunity to finish the job, which he adamantly pledged to do. Muse would have to fight at every step to ensure her safety. Muse would act as her own advocate, investigator, legal counsel, and bodyguard in the years following the event. Kidnapped by a Client covers the brutal kidnapping, two trials, two appeals, procedural errors galore, one Supreme Court reversal, and even Muse’s intricate plan to murder Morrison before he could get to her. Muse would not ultimately execute that plan, and she would emerge victorious in the legal battle thanks to her faith and her own determination and legal acumen. But her safety is not ensured: Morrison is up for parole in 2026. Muse regularly monitors his status. Muse recounts her stranger-than-fiction story in Kidnapped by a Client.  Muse analyzes the failures of the legal system, the mistakes she made, the steps she took to protect herself, and how she has coped with trauma. Readers will find not only a compelling narrative, but also insight into how to protect oneself and ensure one’s own safety and well-being.