It was a merciless killing that stunned the small, trusting community where she lived, and devastated her close-knit family. In the days that followed the discovery of her body, it was thought that Rachel was the victim of a bungled robbery attempt. It soon emerged, however, that police investigating the case believed Rachel had known her killer and that her murder had been carefully planned months in advance. The spotlight immediately fell upon Rachel’s husband, Joe O’Reilly, who admitted in a number of extraordinary press interviews that he was a prime suspect in his wife’s slaying. The 32-year-old advertising executive vehemently denied any involvement. It was a crime that captured the imagination of the public, who watched as the illusion of the idyllic suburban life the couple shared together began to shatter. Extract from the Suspect WITH THE SOUND of her heart pounding loudly in her ears, Rose Callaly drove as quickly as she could in the direction of her daughter’s home.Gripping the steering wheel tightly, she did her best to calm herself down by going through all of the logical reasons why Rachel O’Reilly might not be answering her telephone. Maybe she was out shopping or visiting a friend and had left her mobile at home by mistake, maybe there was a fault with the line, maybe … Rose shook her head and decided to concentrate on the road instead; it was safer that way. Thankfully traffic was good and within 20 minutes she was parking in the driveway of her daughter’s bungalow, which lay nestled in the picturesque countryside of north Dublin.As she pulled up beside Rachel’s Renault Scenic, which was parked in the same spot she always left it, Rose’s sense of foreboding deepened. If her daughter was at home, why had she not answered the landline or acknowledged any of the many worried messages her family had left for her? Ever since being told that her daughter had failed to pick up her youngest son, Adam, from the crèche earlier that morning, Rose knew from somewhere deep down that something was wrong.But now was not the time to panic; she had to find Rachel. As she turned off the engine of her car, two dogs her daughter was looking after began to jump and bark. Already in a rush to get into the house, she was irritated by the thoughts of trying to stop them following her.As it was, she needn’t have worried—something was already stopping the dogs from entering the house. Walking quickly to the back patio doors of the house, the entrance the family always used, Rose was surprised to find them both wide open. She was even more surprised when she saw that the curtains in the kitchen were drawn, something Rachel would never allow happen during the day.She entered and swiftly scanned the room and although paying little attention, as she was intent on locating Rachel, she did notice there were several items strewn around the floor. She would later recall that she felt ‘someone had taken and actually placed them there.’ She also spotted that the kitchen tap was running but did not stop to turn it off. ‘Rachel, Rachel, where are you love?’ Rose called as she walked into the utility room. There was no sign of her daughter in the small area where the washing machine was kept, so she crossed over into the hallway. Turning to her left, she checked the sitting room; it was a mess, dozens of CDs and DVDs lay strewn on the floor. What had happened? Where was Rachel? Rose began to call louder. ‘Rachel, Rachel are you alright? Answer me love.

    Organised crime is about making money. It's a business. But over the past 20 years, the dealers have graduated from motorcycle gangs to Asian crime syndicates and now the most dangerous drug lords in the world - the Mexican cartels.In Gangland, award-winning investigative reporter Jared Savage shines a light into New Zealand's rising underworld of organised crime and violent gangs.The brutal execution of a husband-and-wife; the undercover cop who infiltrated a casino VIP lounge; the midnight fishing trip which led to the country's biggest cocaine bust; the gangster who shot his best friend in a motorcycle shop: these stories go behind the headlines and open the door to an invisible world - a world where millions of dollars are made, life is cheap, and allegiances change like the flick of a switch.

    This volume is comprised of the years 1900 through 1959, and includes all of the best known cases of the period, as well as many more lesser-known murders, all presented in a compelling chronological narrative that takes the reader on a grisly journey through the blood-soaked avenues of early twentieth century crime. Featuring: The Peasenhall Murder. The Seal Chart Murder. The Atlanta Ripper. The Villisca Axe Murders. The Axeman of New Orleans. The Green Bicycle Case. Little Lord Fauntleroy. Hinterkaifeck Farm. The St. Aubin Street Massacre. The Wallace Case. The Atlas Vampire. The Brighton Trunk Crime. The Cleveland Torso Murderer. The Horror in Room 1046. Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm? The Pitchfork Murder. The Sodder Children. The Phantom Killer. The Black Dahlia. Somerton Man. The Grimes Sisters. The Boy in the Box. And Much More!

    A young and talented eye surgeon, he accepted a job with an established eye surgeon to take over his pediatric patients. “It’s a beautiful place,” Stidham told a friend. “I can live right there by the mountains and go hiking. It’s a great deal for me there. The partner I’ll be working with is ultracool. He’s giving me the keys to the kingdom.”Brad Schwartz, the doctor who hired Brian, was ambitious and possessed surgical skills few others had. But he was a troubled man.Within a year of Stidham’s arrival in Tucson, the medical relationship would be severed by Schwartz’s personal troubles. Stidham broke away to start his own practice. Rumors abounded within the medical community that Schwartz was incensed and considered the departure a betrayal. His rage grew, even driving a wedge between him and his fiancée, Lourdes Lopez, a former prosecutor.Three years after Stidham moved to Tucson, his life ended in an empty, darkened parking lot. But who would murder such a nice man in such a violent manner? Lourdes, who had witnessed Schwartz’s toxic rage toward his former partner, feared she knew. But would her suspicions be enough to catch the killer? Find out in TOXIC RAGE.

    He was a man with no conscience. He killed sixteen people, three of them children. Hatcher was also responsible for a different kind of tragedy--the conviction and imprisonment of an innocent man who was mercilessly hounded by the police, the prosecutor and the community for a brutal murder that Hatcher himself committed. A nomadic Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde who manipulated the legal system with gruesome skill, Charles Hatcher was the embodiment of evil, the devil's emissary on Earth. His nemesis was the lone FBI-man in St. Joseph, Missouri who risked his career to end Hatcher's reign of terror. "Innocent Blood" is the true story of Charles Hatcher and his life of crime--a powerful, and blood-chilling glimpse into the darkness between sanity and madness. It also chronicles a justice system gone wrong. Throughout his criminal career Hatcher was able to fool dozens of psychiatrists, who repeatedly failed to identify him as a multiple murderer. Hatcher's astonishing skill was not just in his ability to murder and escape imprisonment. He became an expert at manipulating the criminal justice system; overall, he outwitted police, prosecutors, psychiatrists and judges in twelve cities and eight states. Terry Ganey first covered this story as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Later, he spent four years researching the material for this book, interviewing over seventy-five people and reviewing thousands of documents, court transcripts, prison files, police reports and mental health records. What emerges is a fascinating and horrifying portrait of a mass murderer at large in America--a murderer who could have stalked his victims in any of our towns and cities, whether urban or rural, large or small. This is an updated edition of the New York Times bestseller that was originally published in hardback under the title "St. Joseph's Children." The New York Times called the book, "a powerfully affecting story...every parent's nightmare." Kirkus Reviews said it was "an effective cautionary tale of crime and too-late punishment." The Library Journal described the book as "a gripping tale of murder, pursuit, and justice." And Publishers Weekly's conclusion was: "Disturbing...Justice is shown to triumph--ultimately--in this engaging, instructive true crime study." Customer reviews of the hardback edition "St. Joseph's Children" had this to say about it on the Amazon book website: --"My favorite book of ALL TIME!" --"I can hardly put this book down..." --"I highly recommend this book to all." --"What a wonderful book on a horrible miscarriage of justice." --"Book was very well written." This "Innocent Blood" eBook edition contains additional material that editors had discarded for the first print edition. Some events and background relating to Charles Hatcher's early life have been added, as well as context, description and background. The epilogue has also been updated. The revised eBook recounts the original, shocking narrative, which one reviewer wrote "penetrates the murky darkness of a soul in torment and of a town caught in despair, a town that witnessed both the unremarkable beginning and savage end of Charles Hatcher's criminal career."

     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.

    . . Frankie Cochran knew her boyfriend, David Gerard, was possessive, controlling, and prone to violent rages. When she tried to break up with him, Gerard threatened her with a hammer. One week later, he used it to club her in the head. Again. And again. Then he stabbed her in the throat--and left her for dead. . .And A Sharp Knife. . . Miraculously, Frankie survived--but cops began to suspect Gerard of other vicious crimes. One of his previous girlfriends had died in a house fire, along with her children and her mother. A local prostitute's brutalized body was found in a pool of blood. But it was the unsolved murder of another woman--repeatedly run over on a country road--that finally exposed Gerard as a rage-driven monster out of control. . .To Unleash His Rage Justice finally caught up with Gerard. Hounded by the tireless efforts of detectives and incriminated by DNA evidence as well as up-to-date forensics that matched the tire marks at a crime scene to Gerard's car, one of the Pacific Northwest's most dangerous killers was finally locked behind bars. With 16 pages of shocking photos!

    After a sensational trial, she was sentenced to die by lethal injection, and fifteen years later, on February 24, 2000, she was executed.

    For the first time, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields will reveal the real, hitherto unknown motive for the killing of Odin Lloyd—the only crime for which Hernandez was ever convicted and a revelation so shocking it will shake the foundations of the NFL itself. It will also unpick a pattern of violence and brutality stretching back to his time as a teenager at the University of Florida, revealing further shooting victims, evidence of his involvement in the double murder of Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado in 2012. Featuring new interviews with Hernandez’s cellmates, serving police investigators, prosecutors, psychologists, attorneys—as well as key witnesses including Hernandez’s drug dealer, a male stripper he hired days before the killing of Lloyd—plus extensive testimony from relatives of Hernandez’s victims, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields is the exhaustive, definitive account of the rise and fall of a man undone by his own appetite for violence, gangsterism, power, drugs, and self-destruction. This is the real Aaron Hernandez story—and perhaps just the beginning of a whole new murder investigation.

    He was drawn to trouble like water to a sponge.After experiencing a troubled childhood during which Alan was in and out of children's homes - after being put into care at the tender age of eighteen months old - Alan was a teenager in 1981 when he was sentenced to life in prison for murder during a robbery that had gone badly wrong. He served thirty-two years in various prisons throughout the United Kingdom. This book tells the truth of what goes on behind prison walls and exposes the level of inhumane treatment and brutality that Alan had to endure throughout his thirty-two year journey, during which he never stopped standing up for human rights.Fighting against the degrading prison system of the late twentieth century, Alan helped change the historical humiliating slop out and weekly shower that hundreds of thousands of prisoners had to adhere to throughout the centuries. The battle came at a cost though as it meant more time behind bars, time spent mainly in the segregation unit.Powerfully detailing the way prisoners are treated on a daily basis, Life in Strangeways is a gripping tale that will change the perception of Alan Lord: convicted murderer and riot leader.

    This is one of them. Seven-year-old Samantha Zaldivar is reported missing in February 1997. Despite the best efforts of the community and law enforcement to find her, it seems the first grader has disappeared without a trace until the forensic evidence leads a multi-agency task force to an ugly possibility. Months later, an unlikely turn of events reveals the young girl’s fate, which rocks the rural county in Western New York. Dedicated and meticulous police work brings a murderer to justice, but not without a cost to those involved. Stephen C. Tarbell, a retired Wyoming County Sheriff’s investigator shares his personal account of the investigation into the disappearance and murder of Samantha Zaldivar.

    A schoolteacher who killed multiple paramours with cyanide; a mother who trained her daughters to kill children; a thug from the 1800s who slaughtered more than 900 people, a manservant who killed girls and devoured their body parts.If you thought serial killers was a Western phenomenon, think again!These bone-chilling stories in The Deadly Dozen will take you into the hearts and heads of India's most devious murderers and schemers, exploring what made them kill and why?

    As a falsely accused drug lord, escaped convict, and hunted felon from the Michigan Department of Correction, incarceration was never far from her consciousness. Sent to prison at age 19 on a minor drug offenseâ��a 10-to-20-year sentence after sheâ��d been promised probationâ��Susan Marie LeFevre chose to escape the life sheâ��d been dealt and begin a new one. She married, raised three children, volunteered for charity events and played tennis and bridge with her many friends and neighborsâ��all the while carrying the secret of her past. Not even her husband knew who she really was. The explosive story of her capture played out in the news, usually with the headline starting "Fugitive Mom..." as she became a voiceless pawn shuttling across country on a prison-bound bus back to the confines of Michiganâ��s notoriously cruel penitentiary system. In this riveting new autobiography, Marie Walsh aka Susan LeFevreâ��s story begins in the fractious, idealistic 70s, delves into the world of drugs and touches on church scandal, race relations and a corrupt judicial system. Readers will experience the headiness of that all-consuming first love, the humiliation of squatting naked in a jail cell, the friendshipsâ��and enmitiesâ��forged by necessity among prison women. And finally, readers will understand the price one pays in trying to escape the past and the lessons to be learned by confronting it. Her parallel worlds were forever intertwined as the country witnessed it played out in courtrooms, news media and before public officials who ultimately decided her fate. Two lives â�� one story.

    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.