Book picks similar to
Hijacked: The True Story of the Heroes of Flight 705 by Dave Hirschman
non-fiction
true-crime
crime
history
Pearl: Lost Girl of White Oak Mountain
Bill Yates - 2020
The search for little Pearl consumed the next several weeks, and the story became front page news all over the United States. Hundreds of residents from the nearby towns of Waldron and Booneville Arkansas helped in the search, and a mysterious mountain hermit seemed to hold the secret to Pearl's disappearance. The incredible events that followed contributed to a mountain legend that still exists today.
Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of the Capture & Killing of America's Most Wanted Crime Boss
Casey Sherman - 2020
The leader of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang and #1 on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, Bulger was indicted for nineteen counts of murder, racketeering, narcotics distribution, and extortion. But it was his sixteen-year flight from justice on the eve of his arrest that made him a legend and exposed deep corruption within the FBI.While other accounts have examined Bulger’s crimes, this remarkable chronicle tells the story of his life on the run, his capture, and his eventual murder inside one of America’s most dangerous prisons—”Misery Mountain”—in 2018. Interweaving the perspectives of Bulger, his family and cohorts, and law enforcement, Hunting Whitey explains how this dangerous criminal evaded capture for nearly two decades and shines a spotlight on the dedicated detectives, federal agents, and prosecutors involved in bringing him to justice. It is also a fascinating, detailed portrait of both Bulger’s trial and his time in prison—including shocking new details about his death at Misery Mountain less than twenty-four hours after his arrival.Granted access to exclusive prison letters and interviews with dozens of people connected to the case on both sides, Sherman and Wedge offer a trove of fascinating new stories and create an incomparable portrait of one of the most infamous criminals in American history.Hunting Whitey includes an 8-page photo insert.
The Good Wife: The Shocking Betrayal and Brutal Murder of a Godly Woman in Texas
Clint Richmond - 2007
Evangelical Christians living in booming Austin, Texas, in the mid-1990s, they were respected leaders in their church and community. As Roger diligently worked his way up the high-tech corporate ladder, Penny kept a pristine home and coached similarly devout young women on how to be perfect wives. But on a windy March evening, this godly woman met the devil head-on. And when the police discovered her lifeless body—repeatedly bludgeoned with a lead pipe, then mutilated with a knife from her own spotless kitchen—they were shocked by the rage and savagery behind her slaying.The Good Wife is a startling true story of greed, hatred, betrayal, and an unimaginable murder—a tale of the dark decay that can be hidden behind a facade of saintliness when a marriage seemingly made in heaven descends into hell.
Mengele: The Complete Story
Gerald Posner - 1980
With authority and insight, Mengele examines the entire life of the world's most infamous doctor.
You'll Never Find My Body
Don Lasseter - 2009
Instead, their father showed up with a small bag of cold French fries and said their mother had gone away. Ann's children didn't believe it. Neither did her friends. And neither did the police. But there was zero evidence that anything had happened to Ann.No Body...Los Angeles detectives dug furiously into the case, grilling John Racz and searching for clues. But without a body, the investigation stalled, and three children grew up wondering what had happened to their loving mother-and if their father had killed her.And A Killer In Plain Sight...Fourteen years later, a brilliant female prosecutor defied the legal establishment and delved into the cold case, uncovering shocking information about Ann and her relationship with John. Suddenly, a crusading prosecutor was up against the most difficult kind of murder case of all: to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that John Racz had murdered his wife-despite the fact that her body was never found...With 16 pages of photosDon Lasseter has authored a dozen true crime books, more than fifty magazine articles, and a book about WWII airmen downed in France and rescued by the Resistance. His best seller is Die for Me (Pinnacle, 2000) a chronicle of crimes by California serial killer Charles Ng. Lasseter's television appearances include several talk shows and crime documentaries on A&E's "American Justice and Biography," Court TV, the Discovery Channel, and CSPAN's Book TV. He is a resident of Orange County, California.
Missing: Missing Without Trace in Ireland
Barry Cummins - 2003
Looking at who may be responsible for these disappearances, this book outlines the fact that some of Ireland's most cold and calculating killers have not been caught.
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
Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson
Tom Lange - 1997
Evidence Dismissed
Unsolved Murders and Disappearances in Northest Ohio (Murder & Mayhem)
Jane Ann Turzillo - 2015
Louise Wolf and Mabel Foote, Parma teachers, were on their way to school one winter morning when a maniac sprang from the bushes and bludgeoned them to death. When young Melvin Horst went missing on his way home from playing with friends in 1928, many thought he was kidnapped or accidentally killed by a bootlegger's car. Charles Collins's death looked like suicide but was proved otherwise by two preeminent surgeons and has remained a mystery for more than one hundred years. Author Jane Ann Turzillo recounts eight unsolved murders and two chilling disappearances in Northeast Ohio's history.
Cold Cases: A True Crime Collection: Unidentified Serial Killers, Unsolved Kidnappings, and Mysterious Murders (Including the Zodiac Killer, Natalee Holloway's Disappearance, the Golden State Killer and More)
Cheyna Roth - 2020
Written for true crime junkies who love to speculate on the facts and theories surrounding their favorite cases, this book reads like you’re having a conversation with a friend or listening to your favorite crime podcast. Each chapter delves deep into the facts, while also illuminating the many theories surrounding these mysteriously fascinating cases: - The Zodiac Killer - The disappearance of Natalee Holloway - The murder of JonBenét Ramsey - The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist - The Kingsbury Run murders, aka the Cleveland Torso murders - The Black Dahlia murder - The Freeway Phantom murders - D. B. Cooper’s airplane heist - The Amber Alert case (the death of Amber Hagerman) - The Golden State Killer
Court TV Presents: Murder in Room 103
Harriet Ryan - 2006
Investigators zeroed in on soldiers, turning out barracks and trolling seedy bars for the GIs who partied with Jamie in the hours leading up to her death. But every lead produced only new mysteries. There were unbreakable alibis, a roommate who claimed she had slept through the crime, and lab tests that hinted at a secret lover. The investigation seemed destined for the cold case file until a high-powered American senator pressed for answers. Soon, a greenhorn detective settled on a shocking new suspect, a pretty blonde exchange student named Kenzi Snider. During an interrogation, the teenager confessed to killing Jamie during a lesbian encounter . . . but it was what happened next that was truly surprising.What really happened in Room 103?
Seven Million: A Cop, a Priest, a Soldier for the IRA, and the Still-Unsolved Rochester Brink's Heist
Gary Craig - 2017
Suspicion quickly fell on a retired Rochester cop working security for Brinks at the time--as well it might. Officer Tom O'Connor had been previously suspected of everything from robbery to murder to complicity with the IRA. One ex-IRA soldier in particular was indebted to O'Connor for smuggling him and his girlfriend into the United States, and when he was caught in New York City with $2 million in cash from the Brink's heist, prosecutors were certain they finally had enough to nail O'Connor. But they were wrong. In Seven Million, the reporter Gary Craig meticulously unwinds the long skein of leads, half-truths, false starts, and dead ends, taking us from the grim solitary pens of Northern Ireland's Long Kesh prison to the illegal poker rooms of Manhattan to the cold lakeshore on the Canadian border where the body parts began washing up. The story is populated by a colorful cast of characters, including cops and FBI agents, prison snitches, a radical priest of the Melkite order who ran a home for troubled teenagers on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the IRA rebel who'd spent long years jailed in one of Northern Ireland's most brutal prisons and who was living underground in New York posing as a comics dealer. Finally, Craig investigates the strange, sad fate of Ronnie Gibbons, a down-and-out boxer and muscle-for-hire in illegal New York City card rooms, who was in on the early planning of the heist, and who disappeared one day in 1995 after an ill-advised trip to Rochester to see some men about getting what he felt he was owed. Instead, he got was what was coming to him. Seven Million is a meticulous re-creation of a complicated heist executed by a variegated and unsavory crew, and of its many repercussions. Some of the suspects are now dead, some went to jail; none of them are talking about the robbery or what really happened to Ronnie Gibbons. And the money? Only a fraction was recovered, meaning that most of the $7 million is still out there somewhere.
The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century
Howie Carr - 2006
For years their familiar story was of two siblings who took different paths out of South Boston: William "Billy" Bulger, former president of the Massachusetts State Senate; and his brother James "Whitey" Bulger, a vicious criminal who became the FBI's second most-wanted man after Osama Bin Laden. While Billy cavorted with the state's blue bloods to become a powerful political force, Whitey blazed a murderous trail to the top rung of organized crime. Now, in this compelling narrative, Carr uncovers a sinister world of FBI turncoats, alliances between various branches of organized crime, St. Patrick's Day shenanigans, political infighting, and the complex relationship between two brothers who were at one time kings. As the film Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger, hits theaters, take a deeper dive into the story of the Bulgers, and their fifty-year reign over Boston with Howie Carr's The Brother's Bulger.
102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers
Jim Dwyer - 2005
Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it-until now. Of the millions of words written about this wrenching day, most were told from the outside looking in. "New York Times" reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn have taken the opposite-and far more revealing-approach. Reported from the perspectives of those inside the towers, "102 Minutes" captures the little-known stories of ordinary people who took extraordinary steps to save themselves and others. Beyond this stirring panorama stands investigative reporting of the first rank. An astounding number of people actually survived the plane impacts but were unable to escape, and the authors raise hard questions about building safety and tragic flaws in New York's emergency preparedness. Dwyer and Flynn rely on hundreds of interviews with rescuers, thousands of pages of oral histories, and countless phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts. They cross a bridge of voices to go inside the infernos, seeing cataclysm and heroism, one person at a time, to tell the affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women-the nearly 12,000 who escaped and the 2,749 who perished-as they made 102 minutes count as never before. "102 Minutes" is a 2005 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History
David Enrich - 2017
Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that included a prickly French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; the broker “Abbo,” who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a nervous Kazakh chicken farmer known as “Derka Derka”; a broker known as “Village” (short for “Village Idiot”) who racked up huge expense account bills; an executive called “Clumpy” because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed “Big Nose” who had once been a semi-professional boxer. This group generated incredible riches —until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.With exclusive access to key characters and evidence, The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but also a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout.