Book picks similar to
Hush Little Babies: the true story of a mother who murdered her own children by Don Davis
true-crime
non-fiction
nonfiction
crime
Bluegrass: A True Story of Murder in Kentucky
William Van Meter - 2008
She came from a tiny village in Kentucky. The State moved her as a child into a foster home in a town so small it had one stoplight. New to her own beauty and a little awkward, Katie had the biggest smile on her high school cheerleading squad. In September 2002, she matriculated as a freshman at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. She majored in the dental program, but as it was for many college students her age, partying was of equal priority. She worked days at the smoothie shop, nights at the local strip club, and fell in love with a football player who wouldn't date her. Five feet two in heels and without a bad word to say about anyone, Katie Autry was sweet, kind, and utterly naïve. She was making the clumsy strides of a newborn colt, discovering what the world was like and learning to be her own person. And on the morning of May 4, 2003, Katie Autry was raped, stabbed, sprayed with hairspray, and set on fire in her own dormitory room. In telling the true story of this shocking crime, Bluegrass describes the devastation of not one but three families. Two young men, whose lives seem preordained to intertwine, are jailed for the crime: DNA evidence places Stephen Soules, an unemployed, mixed-race high school dropout, atthe scene, and Lucas Goodrum, a twenty-one-year-old pot dealer with an ex-wife, a girlfriend still in high school, and an inauspicious history of domestic abuse, is held by an ever-changing confession. The friends of the suspects and the foster and birth families of the victim form complex and warring social nets that are cast across town. And a small southern community, populated by eccentrics of every socioeconomic class, from dirt-poor to millionaire, responds to the horror. Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this tale is redolent with atmosphere, dark tension, and lush landscapes. With the keen eye of a talented young journalist returning to his southern roots, Van Meter paints a vivid portrait of the town, the characters who fill it, and the simmering class conflicts that made an injustice like this not only possible, but inevitable.
Robert Black: The True Story of a Child Rapist and Serial Killer from the United Kingdom
C.L. Swinney - 2015
Starting at the age of five, he recalls being sexually curious and began placing items in his anus at the age of eight. He'd sexually assault hundreds of little girls before committing his first murder. Sadly, as law enforcement stumbled along with no leads or evidence, Robert Black would strike repeatedly destroying families and preying on innocent little girls in the United Kingdom.
Honeymoon With A Killer
Don Lasseter - 2009
prosecutor to tell the shocking true story of Rebecca Cleland, a manipulative, money-hungry woman who plots and carries out her husband's murder with the help of members of her own family. Original.
Illustrated True Crime
Nick Yapp - 2006
cannibals and con artists, outlaws and assassins, the men and women for whom law and life had little value, the monsters for whom killing was a way of life...Superbly illustrated with the pick of the unique crime collection of getty images, True Crime openss up the files on over 100 of the most notorious crimes and criminals in history.
No Safe Place
Bill G. Cox - 2000
The shocking true story of a marriage that spiraled into the most forbidden acts a man and woman could commit, and of a husband who began a campaign of intimidation against his wife that ended in murder.
A Need to Kill: Confessions of a Teen Murderer
Michael W. Cuneo - 2011
One night, he waited until they were asleep…then entered the house with a knife. Alec burst into the master bedroom and stabbed Tom and Lisa Haines first. Then he attacked Kevin, who fought for his life. Meanwhile, at the end of the hall, Kevin’s sister Maggie awoke to the sound of violence—and was the only one who made it out alive.
Clean-cut and academically gifted, Alec seemed to have no motives, no history of psychosis—and no remorse. Some believed he was a serial killer in the making, a soulless monster plagued by “demons.” Now, for the first time, acclaimed author Michael W. Cuneo shares the inside story—with shocking details of Alec’s confession to his father, disturbing messages to his classmates, and chilling excerpts from his diaries—and takes you inside the dark, troubled mind of this teenage killer.
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.
Son
Jack Olsen - 1983
In March 1981, luck and inspired police work at last produced an arrest, and Spokane shuddered. The suspect was clean cut and conservative…and Gordon Coe’s son.For eighteen months, Jack Olsen researched the cases of Fred and Ruth Coe to try to learn not only what happened within that family, but how and why. He interviewed more than 150 people and built up a portrait not only of that extraordinary family, but of the mind of a psychopath. And searching the memories of the women in Fred Coe’s life, he unearthed a most horrifying question: What is it like to love and live with a man for years—and then discover he is a psychopathic criminal?
Deadly Dose: The Untold Story of a Homicide Investigator's Crusade for Truth and Justice
Amanda Lamb - 2008
For four months, arsenic consumed the body of promising young pediatric AIDS researcher Eric Miller. No one thought that his wife could be capable of such a horrible crime—except for veteran homicide investigator Chris Morgan, a man who would spend the next four years in his pursuit of justice.
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.
Chase Darkness with Me: How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders
Billy Jensen - 2019
Every story he wrote had one thing in common―they didn't have an ending. The killer was still out there.But after the sudden death of a friend, crime writer and author of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara, Billy became fed up. Following a dark night, he came up with a plan. A plan to investigate past the point when the cops had given up. A plan to solve the murders himself.You'll ride shotgun as Billy identifies the Halloween Mask Murderer, finds a missing girl in the California Redwoods, and investigates the only other murder in New York City on 9/11. You'll hear intimate details of the hunts for two of the most terrifying serial killers in history: his friend Michelle McNamara's pursuit of the Golden State Killer and his own quest to find the murderer of the Allenstown Four. And Billy gives you the tools―and the rules―to help solve murders yourself.Gripping, complex, unforgettable, Chase Darkness with Me is an examination of the evil forces that walk among us, illustrating a novel way to catch those killers, and a true-crime narrative unlike any you've read before.
No One Is Perfect: The True Story Of Candace Mossler And America's Strangest Murder Trial
Ron Smith - 2018
Simpson case, America was fascinated by another "trial of the century". Jacques Mossler, a prominent financier, was brutally murdered in his Key Biscayne apartment. Suspicion quickly fell upon Melvin Lane Powers, the shady nephew of Mossler's wife, Candace. When investigators discovered that "Candy and Mel" were carrying on an incestuous love affair, the pair were charged with the crime. The Miami trial featured the legendary defense attorney, Percy Foreman, whose outrageous tactics created a number of memorable moments. A colorful parade of prosecution witnesses shared tales of recruiting hit men, and the unusual relationship between the glamorous aunt and her nephew. "No One Is Perfect" is a thoroughly researched account of the landmark trial and the life of its chic blonde defendant.
A Beautiful Child
Matt Birkbeck - 2004
Serving as a Lt. Colonel in the ROTC, she earned a full scholarship to Georgia Tech University to study aerospace engineering. She was the ultimate girl next door, sweet, generous, and well-adjusted. But Sharon had disturbing secrets so shocking and unique, they took more than a decade to unravel...This is the horrifying true story of a mysterious young woman caught in the violent web of the murderous fugitive she called her father—and a heartrending testament to the profound courage and perseverance of one woman trapped in the grip of extreme evil
The DC Dead Girls Club: A Vintage True Crime Story of Four Unsolved Murders in Washington DC
Jason Lucky Morrow - 2014
Their deaths had no connection to each other. Each woman was different. Each murder, though violent and brutal, was unlike the other three women. Other than the fact that all four women were young and beautiful with active love lives, they had little in common until they were murdered and their cases remained unsolved to this day. In death they would all share similar newspaper headlines and together they formed The DC Dead Girls Club. * On September 13, 1929, Virginia McPherson’s estranged husband found her body in her apartment. When police ruled her death a suicide, a maverick police officer, Washington daily newspapers, and three U.S. Senators cried foul. * The body of thirty-one-year-old Mary Baker was found in a culvert next to Arlington National Cemetery on April 12, 1930. Her case would be called “the Mystery of 101 Clues” and would end in a bizarre trial that only added another layer to the enigma. * Beulah Limerick was a nineteen-year-old good time girl whose diary recounted her trysts with eighteen different lovers. When she was found dead in her bed on December 31, 1930, it was assumed she died of natural causes. Hours later, a mortician discovered a bullet hole in her head. * On November 4, 1935, Corinna Loring disappeared two days before she was to marry Richard Tear, a handsome orderly at a mental hospital. The twenty-six-year-old was loved by all in the tiny Washington D.C. suburb of Mount Rainier, Maryland, where she sang in the church choir and taught Sunday school. Her death would be the biggest mystery of all.
Against Her Will: The Senseless Murder of Kelly Ann Tinyes
Ronald J. Watkins - 1995
But the nightmare to come was worse than they could ever imagine. Only five doors away, in the home of John and Elizabeth Golub, police found Kelly Ann's body stuffed in a plastic garbage bag. She'd been brutally beaten, stabbed, strangled, and mutilated. After weeks of intense investigation, police arrested the Golubs twenty-one-year-old son, Robert - a reclusive young man obsessed with bodybuilding and given to fits of rage. The sensational trial and subsequent conviction of Robert Golub shocked the nation and tore the once peaceful community apart. Neighbors took sides. So did the media. And no one who lived on Horton Road would ever be the same.NOTE: This book was re-edited in May, 2013 to correct OCR conversion errors.