Book picks similar to
Hung Jury: The Diary of a Menendez Juror by Hazel Thornton
true-crime
history
american-history
books-i-wrote
Elementary: The Explosive File On Scott Watson And The Disappearance Of Ben & Olivia: What Haven't They Told You?
Ian Wishart - 2016
The book that finally cracks the case. Ben Smart. Olivia Hope. Scott Watson. Unmissable. Undeniable. Unprecedented. Unexpected. Note from author: "This book contains quotes from original police witness statements. No two witnesses ever see the crime from exactly the same angle, so differences between statements are expected. Sometimes one statement can have a crucial detail that others have missed. That's why I included what appear to be 'repetitive' statements by a number of witnesses. So you can see the overall similarities and weight of evidence, but also any unique details. Sometimes witness statements are relevant to different parts of the story, so just as in a murder trial, readers may find a statement being referred to more than once.In a crime story, the devil can be in the detail. The statements are quoted in the authentic spelling of the witness - as important legal records they don't get 'proofed'. The court trial lasted 12 weeks and involved 30,000 pages of documents. I have distilled that down to 372 pages but it is still a complex story. Think of yourself as a juror, sifting the evidence."Previous books on this case have concentrated on picking apart the police version of events given in Court. That's a legalistic technique of creating 'doubt'. I ask a different question: Forget about the court case, do the original witness statements including ones never used in court show us what happened? The answer, I suggest, is "Yes", and you are about to find out for yourself..."
Backwoods Genius
Julia Scully - 2012
After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.
Britain's Most Notorious Prisoners: Victorian to Present-Day Cases
Stephen Wade - 2011
It is a place where time stops and lives are held in suspension, taken out of circulation. Amongst the jail population are the dangerous inmates: killers and rapists, gang 'hit-men' and serial offenders. They are the most notorious, their reputations sometimes enhanced by glamour, horrendous tales of their misdeeds and by their very incarceration.
Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer
Stewart P. Evans - 1996
Spurred by the startling discovery of a letter written by a Scotland Yard inspector, two veteran police investigators have traced the shadowy movements of a self-styled "doctor" from St. Louis who had a criminal record spanning both sides of the Atlantic. Two decades after the Ripper's murderous spree, Inspector John George Littlechild, then retired, laments in his fateful letter: "to my mind a very likely [suspect] . . . was an American quack named Francis Tumblety. . . his feelings toward women were remarkable and bitter in the extreme." Littlechild expresses dismay that Tumblety, who was in custody only briefly, was ever granted bail, enabling him to flee London-just as the murders ended. The Littlechild letter, printed in this book, provides crucial details either overlooked by police officials at the time of the investigation or later suppressed because they would reveal the same officials had allowed their prime suspect to slip through their fingers.Sifting through the entire historical record and their own surprising discoveries, Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey have created a true-life detective story that will fascinate all readers of Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, and Charles Dickens. Vividly evoking the mean streets of Victorian London and the wave of terror that swept the city with the Ripper's grisly crimes, they convincingly paint a portrait of history's most infamous serial killer.
My Life with Charles Manson
Paul Watkins - 1979
That was before the Tate/LaBianca murders, before the bizarre warning signals that "Helter Skelter was coming down." Now in MY LIFE WITH CHARLES MANSON, he recalls with chilling, hour-by-hour detail how he came to join the Family and how, from the beginning, they were programmed-by sex, drugs and music-to kill and die for a man who would as easily have cut their throats. He describes the "creepy crawly nights" which were rehearsals for murder... and Manson's richly embroidered ceremonial vest which depicted scenes of Family life and was woven partly in human hair... MY LIFE WITH CHARLES MANSON is a story of violence against body, mind and soul-perhaps the most shocking story ever told.
The Last Book on the Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History’s Most Notorious Serial Killers
Ben Kissel - 2020
Deeply researched but with a morbidly humorous bent, the podcast has earned a dedicated and aptly cultlike following for its unique take on all things macabre. In their first book, the guys take a deep dive into history’s most infamous serial killers, from Ted Bundy to John Wayne Gacy, exploring their origin stories, haunting habits, and perverse predilections. Featuring newly developed content alongside updated fan favorites, each profile is an exhaustive examination of the darker side of human existence. With appropriately creepy four-color illustrations throughout and a gift-worthy paper over board format, The Last Book on the Left will satisfy the bloodlust of readers everywhere.
The Devil's Rooming House: The True Story of America's Deadliest Female Serial Killer
M. William Phelps - 2010
In telling this fascinating story, M. William Phelps also paints a vivid portrait of early-twentieth-century New England.
Black Eye
Neville Steed - 1989
won the John Creasey Memorial Award for the best first crime novel of 1986; his second consolidates this promise.’ — The Times 1937, Devon. Johnny Black is a young and penniless pilot turned detective in the glamorous yet dangerous thirties. His girlfriend, the lovely Tracy Spencer-King, enlists him to help a friend, Diana Travers, and the unfolding tragedy becomes his first case. Diana’s sister, Deborah, died a few months before in what Diana believes are suspicious circumstances. Apparently Deborah was riding with her husband, the actor Michael Seagrave, in his new Frazer-Nash sports car on Bigbury Sands when – like the star Isadora Duncan – her long scarf got tangled in the wheels and broke her neck. Despite police being satisfied that Deborah’s death was a tragic accident, Diana thinks that Seagrave murdered his wife. But does Diana know more than she is letting on? Johnny’s investigations soon begin to support Diana’s doubts, for Seagrave proves to be a long standing philanderer and is currently pursuing a girl employed by a dancing academy, Daphne Phipps, and Susan Prendergast the daughter of a rich tycoon. Suspicions deepen when the dancer disappears and Johnny unearths some unsavoury facts about Seagrave’s past. Soon Black is up to his neck in murder and mayhem, as another key figure disappears and a blood-stained jacket turns up on the back of a murderer who has escaped from Dartmoor. It soon becomes clear that whoever is behind the disappearances might just want Johnny and Tracy dead too ... Black Eye, a novel in the great classic tradition of British thrillers, recounts the first case handled by the Black Eye Detective Agency, set up in Torquay, Devon, by a young and impecunious ex-pilot, Johnny Black. Praise for Neville Steed: ‘Steed’s debut Tinplate ... won the John Creasey Memorial Award for the best first crime novel of 1986; his second consolidates this promise.’ —
The Times
‘Mr Steed’s sense of humour endears ... all the details about model-making are fascinating.’ —
Punch
Neville Steed lives in South Devon, where the main action of Black Eye takes place. He read Law at Oxford and has travelled extensively. His interests include anything and everything connected with the motor car, aviation, the cinema and the Art Deco world of the 1930s. He is married with four sons. Endeavour Press is the UK’s leading independent publisher of digital books. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.
Monster City: Murder, Music, and Mayhem in Nashville’s Dark Age
Michael Arntfield - 2018
By the time Pat Postiglione arrived there in 1980, it was also the scene of an unsolved series of vicious sex slayings that served as a harbinger of worse to come. As Postiglione was promoted from street-beat Metro cop to detective sergeant heading Music City’s elite cold-case Murder Squad, some of America’s most bizarre, elusive, and savage serial killers were calling Nashville home. And during the next two decades, the body count climbed.From Vanderbilt University to dive bars and out-of-the-way motels, Postiglione followed the bloody tracks of these ever-escalating crimes—each enacted by a different psychopath with the same intent: to murder without motive or remorse. But of all the investigations, of all the monsters Postiglione chased, few were as chilling, or as game changing, as the Rest Stop Killer: a homicidal trucker who turned the interstates into his trolling ground. Next stop, Nashville. But Postiglione was waiting.
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.
Perfect Victim: The True Story of "The Girl in the Box" by the D.A. Who Prosecuted Her Captor
Christine McGuire - 1989
. . most thought-provoking."--BooklistIn 1997 twenty-year-old Colleen Stan left home to hitchhike from Oregon to California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and extraordinary crime.This is Colleen's incredible true story, told by the determined young district attorney who prosecuted the man who had forced her to endure years of sexual perversion . . . and held her captive in a coffin-like box under his and his wife's bed. A story of riveting psychological intensity and gripping courtroom drama, Perfect Victim reveals the whole truth about Collen Stan's real-life nightmare . . . and the psychopath who enslaved her body and her mind."Horrifying!"--The Cincinnati Post"Hard to put down!"--Chicago Tribune"A gripping and disturbing story of the secret life of apparently normal people. At once, horrific and engrossing."--Vincent Bugliosi, author of
Helter Skelter
L.A. Secret Police. Inside the LAPD Elite Spy Network
Mike Rothmiller - 1992
Secret Police. Inside the LAPD Elite Spy Network is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller. This incredible non-fiction book rips the lid off the LAPD and exposes the reader to its dark underbelly of corruption during the reign of Chief Daryl Gates. L.A. cops ruined lives and reputations, inflicted mindless brutality, committed murder and engaged in massive cover-ups. In Los Angeles, police corruption was much more than unmarked envelopes stuffed with cash. It was a total corruption of power. For decades LAPD engaged in massive illegal spying and lied about it. Its spying targets included politicians, movie stars, professional athletes, news reporters and anyone wielding power or those of interest to Daryl Gates. Incredibly, the spying targets included a Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a Secretary of Defense, a current Governor and the President of the United States. It all happened in Los Angeles. Detective Rothmiller is the modern-day Frank Serpico; he exposed the tentacles of corruption which reached to the highest levels within the LAPD and Washington D.C. It wasn’t long after that an assassin attempted to take his life. It was apparent to many that powerful forces wanted him silenced. Incredibly, in this book Detective Rothmiller names names! See why this book changed the LAPD and is required reading at many universities. As former Assistant United States Attorney Marvin Rudnick said, “Rothmiller was in a position to know. He did very sensitive work.” Every book has an ending. However, the ending of this book will shock you. Within the new epilogue is a multi-page essay written especially for this updated book by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston. In it he describes his personal experience as a target of Daryl Gates illegal intelligence operations while he served as a Los Angeles Times reporter. You’ll also read the challenge posed by detective Rothmiller to the LAPD. A challenge LAPD has refused to answer. Since releasing this updated eBook, Detective Rothmiller has been interviewed dozens of times by the national media regarding current NSA domestic spying and the 2013 murderous rampage of former LAPD cop Christopher Dorner. In late 2013 Detective Rothmiller was interviewed for a major television documentary which will expose corruption and major crimes committed at the highest levels. The documentary is scheduled for release in 2016.
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South
Radley Balko - 2018
Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist chronicles how the courts and Mississippi's death investigation system--a relic of the Jim Crow era--failed to deliver justice for its citizens and recounts the horrifying story of the two men who built successful careers on the back of this system. For nearly two decades, medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend Dr. Michael West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison. But then some of those convictions began to fall apart. Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington argue that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures are at fault, and raise sobering questions about our criminal justice system's ability to address them.
White Devil: The True Story of the First White Asian Crime Boss
Bob Halloran - 2015
Willis, according to prosecutors, was “the kingpin, organizer and leader of a vast conspiracy,” all within the legendarily insular and vicious Chinese mafia.It started when John Willis was 16 years old . . . his life seemed hopeless. His father had abandoned his family years earlier, his older brother had just died of a heart attack, and his mother was dying. John was alone, sleeping on the floor of his deceased brother’s home. Desperate, John reached out to Woping, a young Chinese man Willis had rescued from a bar fight weeks before. Woping literally picks him up off the street, taking him home to live among his own brothers and sisters. Soon, Willis is accompanying Woping to meet his Chinese mobster friends, and starts working for them. Journalist Bob Halloran tells the tale of John Willis, aka White Devil, the only white man to ever rise through the ranks in the Chinese mafia. Willis began as an enforcer, riding around with other gang members to “encourage” people to pay their debts. He soon graduated to even more dangerous work as a full-fledged gang member, barely escaping with his life on several occasions.As a white man navigating an otherwise exclusively Asian world, Willis was at first an interesting anomaly, but his ruthless devotion to his adopted culture eventually led to him emerging as a leader. He organized his own gang of co-conspirators and began an extremely lucrative criminal venture selling tens of thousands of oxycodone pills. A year-long FBI investigation brought him down, and John pleaded guilty to save the love of his life from prosecution. He has no regrets.White Devil explores the workings of the Chinese mafia, and he speaks frankly about his relationships with other gang members, the crimes he committed, and why he’ll never rat out any of his brothers to the cops.Told to Halloran from Willis’s prison cell, White Devil is a shocking portrait of a man who was allowed access into a secret world, and who is paying the price for his hardened life.
Robert Pickton: The True Story of the Pig Farmer Killer
Chris Swinney - 2015
This is the first book in a twenty-four volume series collection, edited by crime historian Dr. Peter Vronsky and true crime author and publisher RJ Parker. Each month they will publish a book of Canada’s most notorious criminals, written by various authors, and published under VP Publications, an imprint of RJ Parker Publishing, Inc. Chris Swinney worked Narcotics and Homicide cases for the past six years in the state of California. He also has written a crimes fiction trilogy called, "The Bill Dix Detective Series" Dr. Peter Vronsky is author of one of the most sold serial killer books worldwide; "Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters" RJ Parker has written 18 true crime books including bestsellers; "Serial Killers Abridged: An Encyclopedia of 100 Serial Killers", and "Parents Who Killed Their Children: Filicide", and publishes for several authors. BOOK 2 in Crimes Canada - Marc Lépine: The True Story of the Montreal Massacre by RJ Parker With extreme hatred in his heart against feminism, an act that feminists would label 'gynocide', a heavily armed Marc Lépine entered the University École Polytechnique de Montreal, and after allowing the male students to leave, systematically murdered 14 female students. But what motivated Lépine to carry out this heinous crime? Mass murderer, madman, cold-blooded killer, misogynist, political zealot? Or was he simply another desperate person frustrated with his powerless status in this world? The case of Lépine has been debated among the most prestigious criminologists in the country. This account entails some of the most controversial opinions of these experts to date. Only one thing is known for sure - Lépine's actions on December 6, 1989 radically changed this country and why he did what he did is much more complex than we will ever know. WITH PHOTOS BOOK 3 in Crimes Canada - Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka: The True Story of the Ken and Barbie Killers by Dr. Peter Vronsky WARNING: This book contains police and court transcripts of audio and descriptions of extremely graphic sexual violence contained in videotapes made by the perpetrators." Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka were so perfectly iconic as a newlywed couple that they were dubbed "Ken and Barbie". But their marriage had a dark side involving sex, death, and videotape. The 'perfect couple' first raped and murdered Karla's little sister and then kidnapped teenage schoolgirls whom they enslaved, raped, tortured and killed while gleefully recording themselves on video doing it. Vronsky will take you on the journey from the Scarborough Rapist (Bernardo) to Bordelais (Homolka's current last name) and her return to Canada in October, 2014 from the island of Gaudeloupe where she lived for several years with her husband and three children. WITH (21) PHOTOS