In this, M.J. Trow's latest reinvestigation of a bizarre and brutal serial killing, he delves deep into the appalling facts of the case, into the futile police investigations, and into the dark history of late Victorian London.The incredible criminal career of the Thames torso murderer has gripped readers and historians ever since he committed his crimes in the 1870s and 1880s. The case poses as many questions as the even more notorious killings of Jack the Ripper. How, over a period of fifteen years, did the Thames murderer get away with a succession of monstrous and sensational misdeeds? And what sort of perverted character was he, why did he take such risks, why did he kill again and again?

    From a colonial manse in New England to a small-town home in Iowa to a Beverly Hills mansion, these residences have taken on a life of their own, gaining everything from local lore and gossip to national—and even global—infamy.Writer Steve Lehto recounts the stories behind the houses where Lizzie Borden supposedly gave her stepmother “forty whacks,” where the real Amityville Horror was first unleashed by gunfire, and where the demented acts of the Manson Family horrified a nation—as well some lesser-known sites of murder that were no less ghastly.Exploring the past and present of more than twenty-five renowned homicide scenes, American Murder Houses is a tour through the real estate of some of the most grisly and fascinating crimes in American history.INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

    Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more.This is the true story of their search for—and identification of—the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide—and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.

    He has confronted, interviewed and researched dozens of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and James Earl Ray - for a landmark study to understand their motives. To get inside their minds. He is Special Agent John Douglas, the model for law enforcement legend Jack Crawford in Thomas Harris's thrillers Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and the man who ushered in a new age in behavorial science and criminal profiling. Recently retired after twenty-five years of service, John Douglas can finally tell his unique and compelling story.

    Holmes himself.There are many who claim Herman Mudgett (a.k.a. H. H. Holmes) was Jack the Ripper. While many of the facts support the theory, many do not. While no one can know the extent of Holmes crimes, his own words and those of contemporary reporters provide a unique view into the mind of the man who is probably the most prolific serial killer of all time. While Holmes admitted to 27 murders, the number is probably far higher. Holmes posted job opportunities for assistants in local papers and women who responded to these advertisements were never heard from again. During the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 (frequently referred to as the Chicago World's Fair), a Holmes ran a hotel filled with secret rooms and traps made to murder his guests. Soundproof rooms allowed him to torture and kill both his guests and his lovers, sometimes for months on end. After his arrest, H.H. Holmes wrote two confessions. In the first confession, he admits that he is a swindler but insists he is not a murderer. In the second, after his conviction, he admits to murdering 27 people. For the first time in the 21st century, both confessions are now available to readers everywhere.The confessions have been painstakingly transcribed for all to see the devious nature of this monster. It is unknown how many people Holmes killed in his murder hotel in Chicago. The detectives who searched the horror chambers were unable to get a true body count because Holmes had installed lime pits to dissolve the bodies. Some place the number of murders attributed to Holmes as high as 200. The book now includes another book written shortly after the trial and execution of Holmes: Holmes, the Arch Fiend Or: A Carnival of Crime; The Life, Trial, Confession and Execution of H. H. Holmes. This book provides a narrative that is not covered in the other texts, including possible conversations between Holmes and his victims. A fourth book has been added to this series: The Holmes Castle. This contemporary account, written in 1895 prior to Holmes execution, describes more of the atrocities of Holmes and provides new names of people who simply disappeared after contacting Holmes.

    The community was outraged: How could a woman commit such an act of violence? Firsthand accounts describe the victim, John Hossack, as a cruel and unstable man. Perhaps Margaret Hossack was acting out of fear. Or perhaps the story she told was true—that an intruder broke into the house, killed her husband while she slept soundly beside him, and was still on the loose. Newspapers across the country carried the story, and community sentiment was divided over her guilt. At trial, Margaret was convicted of murder, but later was released on appeal. Ultimately, neither her innocence nor her guilt was ever proved. Patricia Bryan and Thomas Wolf examine the harsh realities of farm life at the turn of the century and look at the plight of women—legally, socially, and politically—during that period. What also emerges is the story of early feminist Susan Glaspell, who covered the Hossack case as a young reporter and later used it as the basis for her acclaimed work A Jury of Her Peers.Midnight Assassin expertly renders the American character and experience: our obsession with crime, how justice is achieved, and the powerful influence of the media.

    On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects.The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era's most baffling murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus. Reenactments of the murder were staged in Times Square, armed reporters lurked in the streets of Hell's Kitchen in pursuit of suspects, and an unlikely trio — a hard-luck cop, a cub reporter, and an eccentric professor — all raced to solve the crime.What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial: an unprecedented capital case hinging on circumstantial evidence around a victim whom the police couldn't identify with certainty, and who the defense claimed wasn't even dead. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale — a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that have dominated media to this day.

    This information has been kept in topsecret government files since the 1940s. His audiences hear the truth unfold as he writes about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the war on drugs, the secret government, and UFOs.Bill is a lucid, rational, and powerful speaker whose intent is to inform and to empower his audience. Standing room only is normal. His presentation and information transcend partisan affiliations as he clearly addresses issues in a way that has a striking impact on listeners of all backgrounds and interests. He has spoken to many groups throughout the United States and has appeared regularly on many radio talk shows and on television.In 1988 Bill decided to "talk" due to events then taking place worldwide, events that he had seen plans for back in the early 1970s. Bill correctly predicted the lowering of the Iron Curtain, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the invasion of Panama. All Bill's predictions were on record well before the events occurred. Bill is not a psychic. His information comes from top secret documents that he read while with the Intelligence Briefing Team and from over seventeen years of research.

    Immediately, strange and lurid rumors began circulating the neighborhood about what had happened. Some said she ran off with an egg seller; others supposed it was an aristocratic foxhunter who had taken young Bridget away. Swirling amid rumors was the barely whispered, but widely held, belief that Bridget had gone with no mortal man; rather, she had gone off with the fairies. The mystery deepened when seven days later her body was discovered, bent, broken and badly burned in a shallow grave. Within a few days, the unimaginable truth came to light: for almost a week before her death Bridget had been confined, ritually starved, threatened, physically and verbally abused, exorcised, and, finally, burned to death by her husband, Michael Cleary, her father, and extended family who confused bronchitis with a "fairy dart." They had all become convinced that "their Bridgie" had been taken from them and her fairy-possessed body left behind to deceive them. In The Cooper's Wife Is Missing, Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates make sense of this ancient, rarely publicized, ritual exorcism and explain how the incident went on to become a national and international incident. Set against a backdrop of renewed Irish nationalism, a Church crackdown on lingering pagan practices and the ongoing British humiliation of Catholic Ireland, the authors deftly map the dislocating anxieties that beset the rural peasantry in late nineteenth-century Ireland. Bewildered and frightened by the changes occurring all around them, pulled in all directions by their politicians, priests, landlords and English overlords, the Clearys were not alone in retreating to the relative comfort of pagan ritual. Drawing on first-hand accounts, contemporary newspaper reports, police records, trial testimony and a rich wealth of folklore, the authors weave a mesmerizing tale that touches upon magic, madness and mystery as it details, day by day, Bridget's ordeal and the resulting investigation. This is narrative history at its evocative best. It fascinates as it illuminates.

    Norse mythology is rich in adventure and ideas about creation, death, and the afterlife. And from Wagnerian operas to Lord of the Rings to Marvel's Avengers, it has had an immense influence across Western culture. Norse Myths takes a wide-ranging approach to the topic, examining the creation stories of the Norse world, the monsters and the pantheons of the deities including such figures as Thor, Freyr and Loki. It looks at the sagas that tell of real and imagined people, featuring both heroic tales and humorous escapades. The book also examines how Norse myths were interpreted in a Christianized Europe and how their motifs influenced medieval German writers and, in turn, were used in the modern world in very different ways, by the likes of Richard Wagner, Adolf Hitler and J.R.R. Tolkien. Illustrated with 180 color and black & white photographs, artworks and maps, Norse Myths is an exciting, engaging, and highly informative exploration of a fascinating and highly influential world, and will appeal to anyone interested in folklore and history. REVIEWS: "This magnificent book is more or less an encyclopedia. Beautifully illustrated." - Books Monthly UK

    From Dallas nightclub reporter Tony Zoppi, who found himself carrying the president's casket; Secret Service agent Clint Hill beating his hands in despair on the trunk of the limousine as he watches Kennedy die; Howard Brennan, a construction worker on a lunch break watching a man take aim on the motorcade with a rifle; reporter Hugh Aynesworth with only an electricity bill on which to write notes for the scoop of his career; DJ John Peel a few feet from Oswald as he's questioned by the press; to Robert Kennedy sitting in the dark in the back of an empty army truck, waiting for his brother's body to arrive. 'The Assassination of JFK: Minute by Minute' is pure chronological narrative, giving a blow by blow account of the terrible events as they unfolded.

    Within two years he's a multimillionaire. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers," writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand new Pontiacs for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt's bosses at the U.S. Attorney's office hired her right out of law school, assuming she'd pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It's a decision with deadly consequences: With Remus behind bars, Dodge and Imogene begin an affair and plot to ruin him, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government--and that can only end in murder.

    Yet they must be caught because the one unifying characteristic all serial killers share is their inability to feel remorse for their actions, and consequently their need to keep on killing...Some profilers believe that serial killers don't learn from their mistakes. This book explores the greed-factor that sets in and explains how killers come to think that the more they kill and get away with it, the easier it will become.

    We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell." Having proved himself peerless in the arena of reinterpreting superheroes, Alan Moore turned his ever-incisive eye to the squalid, enigmatic world of Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders of 1888. Weighing in at 576 pages, From Hell is certainly the most epic of Moore's works and remarkably and is possibly his finest effort yet in a career punctuated by such glorious highlights as Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Going beyond the myriad existing theories, which range from the sublime to the ridiculous, Moore presents an ingenious take on the slaughter. His Ripper's brutal activities are the epicentre of a conspiracy involving the very heart of the British Establishment, including the Freemasons and The Royal Family. A popular claim, which is transformed through Moore's exquisite and thoroughly gripping vision, of the Ripper crimes being the womb from which the 20th century, so enmeshed in the celebrity culture of violence, received its shocking, visceral birth. Bolstered by meticulous research that encompasses a wide spectrum of Ripper studies and myths and coupled with his ability to evoke sympathies in such monstrous characters, Moore has created perhaps the finest examination of the Ripper legacy, observing far beyond society's obsessive need to expose Evil's visage. Ultimately, as Moore observes, Jack's identity and his actions are inconsequential to the manner in which society embraced the Fear: "It's about us. It's about our minds and how they dance. Jack mirrors our hysterias. Faceless, he is the receptacle for each new social panic." Eddie Campbell's stunning black and white artwork, replete with a scratchy, dirty sheen, is perfectly matched to the often-unshakeable intensity of Moore's writing. Between them, each murder is rendered in horrifying detail, providing the book's most unnerving scenes, made more so in uncomfortable, yet lyrical moments as when the villain embraces an eviscerated corpse, craving understanding; pleading that they "are wed in legend, inextricable within eternity". Though technically a comic, the term hardly begins to describe From Hell's inimitable grandeur and finesse, as it takes the medium to fresh heights of ingenuity and craftsmanship. Moore and Campbell's autopsy on the emaciated corpse of the Ripper myth has divulged a deeply disturbing yet undeniably captivating masterpiece. —Danny Graydon

    Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. - John Moe