Betrayal in Blood


Michael Benson - 2006
      “Mommy . . . won’t be with us anymore.”   That’s what attorney Kevin C. Bryant, forty-five, told his two young sons in the spring of 2003. At the time, blond, pretty, twenty-six-year-old Tabatha Bryant was alive and well in an upscale suburb of Rochester, New York. But that was about to change—because Bryant knew his wife was cheating, and he intended to end the affair by ending her life. On June 14, 2003, he called 9-1-1 to report Tabatha slain by an unknown intruder who’d shot her in the eye with a .22 and repeatedly stabbed her in the neck and upper body. Soon, a drug bust led to Cassidy Green’s confession that she’d driven the getaway car. She fingered boyfriend Cyril Winebrenner as the killer.   Winebrenner and Kevin Bryant were buddies who’d regularly gone on cocaine-fueled sex binges with hookers. Astoundingly, Winebrenner was also the victim’s half-brother—but Bryant’s offer of $5,000 had convinced him that money is thicker than blood.   In a trial that shook “Country Club Row,” prosecutors would present evidence and testimonies that revealed even more sordid details, bringing the lawyer who tried to get away with murder to justice. Betrayal in Blood reveals the full story, from the author of numerous true crime accounts including Escape from Dannemora: Richard Matt, David Sweat, and the Great Adirondack Manhunt.

Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: The Uncensored Story of the JonBenet Murder and the Grand Jury's Search for the Truth


Lawrence Schiller - 1999
    A brilliant portrait of an inscrutable family thrust under the spotlight of public suspicion and an affluent, tranquil city torn apart by a crime it couldn't handle, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town uncovers the mysteries that have bewildered the nation.Why were the Ramseys, the targets of the investigation, able to control the direction of the police inquiry?Can the key to the murder be found in the pen and writing pad used for the ransom note?Was it possible for an intruder to have killed JonBenét?

An Hour To Kill: A True Story of Love, Murder, and Justice in a Small Southern Town


Dale Hudson - 1999
    Family friend. All-American boy. Murderer. Ken Register, much to the shock of the small town of Conway, South Carolina, was all of these things. Clean-cut, polite to a fault, and respectful of elders, Ken was the kind of guy parents wanted their daughters to date. But only months after a seventeen-year-old girl's brutal murder, the residents of Conway were in for another suprise: that the killer was one of their own.A stunned community.Crystal Todd and Ken were "best friends," and had even briefly dated. When Crystal's hideously gutted body was found near the woods of Conway, Ken checked in every day to console Crystal's mother and inquire about the murder investigation.A shocking killer.Ken was practically the last person anyone would suspect. Until he started acting nervous and suspicious, afraid he would be "framed" for Crystal's murder. And until DNA tests confirmed that he was indeed the man who repeatedly raped and stabbed Crystal Todd, then left her mutilated body in a ditch.Discover, through fascinating first-person accounts, the tortured Southern son who committed murder; the courageous detective determined to break the case; the broken mother who lost her only child; and the disbelieving parents who, to this day, defend their son's innocence.

Pretty Boy


Roy Shaw - 1999
    He has cult status and commands a respect that few, even in the violent world he moves in, can equal. To him, violence is simply an accepted part of his profession. He doesn't exaggerate it, he can't excuse it and he refuses to apologize for it. His name may mean nothing to you—he's no actor, no showman, no wannabe celebrity. He does, however, live by a merciless code, and though he may not have cloven hooves and a tail, if he goes after someone, all hell comes with him.

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple


Jeff Guinn - 2017
    His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.

The Onion Field


Joseph Wambaugh - 1973
    This is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one March night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field.

Zodiac


Robert Graysmith - 1986
    A sexual sadist who taunted police with anonymous notes. A madman who was never apprehended. This is the first, complete account of Zodiac's reign of terror. Is he still out there?

Love, Lies, And Murder: They Were the Perfect Couple... Then He Killed Her


Gary C. King - 2007
    Through his wife Janet, Perry won a position in his father-in-law's firm and joined the city's social elite. The couple raised two children in a mansion that Janet, a talented artist, designed. They seemed to have the good life and more...A Husband's Betrayal...But in 1996, when Janet vanished, police dug into Perry's past, turning up strange stories of sexual obsession, unfaithfulness, and vicious arguments with Janet. When they suspected that one of those fights ended in murder, Perry skipped town with his children. A Father's Vow For Justice  Janet's father would not let Perry escape so easily. He and his agents pursued the murder suspect to Chicago, and then to Mexico, where Perry opened a new practice and remarried. Still, ten years would pass before the desperate fugitive became trapped in his own web of deceit and betrayal. Includes 16 Pages Of Revealing Photos!

I'd Kill For You


M. William Phelps - 2015
    Her father, a renowned DNA researcher, lived in a farmhouse outside Leesburg, Virginia, where in December 2001, he was fatally stabbed by what seemed to be a ninja-style sword. Police arrested Kyle Hulbert, a troubled teen--and aspiring vampire. Kyle was Clara's friend, one of a circle obsessed with role-playing games.Drawing on exclusive interviews with the killer, bestselling author M. William Phelps reveals a frightening subculture, the tragic collision of two young people's dark worlds, and its deadly consequences.Includes 16 Pages Of Dramatic Photos

Mom Said Kill


Burl Barer - 2008
    The shocking true story of Barbara Opel, a woman who convinced a group of teenagers, including her 13-year-old daughter, to savagely kill her boss.

Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer


Stephen G. Michaud - 1989
    A unique, horrifying self-portrait of one of the most savage sex killers in history.This updated edition contains a new foreword by Robert Keppel, president of the Institute for Forensics.

Every Breath You Take: A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder


Ann Rule - 2000
    Although happily ensconced in a loving second marriage, and a new family of quadruplets, Sheila never truly escaped the vicious enslavement of her ex-husband, multi-millionaire Allen Blackthorne, a handsome charmer— and a violent, controlling sociopath who subjected Sheila to unthinkable abuse in their marriage, and terrorized her for a decade after their divorce. When Sheila was slain in her home, in the presence of her four toddlers, authorities raced to link the crime to Blackthorne, the man who vowed to monitor Sheila's every move in his obsessive quest for power and revenge.

Shannon: Betrayed from Birth


Rose Martin - 2009
    The 999 call made by her mother, Karen, alerted the police to the nine-year-old's disappearance and sparked a massive search across the north of England. The story dominated newspaper headlines and television news for the weeks that followed and there was even an offer of a GBP 50,000 reward for the person who found Shannon. Twenty-four days later, Shannon was found, concealed in the base of a divan bed in a flat about a mile away from her home in West Yorkshire. The truth that unfolded over the subsequent weeks horrified the public, who had sympathized with the seemingly stricken mother and even helped in the search for Shannon. It transpired that the abduction of the innocent girl had been a wicked plan dreamed up by her own mother in league with an accomplice, her stepfather's uncle, Michael Donovan. Donovan lured Shannon into his car with the promise of a trip to the fair. For almost three weeks, she was kept hidden in his home and given temazepam and travel sickness tablets to subdue her. While Shannon suffered, her captors came up with a plan to release her in Dewsbury Market, and for Donovan to find her and claim the reward money. Shannon was finally discovered when neighbors told police that they had heard a child's footsteps coming from Donovan's flat.

Disturbed Ground


Carla Norton - 1994
    Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house on F street in Sacramento, taking in the city's homeless. But when corpses were dug up in her garden, it became clear the "kind-hearted" landlady was, in fact, a psychotic killer.Carla Norton is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller PERFECT VICTIM, which the FBI put on their Behavioral Sciences Unit reading list. She served as the special sections editor for the San Jose Mercury News and has written for numerous publications. She has an MFA from Goddard College and has twice served as a judge for the Edgar Awards. THE EDGE OF NORMAL, which won a Royal Palm Literary Award, is her highly anticipated debut novel to be released in September 2013. She lives in California and Florida."Brilliant... A classic!" --Ann Rule“Stunning... Disturbed Ground reads as smoothly as the most seamless blockbuster novel … Bravo!” --Jeffrey Deaver

Blood and Money


Thomas Thompson - 1976
    To that mix, add glamorous personalities, prominent Texas businessmen, gangland reprobates, and a whole parade of medical experts. At once a documentary account of events and a novelistic reconstruction of encounters among the cast of colorful characters, this anatomy of murder first chronicles the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death in 1969 of Joan Robinson--the pampered daughter of a Texas oil millionaire and the wife of plastic surgeon Dr. John Hill--then examines the bizarre consequences that followed it. For in 1972, having been charged by his father-in-law with Joan's death and having survived a mistrial, John Hill himself was killed, supposedly by a robber. So was the robber, by a cop, supposedly for resisting arrest. From the exclusive haunts of Houston's super-rich to the city's seamy underworld of prostitutes, pimps, and punks, author and investigative journalist Thomas Thompson tracks down all the leads and clues. And in a brutal tale of blood and money he uncovers some shocking and bitter truths.