Eleven-year-old Amy Burridge rides with her eighteen-year-old sister, Becky, to the grocery store. When they finish their shopping, Becky’s car gets a flat tire. Two men politely offer them a ride home. But they were anything but Good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes at the hands of these men before being thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived. The other did not. Years later, author and journalist Ron Franscell—who lived in Casper at the time of the crime, and was a friend to Amy and Becky—can’t forget Wyoming’s most shocking story of abduction, rape, and murder. Neither could Becky, the surviving sister. The two men who violated her and Amy were sentenced to life in prison, but the demons of her past kept haunting Becky…until she met her fate years later at the same bridge where she’d lost her sister.

    To his last moment he proclaimed his innocence of the arson that claimed the lives of his children. While much has been written of the trial, conviction and execution of Willingham, Inferno is the first exploration of the possible causes of the fire that cost three children, and eventually, Willingham himself, their lives. Instead of him saving her, Amber would save her daddy. She would save him by awakening him with her screams and pleas, by telling him of the fire, by taking his place in bed, by breathing in the smoke that would have filled his lungs instead of hers.The fire, however, would not be denied. Disguised first as justice and then as a needle, it would consume her father just as surely as it had Amber and her infant sisters.While much has been written of the trial, conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, the discussion has been limited to whether or not the fire that killed his children was caused by arson. This is the first book to investigate other possible causes of the fire that claimed initially three, and eventually four lives.

    Thousands of volunteers, every available police officer, and scores of FBI officers descended upon the town to hunt for the girl. Her picture was everywhere--anyone who watched the local TV news then remembers the photograph of the girl with the sideways ponytail dangling from one side of her smiling face. That image also became indelible in the mind of an eleven-year-old boy almost fifty miles away. James Renner never forgot Amy. Even at that young age, he vowed to find her. Tragically, Amy Mihaljevic was found dead a few months later. Her killer, however, was never found. The case remains unsolved. That cold case never left the mind of the impressionable young boy, who grew up and became a reporter for an alternative weekly magazine in Cleveland. Fifteen years after Amy's body was found, Renner picked up the leads himself and began trying to solve the crime. Filled with myste

    Their killers were the Olives’ 16-year-old daughter and her 20-year-old lover.This is the story of that shocking murder and the appalling events that led up to it. It is the story of the middle-class dream turned into a nightmare, of parents and children living in mutually alien and hostile worlds, and of a youth culture for which promiscuous sex and every kind of drug are no longer enough.It is a story that cuts to the bone of American life – and strikes inescapably close to home. 

    In two years, this ring of card savants earned more than three million dollars. Filled with tense action and incredibly close calls, this is a real-life adventure that could have stepped straight out of a Hollywood film.

    Sam Sheppard murder case (The New York Times Book Review).“My God . . . I think they’ve killed Marilyn!”    At 5:40 a.m. on July 4, 1954, the mayor of Bay Village, a small suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, received a frantic phone call from his neighbor Dr. Sam Sheppard. The news was too terrible to comprehend: Marilyn, Sam’s lovely wife, was dead, her face and torso beaten beyond recognition by an unknown assailant who had knocked Sam unconscious and escaped just before dawn. In the adjacent bedroom, Chip, the Sheppards’ seven-year-old son, had slept through the entire ordeal.   Almost immediately, the police began to suspect Sam Sheppard. The local press rushed to cast judgment on the handsome, prosperous doctor. After a misguided investigation, Sheppard was arrested and charged with murder. Sentenced to life in prison, he served for nearly a decade before he was acquitted in a retrial. Until his death, he maintained his innocence.   Culled from DNA evidence, testimony that was never heard in court, prison diaries, and interviews with the Sheppard family and other key players, The Wrong Man makes a convincing case for Sheppard’s innocence and reveals the identity of the real killer.   This ebook contains ten photographs not included in previous editions.

    It was the lead they'd been desperate for in a multi-state manhunt for an elusive serial killer. Where the witness took them was to the last man anyone would have suspected.Richard Marc Evonitz was beloved by friends and family. He was handsome, intelligent, and compassionate. Serving a spotless eight years in the U.S. Navy, he was a town hero who lived in harmony in an exclusive South Carolina neighborhood. The only ones who saw Evonitz's dark side were his victims. They were helpless teenage girls who, one by one, were subjected to his twisted sexual fantasies of kidnap, rape, and murder—until his double life came undone by the brave cunning of his last young victim. But as authorities and the media descended upon him, Evonitz had one more shocking surprise in store for everyone—a stunning final act of violence and reckoning that would turn a bright sunlit morning blood red.

    At the end of the nineteenth century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher, known and feared as "The Killer of Little Shepherds," terrorized the French countryside. He eluded authorities for years--until he ran up against prosecutor Emile Fourquet and Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, the era's most renowned criminologist. The two men--intelligent and bold--typified the Belle Epoque, a period of immense scientific achievement and fascination with science's promise to reveal the secrets of the human condition. With high drama and stunning detail, Douglas Starr revisits Vacher's infamous crime wave, interweaving the story of how Lacassagne and his colleagues were developing forensic science as we know it. We see one of the earliest uses of criminal profiling, as Fourquet painstakingly collects eyewitness accounts and constructs a map of Vacher's crimes. We follow the tense and exciting events leading to the murderer's arrest. And we witness the twists and turns of the trial, celebrated in its day. In an attempt to disprove Vacher's defense by reason of insanity, Fourquet recruits Lacassagne, who in the previous decades had revolutionized criminal science by refining the use of blood-spatter evidence, systematizing the autopsy, and doing groundbreaking research in psychology. Lacassagne's efforts lead to a gripping courtroom denouement. "The Killer of Little Shepherds" is an important contribution to the history of criminal justice, impressively researched and thrillingly told.

    There were no screams when she was taken, suggesting the culprit was someone familiar to her, and when she turned up again in a nearby village several days later, she was found in perfect health and happiness. No one was ever accused of a crime. The incident quickly faded from her memory, and her parents never discussed it. To the contrary, they deliberately hid it from her, and she did not learn of it for half a century. This was not the only secret her parents kept from her. For many years, while raising her in draconian isolation and protectiveness, they also hid the fact that she’d been adopted, and that shortly after the kidnapping, her name was changed from Grace to Betty. In Five Days Gone, Laura Cumming brilliantly unspools the tale of her mother’s life and unravels the multiple mysteries at its core. Using photographs from the time, historical documents, and works of art, Cumming investigates this case of stolen identity with the toolset of a detective and the unique intimacy of a daughter trying to understand her family’s past and its legacies. Compulsive, vivid, and profoundly touching, Five Days Gone is a masterful blend of memoir and history, an extraordinary personal narrative unlike any other.

    The nine stories that open the book show how fully formed Kinsey was from the beginning. The thirteen stories in the second part, written in the decade following her mother's death, feature Kit Blue, a younger version of Grafton herself, and reflect her troubled family life and the author's journey from anger to understanding and forgiveness.Between the sheets --Long gone --Parker shotgun --Non sung smoke --Falling off the roof --Poison that leaves no trace --Full circle --Little missionary work --Lying game --Eye for an I : justice, morality, the nature of the hard-boiled private investigator, and all that existential stuff --Woman capable of anything --That's not an easy way to go --Lost people --Clue --Night visit, corridor A --April 24, 1960 --Closet --Maple Hill --Portable life --Quarrel --Jessie --Death review --Letter from my father

    Barri Flowers in this unparalleled collection of some of the top true-crime writers in the world.

    It's a book about a woman. Marcia Clark takes us inside her head and her heart. Her voice is raw, incisive, disarming, unmistakable. Her story is both sweeping and deeply personal. How did she do it, day after day? What was it like, orchestrating the most controversial case of her career in the face of the media's relentless klieg lights? How did she fight her personal battles - those of a working mother balancing a crushing workload and a painful, very public divorce? When did she know that her case was lost? Who stood by her, and who abandoned her? And how did she cope with the outcome? As Clark shares the secrets of her own life, we understand for the first time why she identified so strongly with Nicole, in a way no man ever could. No one is spared in this unflinching account - least of all Clark herself, who candidly admits what she wishes she'd done differently - and, for the first time, we understand why the outcome was inevitable.

    On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans was murdered by a band of masked men. The crime stunned and paralyzed France since Louis had often ruled in place of his brother King Charles, who had gone mad. As panic seized Paris, an investigation began. In charge was the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, the city's chief law enforcement officer -- and one of history's first detectives. As de Tignonville began to investigate, he realized that his hunt for the truth was much more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. A rich portrait of a distant world, Blood Royal is a gripping story of conspiracy, crime and an increasingly desperate hunt for the truth. And in Guillaume de Tignonville, we have an unforgettable detective for the ages, a classic gumshoe for a cobblestoned era.

    The twisted true story of murderous madman Hayward Bissell, who led a bloody rampage down an Alabama highway - with the mutilated body of his pregnant girlfriend at his side.

    The apparent weapons, an ax and butcher knife, are found nearby. A month later the husband and father, who was away on a business trip when the bodies were found, is accused of the killings. Police believe he methodically murdered his wife and children before he left. But why? A successful businessman and devoted member of a fundamentalist religious group, David Hendricks has the total support of his extended family. Police paint a darker picture, and prosecutors face the daunting task of convicting him on a case based on completely circumstantial evidence. A New York Times best-seller, this book has now been updated with additional content and photos. Readers often comment they must continually remind themselves that this story is real, that "Reasonable Doubt" is testament to the fact truth is stranger than fiction. The book has also been used in college-level criminal justice courses to explain and illustrate the legal concept of reasonable doubt.