Book picks similar to
Righteous Carnage: The List Murders in Westfield by Timothy B. Benford
true-crime
non-fiction
crime
nonfiction
She Wanted It All
Kathryn Casey - 2005
in a second conspiracy to commit murder.
The Good Wife: The Shocking Betrayal and Brutal Murder of a Godly Woman in Texas
Clint Richmond - 2007
Evangelical Christians living in booming Austin, Texas, in the mid-1990s, they were respected leaders in their church and community. As Roger diligently worked his way up the high-tech corporate ladder, Penny kept a pristine home and coached similarly devout young women on how to be perfect wives. But on a windy March evening, this godly woman met the devil head-on. And when the police discovered her lifeless body—repeatedly bludgeoned with a lead pipe, then mutilated with a knife from her own spotless kitchen—they were shocked by the rage and savagery behind her slaying.The Good Wife is a startling true story of greed, hatred, betrayal, and an unimaginable murder—a tale of the dark decay that can be hidden behind a facade of saintliness when a marriage seemingly made in heaven descends into hell.
Bad Blood: A Family Murder in Marin County
Richard M. Levine - 1982
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.
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.
Murdered Innocents
Corey Mitchell - 2005
Describes how, in 1991, four teenage girls were brutally raped, murdered, and set on fire in a small yogurt shop, a shocking crime that rocked the town of Austin, Texas and resulted in false confessions and an unexpected twist.
To Die For: The Shocking True Story of Serial Killer Dana Sue Gray
Kathy Braidhill - 2000
Dropping thousands of dollars on a shopping binge or a luxurious day spa was nothing out of the ordinary for Dana-nor for many wealthy women. But Dana wasn't wealthy-she was an unemployed nurse. She was also a serial murderess, who preyed upon elderly women, violently killed them, then used their credit cards to embark on wild, post-murder spending sprees.Women serial killers are rare-there are only 36 documented cases-and those, like Dana Sue Gray, who murder so brutally that veteran police officers are shaken by the bloodiness of the crime scene, are even rarer. Now, in an exposé as shocking and fascinating as its subject matter, author Kathy Braidhill explores the stunning story of Dana Sue Gray, one of the most dangerous, deadly, and disturbed women in history.
No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine
Brooks Brown - 2002
It was the worst single act of murder at a school in U.S. history. Few people knew Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris better than Brooks Brown. Brown and Klebold were best friends in grade school, and years later, at Columbine, Brown was privy to some of Harris and Klebolds darkest fantasies and most troubling revelations After the shootings, Brown was even accused by the police of having been in on the massacre simply because he had been friends with the killers.Now, for the first time, Brown, with journalist Rob Merritt, gets to tell his full version of the story. He describes the warning signs that were missed or ignored, and the evidence that was kept hidden from the public after the murders. He takes on those who say that rock music or video games caused Klebold and Harris to kill their classmates and explores what it might have been that pushed these two young men, from supposedly stable families, to harbor such violent and apocalyptic dreams.Shocking as well as inspirational and insightful, No Easy Answers is an authentic wake-up call for all the psychologists, authorities, parents, and law enforcement personnel who have attempted to understand the murders at Columbine High School. As the title suggests, the book offers no easy answers, but instead presents the unvarnished facts about growing up as an alienated teenager in America today.Brooks Brown graduated from Columbine High School in 1999; this is his first book. Most recently, Brooks worked and consulted on Michael Moores latest documentary called Bowling for Columbine. He lives in Littleton, Colorado. Rob Merritt graduated from the University of Iowa School of Journalism in 1998 and currently works as a newspaper writer in Marshalltown, Iowa.
Property Of Folsom Wolf
Don Lasseter - 1995
Louis housewife who abandoned her family and became the sex-slave of ex-Folsom Prison convict Greg Marlow, known to his fellow inmates as "Folsom Wolf". Together, the pair went on a cross-country spree of sex, torture and murder that ended with their convictions and death sentences.
A Death in Belmont
Sebastian Junger - 2006
Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim's house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the Belmont murder, but the terror of the Strangler continues.On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvo—the man who would eventually confess in lurid detail to the Strangler's crimes—is also in Belmont, working as a carpenter at the Jungers' home. In this spare, powerful narrative, Sebastian Junger chronicles three lives that collide—and ultimately are destroyed—in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.
The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox
Nina Burleigh - 2011
The Fatal Gift of Beauty is award-winning author and journalist Nina Burleigh’s mesmerizing literary investigation of the murder, the controversial prosecution, the conviction and twenty-six-year sentence of Knox, the machinations of Italian justice, and the underground depravity and clash of cultures in one of central -Italy’s most beloved cities. When Perugia authorities concluded that the murder was part of a dark, twisted rite—a “sex game”—led by the American with an uncanny resemblance to Perugia’s Madonna, they unleashed a media frenzy from Rome to London to New York and Seattle. The story drew an international cult obsessed with “Foxy Knoxy,” a pretty honor student on a junior year abroad, who either woke up one morning into a nightmare of superstition and misogyny—the dark side of Italy—or participated in something unspeakable. The investigation begins in the old stone cottage overlooking bucolic olive groves where Kercher’s body was found in her locked bedroom. It winds through the shadowy, arched alleys of Perugia, a city of art that is also a magnet for tens of thousands of students who frequent its bars, clubs, and drug bazaar on the steps of the Duomo. It climaxes in an up-close account of Italy’s dysfunctional legal system, as the trial slowly unfolds at the town’s Tribunale, and the prosecution’s thunderous final appeal to God before the quivering girl defendant resembles a scene from the Inquisition. To reveal what actually happened on that terrible night after Halloween, Nina Burleigh lived in Perugia, attended the trial, and corresponded with the incarcerated defendants. She also delved deeply into the history, secrets, and customs of Perugia, renowned equally for its Etruscan tunnels, early Christian art, medieval sorcerers, and pagan roots. The Fatal Gift of Beauty is a thoughtful, compelling examination of an enduring mystery, an ancient, storied place, and a disquieting facet of Italian culture: an obsession with female eroticism. It is also an acute window into the minds and personalities of the accused killers and of the conservative Italian magistrate striving to make sense of an inexplicable act of evil. But at its core is an indelible portrait of Amanda Knox, the strangely childlike, enigmatic beauty, whose photogenic face became the focal point of international speculation about the shadow side of youth and freedom.
Fear Came to Town: The Santa Claus, Georgia, Murders
Doug Crandell - 2009
The Christmas holiday spirit lives all year around. It?s also where Jerry Scott Heidler was raised. And where?in December 1997?he brutally slaughtered his former foster family in an act that devastated the town forever.
A Season of Darkness
Doug Jones - 2010
But it would take more than thirty years before the case finally came to its shocking, unexpected, and long-awaited concusion.
Eye of the Beholder
Lowell Cauffiel - 1994
A detailed exploration into the murder of TV anchorwoman Diane Newton King in 1991 describes how her husband was convicted of the crime a year later only after playing mind games with the police and leading them on several wild goose chases.
Black Widow: A Beautiful Woman, Two Lovers, Two Murders
Marion Collins - 2007
But Glenn died in agony - his body racked with spasms, his mind plunged into delirium. And by the time he was found dead, Glen's wife was more than ready for his funeral.Julia Lynn Turner, a former sheriff's assistant and 911 operator, had a thing for men in uniform - and for their money. While detectives and forensic examiners ruled Glenn's death the result of a virulent flu, time would tell another story. Lynn was already secretly living with Randy Thompson, a firefighter, who would meet the same excruciating death.Driven by family who would not give up their quest for justice, a new investigation and an explosive trial eventually exposed the truth about a woman who had a way of making men die, and about a means of murder that was pure intoxicating evil.