But fewer know that Olathe achieved notoriety again in 1982, when a member of Olathe's growing Evangelical Christian population, a gentle man named David Harmon, was bludgeoned to death while sleeping—the force of the blows crushing his face beyond recognition. Suspicion quickly fell on David's wife, Melinda, and his best friend, Mark, student body president of the local bible college. However, the long arms of the church defended the two and no charges were pressed. The case was declared as dead as David Harmon. Two decades later, two Olathe police officers revived the cold case making startling revelations that reopened old wounds and chasms within the Olathe community—revelations that rocked not only Olathe, but also the two well-healed towns in which Melinda and Mark resided. David's former wife and friend were now living separate, successful, law-abiding lives. Melinda lived in suburban Ohio, a devoted wife and mother of two. Mark had become a Harvard MBA, a high-paid corporate mover, a family man, and a respected community member in a wealthy suburb of New York City. Some twenty years after the brutal murder, each received the dreaded knock of justice at the door.A Cold-Blooded Business provides fascinating character studies of Melinda and Mark, killers who seemingly returned to normalcy after one blood-splattered night of violence. A fast-moving true crime narrative, A Cold-Blooded Business is a chilling exploration into the darkest depths of the human psyche.

    An unsettling look at the Sconce family from the acclaimed true crime author of Deadly Lessons.   For sixty years, families in Southern California trusted the Sconce Family Funeral Home with their loved ones’ remains. That trust was betrayed in an extraordinary, horrifying fashion, as it was discovered that the family, seeing an opportunity, had been stealing gold fillings and harvesting the organs of the newly deceased, hiding the evidence by burning the bodies in their crematorium.   When the shocking acts came to light, a trial brought every gruesome detail to the forefront, and Ken Englade has—with even-handed, clear-eyed reporting—chronicled every chilling detail.

    Julie Miller was a successful executive who, through a newspaper ad, met who she thought was "Mr. Right." Little did she know that he had a violent past and a predisposition for bizarre sexual rituals. This tragic, true-crime tale will shock its horrified readers.

    With a single, violent slash, he severed her windpipe and left her for dead. Miraculously, she survived and would lead authorities to the arrest of 35-year-old Tommy Lynn Sells, a former truck driver, carnival worker, and cross-country drifter...He Aspired To Become "The Worst Serial Killer Of All Time."With no apparent motive and no common pattern to his inconceivable bloodshed, the elusive Sells had carved his way across the country for two decades slaughtering women, men, transients, entire families, teenagers, and even infants with ghoulish abandon.Through The Window is more than an investigation into a crime spree that stunned a nation. It's an utterly terrifying plunge into the unfathomable dark mind of a serial killer, and the heart-wrenching story of the brave child who finally brought him to justice.

    When Raffield's cover became suspect, word spread through a small circle of friends that the young officer would pay with his life. No one stopped it. On a rainy fall evening in 1987, Raffield was lured to an isolated field. Three bullets were fired-one unloaded into his skull. The baby-faced killer, Greg Knighten, stole eighteen dollars from Raffield's wallet, divided it among his two young accomplices, and calmly said, "it's done."With chilling detail, Carlton Stowers illuminates a dark corner of America's heartland and the children who hide there. What he found was an alienated subculture of drug abuse, the occult, and an unfathomable teenage rage that exploded at point blank range on a shocking night of lost innocence...

    When a search yielded nothing, and all physical evidence had seemingly disappeared, authorities had little to go on—except a disturbing phone call five weeks later from Göran’s daughter Maria. She was sure that her sister, Sara, was somehow involved. At the heart of the alleged crime: Sara’s greed, her father’s land holdings, and his bitter feud with Sara’s idler boyfriend. With no body, there was no crime—and the case went as cold and dark as the forests of southern Sweden. But not for Therese Tang. For two years, this case was her obsession.A hard-working ex-model, mother of three, and Missing People investigator, Therese was willing to put her own safety at risk in order to uncover the truth. What she found was a nest of depraved secrets, lies, and betrayal. All she had to do now, in her relentless and dangerous pursuit of justice, was prove that it led to murder.

    One was memorialized in Truman Capote’s classic novel, In Cold Blood. The other was all but forgotten. Dick Hickock and Perry Smith confessed to the first: the November 15, 1959 murder of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas. Despite remarkable coincidences between the two crimes, they denied committing the second: the December 19 murder of a family of four in Osprey, Florida. Over half a century later, a determined Florida detective undertakes exceptional efforts to try to bring closure to the long-cold case.

    Two years later, police found a boy abandoned outside a variety store in New Jersey. The FBI tracked down Dora Fronczak, the kidnapped infant’s mother, and she identified the abandoned boy as her son. The family spent the next fifty years believing they were whole again—but Paul was always unsure about his true identity. Then, four years ago—spurred on by the birth of his first child, Emma Faith—Paul took a DNA test. The test revealed that he was definitely not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul has been on a tireless mission to find the man whose life he’s been living—and to discover who abandoned him, and why. Poignant and inspiring, The Foundling is a story about a child lost and a faith found, about the permanence of families and the bloodlines that define you, and about the emotional toll of both losing your identity and rediscovering who you truly are.

    When she opened it, an FBI agent informed her that her father had been arrested for murdering ten people, including two children. It was then that she learned her father was the notorious serial killer known as BTK, a name he’d given himself that described the horrific way he committed his crimes: bind, torture, kill. As news of his capture spread, Wichita celebrated the end of a thirty-one-year nightmare. For Kerri Rawson, another was just beginning. She was plunged into a black hole of horror and disbelief. The same man who had been a loving father, a devoted husband, church president, Boy Scout leader, and a public servant had been using their family as a cover for his heinous crimes since before she was born. Everything she had believed about her life had been a lie.Written with candor and extraordinary courage, A Serial Killer’s Daughter is an unflinching exploration of life with one of America’s most infamous killers and an astonishing tale of personal and spiritual transformation. For all who suffer from unhealed wounds or the crippling effects of violence, betrayal, and anger, Kerri Rawson’s story offers the hope of reclaiming sanity in the midst of madness, rebuilding a life in the shadow of death, and learning to forgive the unforgivable.

    Two drifters offered to help her out. One was an escaped convict, the other had just been released from prison. Within minutes they had abducted Suzanne who they then subjected to a night of rape and terror before brutally murdering her in Arizona's Superstition Mountains. This is an account of murder, told from all sides, such as you've never read before.

    The autopsy report ruled peritonitis was the cause, but the startling photos of the boy suggested murder.How could the Jurgens kill a small child and get away with it? Determined to find answers, detectives Ron Meehan and Greg Kindle tracked down old witnesses and rebuilt the case brick by brick until they exposed the demons that drove an adopted parent to torture and eventually murder a helpless child. Just as compelling, they investigated why so many people watched and did absolutely nothing. A vivid portrait of an all-American town that harbored a killer, A Death in White Bear Lake is also the absorbing story of two detectives who refused to give up until they had the killer cold.

      “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.

    Half an hour later, the girls returned alone, claiming that Pauline's mother had had an accident. But when Honora Parker was found in a pool of blood with the brick used to bludgeon her to death close at hand, Juliet and Pauline were quickly arrested, and later confessed to the killing. Their motive? A plan to escape to the United States to become writers, and Honora's determination to keep them apart. Their incredible story made shocking headlines around the world and would provide the subject for Peter Jackson's Academy Award-nominated film, Heavenly Creatures.A sensational trial followed, with speculations about the nature of the girls' relationship and possible insanity playing a key role. Among other things, Parker and Hulme were suspected of lesbianism, which was widely considered to be a mental illness at the time. This mesmerizing book offers a brilliant account of the crime and ensuing trial and shares dramatic revelations about the fates of the young women after their release from prison. With penetrating insight, this thorough analysis applies modern psychology to analyze the shocking murder that remains one of the most interesting cases of all time.

    Both sought to redefine themselves beneath the stars. By the time they made it to the snowy Cascade Range of British Columbia—the trail’s end—Aspen and Justin were in love.Embarking on a new pilgrimage the next summer, they returned to those same mossy mountains where they’d met, and they married. They built a world together, three years of a happy marriage. Until a cold November morning, when, after kissing Aspen goodbye, Justin left to attend the funeral of a close friend.He never came back. As days became weeks, her husband’s inexplicable absence left Aspen unmoored. Shock, grief, fear, and anger battled for control—but nothing prepared her for the disarming truth. A revelation that would lead Aspen to reassess not only her own life but that of the disappeared as well.The result is a brave and inspiring memoir of secrets kept and unearthed, of a vanishing that became a gift: a woman’s empowering reclamation of unmitigated purpose in the surreal wake of mystifying loss.

    On Mother’s Day, 1985, the bodies of Kathryn Eastburn and her two young daughters were found in their Fayetteville, North Carolina, home. Katie, an air force captain’s wife, had been raped and stabbed to death. Kara and Erin’s throats had been slit. Their toddler sister, Jana, was the only survivor of a bloody killing spree that terrified a community still reeling from the conviction, six years prior, of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald for the savage slayings of his pregnant wife and two daughters.   The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department soon focused its investigation on US Army soldier Tim Hennis. Detectives and local prosecutors built their case on circumstantial evidence and a jury convicted Hennis and sentenced him to death. But his defense team refused to give up. Piece by piece, they discredited the state’s case, exposing false testimony, concealed evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct. At a second trial, Hennis was found not guilty and released from death row.   But an even more stunning turn of events was yet to come. Twenty-five years after the murders, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation tested a crucial piece of DNA evidence from the crime scene. The shocking results led to an unprecedented third trial to determine Tim Hennis’s guilt or innocence.   From the initial discovery of the horrifying scene at 367 Summer Hill Road to the controversial change of jurisdiction that allowed Hennis to be prosecuted for an astonishing third time, author Scott Whisnant chronicles every development in this intricate, disturbing, and still-evolving case. Has the mystery of who killed Katie, Kara, and Erin Eastburn been solved beyond a reasonable doubt? Read Innocent Victims and decide for yourself.