Book picks similar to
Buried Secrets: A True Story of Drug Running, Black Magic, and Human Sacrifice by Edward Humes
true-crime
crime
non-fiction
nonfiction
On the Farm
Stevie Cameron - 2010
You need On the Farm.Covering the case of one of North America's most prolific serial killer gave Stevie Cameron access not only to the story as it unfolded over many years in two British Columbia courthouses, but also to information unknown to the police - and not in the transcripts of their interviews with Pickton - such as from Pickton's long-time best friend, Lisa Yelds, and from several women who survived terrifying encounters with him. You will now learn what was behind law enforcement's refusal to believe that a serial killer was at work.Stevie Cameron first began following the story of missing women in 1998, when the odd newspaper piece appeared chronicling the disappearances of drug-addicted sex trade workers from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside. It was February 2002 before Robert William Pickton was arrested, and 2008 before he was found guilty, on six counts of second-degree murder. These counts were appealed and in 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its conclusion. The guilty verdict was upheld, and finally this unprecedented tale of true crime can be told.From the Hardcover edition.
Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders
Terry Sullivan - 1983
He would be the final victim of John Wayne Gacy's horrifying compulsion. Then, ten days after the boy's disappearance. Detectives, finding a human bone in the crawl space of Gacy's house, dug into the lime-covered ground. With mounting horror, they pulled bone after bone from Gacy's suburban home until finally they had gathered the remains of twenty-eight more youths who had fallen prey to the killer clown.
16 Pages of Shocking Photos! "An unnerving true story of murder, terror and justice." –The Dallas Morning News
Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History
Peter Houlahan - 2019
Norco ’80 tells the story of how five heavily-armed young men—led by an apocalyptic born-again Christian—attempted a bank robbery that turned into one of the most violent criminal events in U.S. history, forever changing the face of American law enforcement. Part action thriller and part courtroom drama, Norco ’80 transports the reader back to the Southern California of the 1970s, an era of predatory evangelical gurus, doomsday predictions, megachurches, and soaring crime rates, with the threat of nuclear obliteration looming over it all. A group of landscapers transforms into a murderous gang of bank robbers armed to the teeth with military-grade weapons. Their desperate getaway turned the surrounding towns into war zones. When it was over, three were dead and close to twenty wounded; a police helicopter was forced down from the sky, and thirty-two police vehicles were destroyed by thousands of rounds of ammo. The resulting trials shook the community to the core, raising many issues that continue to plague society today: from racism and the epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder within law enforcement to religious extremism and the militarization of local police forces.
Killing for Company: The Case of Dennis Nilsen
Brian Masters - 1985
Within days he had confessed to fifteen gruesome murders over a period of four years. His victims, all young homosexual men, had never been reported missing. Brian Masters, with Nilsen's full cooperation, has produced a unique study of a serial killer's mind, revealing the disturbing psychology of a mass murderer.
Victim: The Other Side of Murder
Gary Kinder - 1981
During an armed robbery, several hostages were brutally tortured, shot in the head, and left for dead. Victim focuses on the members of one family -- including a mother who died after the attack and a son who was left barely alive -- as they fought for his survival and struggled to rebuild their lives. Victim was the first book to go beyond the headlines and statistics about violent crime, to tell the victims' dramatic story of love, loss and courage. It remains one of the most influential books in the victims' rights movement and has become required reading in criminology courses across the country. It may be more relevant now than ever. "Victim is Truman Capote's In Cold Blood turned inside out." -- Newsweek; "Just as Capote did, Kinder has somehow created a story that is truer than true." -- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Big Book of Serial Killers
Jack Rosewood - 2017
These hunters search not for animals, but for the touch, taste, and empowerment of human flesh. They are cannibals, vampires and monsters, and they walk among us. These serial killers are not mythical beasts with horns and shaggy hair. They are people living among society, going about their day to day activities until nightfall. They are the Dennis Rader’s, the fathers, husbands, church going members of the community. This A-Z encyclopedia of 150 serial killers is the ideal reference book. Included are the most famous true crime serial killers, like Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and Richard Ramirez, and not to mention the women who kill, such as Aileen Wuornos and Martha Rendell. There are also lesser known serial killers, covering many countries around the world, so the range is broad. Each of the serial killer files includes information on when and how they killed the victims, the background of each killer, or the suspects in some cases such as the Zodiac killer, their trials and punishments. For some there are chilling quotes by the killers themselves. The Big Book of Serial Killers is an easy to follow collection of information on the world’s most heinous murderers.
A Checklist for Murder: The True Story of Robert John Peernock
Anthony Flacco - 1995
Robert Peernock appeared to have the ideal life. Working as a pyrotechnics engineer and computer expert and coming home to his wife and daughter, Peernock projected the American dream. Even when he and his wife separated, it seemed amicable, just a small bump for the well-to-do family. But there was madness in his house: in private, Peernock was violent, subtly manipulative, and bordering on psychotic. But the horrifying details of his home life would only come to light after Peernock finally lost all control. Peernock had come home, brutally beat both his wife and daughter, force fed them alcohol, and deliberately sent them to their death behind the wheel, staging it to look like a drunk driving accident. He didn’t foresee that his daughter would survive, and even with years of abuse, her attempted murder, and horrendous injuries, he never anticipated that she would speak so powerfully against him. Throughout his trial, Peernock claimed a massive government conspiracy against him. He hired and fired lawyers multiple times, deadlocking juries and spinning a web of lies. New York Times bestselling author Anthony Flacco chronicles the sensational trial and all the terror that preceded it, looking deep into the mind of a deranged killer whose American dream was a waking nightmare for those trapped within it.
Reel to Real: The Video Store Murders
Joyce Nance - 2014
But in March 1996, the robbery of a Hollywood Video store went horribly wrong, ending in a hail of gunfire and the worst mass murder in the history of Albuquerque, New Mexico. This book is based on the true story of three ex-cons who met through the New Mexico Community Corrections early release program. One was obsessed with movies and guns, another was hopelessly in love, and the third double-crossed them both. Initially, all hoped for a new and better life, but in this modern tragedy, the ex-cons' self-destructive impulses ultimately led to their doom and that of their innocent victims. An entire city was left to mourn.
The Interrogator: An Education
Glenn L. Carle - 2011
Carle was a wholesome, stereotypical New England Yankee, a former athlete struggling against incipient middle age, someone always with his nose in an abstruse book. But for two decades Carle broke laws, stole, and lied on a daily basis about nearly everything. "I was almost never who I said I was, or did what I claimed to be doing." He was a CIA spy. He thrived in an environment of duplicity and ambiguity, flourishing in the gray areas of policy.The Interrogator is the story of Carle's most serious assignment, when he was "surged" to become an interrogator in the U.S. Global War on Terror to interrogate a top level detainee at one of the CIA's notorious black sites overseas. It tells of his encounter with one of the most senior al-Qa'ida detainees the U.S. captured after 9/11, a "ghost detainee" who, the CIA believed, might hold the key to finding Osama bin Ladin.As Carle's interrogation sessions progressed though, he began to seriously doubt the operation. Was this man, kidnapped in the Middle East, really the senior al-Qa'ida official the CIA believed he was? Headquarters viewed Carle's misgivings as naive troublemaking. Carle found himself isolated, progressively at odds with his institution and his orders. He struggled over how far to push the interrogation, wrestling with whether his actions constituted torture, and with what defined his real duty to his country. Then, in a dramatic twist, headquarters spirited the detainee and Carle to the CIA's harshest interrogation facility, a place of darkness and fear, which even CIA officers only dared mention in whispers.A haunting tale of sadness, confusion, and determination, The Interrogator is a shocking and intimate look at the world of espionage. It leads the reader through the underworld of the Global War on Terror, asking us to consider the professional and personal challenges faced by an intelligence officer during a time of war, and the unimaginable ways in which war alters our institutions and American society.
Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder
Piu Marie Eatwell - 2017
A housewife out for a walk with her baby notices a cloud of black flies buzzing ominously in Leimert Park. An "unsightly object" is identified as the mutilated body of Elizabeth Short, an aspiring starlet from Massachusetts who had been lured west by the siren call of Hollywood. Her killer would never be found, but Short’s death would bring her the fame she had always sought. Her murder investigation transformed into a real-life film noir, featuring corrupt cops, femmes fatales, gun-slinging gangsters, and hungry reporters, replete with an irresistible, legendary moniker adapted from a recent film—The Black Dahlia.For over half a century this crime has maintained an almost mythic place in American lore as one of our most inscrutable cold cases. With the recently unredacted FBI file, newly released sections of the LAPD file, and exclusive interviews with the suspect’s family, relentless legal sleuth Piu Eatwell has gained unprecedented access to evidence and persuasively identified the culprit. Black Dahlia, Red Rose layers these findings into a gritty, cinematic retelling of the haunting tale.As Eatwell chronicles, among the first to arrive at the grisly crime scene was Aggie Underwood, the "tough-as-nails" city editor for the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express; meanwhile, the chain-smoking city editor for the Los Angeles Examiner, Jimmy Richardson, sent out his own reporters. Eatwell reveals how, through a cutthroat race to break news and sell papers, the public image of Elizabeth Short was distorted from a violated beauty to a "man crazy delinquent." As rumors of various boyfriends circulated, the true story of the complex young woman ricocheting between jobs, lovers, and homes was lost. Instead, kitschy headlines tapped into a wider social anxiety about the city’s "girl problem," and Short’s black chiffon and smoldering gaze become a warning for "loose" women coming of age in postwar America.Applying her own background as a lawyer to the surprising new evidence, Eatwell ultimately exposes many startling clues to the case that have never surfaced in public. From the discovery of Elizabeth’s notebook, inscribed with the name of the city’s most notorious and corrupt businessman, to a valid suspect plucked from the hundreds of "confessing Sams" by a brilliant, well-meaning doctor, Eatwell compellingly captures every "big break" in the police investigation to reveal a truly viable resolution to the case. In rich, atmospheric prose, Eatwell separates fact from fantasy to expose the truth behind the sinewy networks of a noir-tinged Hollywood. Black Dahlia, Red Rose at long last accords the Elizabeth Short case its due resolution, providing a reliable and enduring account of one of the most notorious unsolved murders in American history.
American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century
Maureen Callahan - 2019
John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history. The FBI considered his behavior unprecedented. Described by a prosecutor as "a force of pure evil," Keyes was a predator who struck all over the United States. He buried "kill kits"--cash, weapons, and body-disposal tools--in remote locations across the country. Over the course of fourteen years, Keyes would fly to a city, rent a car, and drive thousands of miles in order to use his kits. He would break into a stranger's house, abduct his victims in broad daylight, and kill and dispose of them in mere hours. And then he would return home to Alaska, resuming life as a quiet, reliable construction worker devoted to his only daughter.When journalist Maureen Callahan first heard about Israel Keyes in 2012, she was captivated by how a killer of this magnitude could go undetected by law enforcement for over a decade. And so began a project that consumed her for the next several years--uncovering the true story behind how the FBI ultimately caught Israel Keyes, and trying to understand what it means for a killer like Keyes to exist. A killer who left a path of monstrous, randomly committed crimes in his wake--many of which remain unsolved to this day.American Predator is the ambitious culmination of years of interviews with key figures in law enforcement and in Keyes's life, and research uncovered from classified FBI files. Callahan takes us on a journey into the chilling, nightmarish mind of a relentless killer, and to the limitations of traditional law enforcement.
The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul
Eleanor Herman - 2018
For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family’s spoons, tried on their underpants and tested their chamber pots.Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions. Women wore makeup made with mercury and lead. Men rubbed turds on their bald spots. Physicians prescribed mercury enemas, arsenic skin cream, drinks of lead filings, and potions of human fat and skull, fresh from the executioner. The most gorgeous palaces were little better than filthy latrines. Gazing at gorgeous portraits of centuries past, we don’t see what lies beneath the royal robes and the stench of unwashed bodies; the lice feasting on private parts; and worms nesting in the intestines.In The Royal Art of Poison, Eleanor Herman combines her unique access to royal archives with cutting-edge forensic discoveries to tell the true story of Europe’s glittering palaces: one of medical bafflement, poisonous cosmetics, ever-present excrement, festering natural illness, and, sometimes, murder.
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.
On Chapel Sands: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child
Laura Cumming - 2019
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.
Murder in the Midlands: Larry Gene Bell and the 28 Days of Terror that Shook South Carolina
Rita Y. Shuler - 2007
Shuler leads us through the twenty-eight days of terror and shocking events of one of the most notorious double murders and manhunts in South Carolina history. Shuler shares her own personal interactions with some of the key players in this famous manhunt and investigation. Also included are Bell’s chilling calls from area phone booths to the Smith family, along with his disconcerting interviews and bizarre actions in the courtroom, which show the dark, evil and criminal mind of this horrific killer. This case has been featured on the Discovery Channel’s FBI Files, episode “Cat and Mouse,” and in the CBS movie Nightmare in Columbia County, which can still be seen on Lifetime TV. It currently runs as the episode “Last Will” on Court TV’s Forensic Files.