Book picks similar to
Justice is Served by Robert K. Ressler


true-crime
non-fiction
true-crime-forensics
crime-true-crime

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.

The Serial Killer's Apprentice: And 12 Other True Stories of Cleveland's Most Intriguing Unsolved Crimes


James Renner - 2008
    He cares about these victims . . . When it comes to true crime, this is the kind of writer we need." -- Crime Shadow NewsAn investigative journalist cracks open 13 of Northeast Ohio's most intriguing unsolved crimes and attempts to crack open dark secrets that have baffled Clevelanders for years, including:- Murder--Beverly Jarosz, just 16 years old, felt a dark foreboding in the months before she was stabbed to death in her quiet Garfield Heights home in December 1964.- Stolen Identity--Joseph Newton Chandler of Eastlake was not who he claimed to be. Some think he was the Zodiac killer; others say he was D.B. Cooper, or even Jim Morrison.- Suicide or murder?--Joseph Kupchik hid gambling problems from friends and family until he was found at the bottom of a nine-story parking deck in downtown Cleveland--with multiple stab wounds.- Heist--In 1969, Lakewood bank employee Ted Conrad nabbed $215,000 from the vault one day after his twentieth birthday. The FBI still shows up at his high school reunions.- Controversy--Jeffrey Krotine was thrice tried for the grisly 2003 murder of his wife and ultimately acquitted, to the frustration of Cuyahoga County prosecutors, detectives, and even jurors.These stories venture into dark alleys and seedy strip clubs, as well as comfortable suburbs and cozy small towns, where some of the region's most horrendous crimes have occurred. Renner's unblinking eye for detail and unwavering search for the truth make this book a gripping read.

Remembering Anita Cobby: The Case, the Husband, the Aftermath – 30 Years On


Mark Morri - 2016
    Five men were caught and, amid unprecedented scenes, jailed for life. For young reporter Mark Morri, the case was a baptism of fire. Told to 'find the husband', he despaired: Cobby had changed his name and disappeared. But the Daily Mirror found him, and Morri's interviews sent newspaper sales soaring. For nearly thirty years, Morri and Cobby kept in touch. In this book, John finally opens up, recounting how he and Anita fell in love, travelled the world, suffered the pain of her miscarriage, and how he still believes today that they are soulmates. He also explains why they were apart at the time of the murder. Weaving in chilling material from the autopsy police files, and interviews with the detectives who hunted down the killers, Mark Morri explores the ripple effects of the murder that still shocks a nation.

Taken from Home


Eric Francis - 2006
    But seven months later, investigators found Jennifer’s remains in a Mesa County landfill, and things took a darker turn… Jennifer had been shot in the head, investigators discovered, and Abby was nowhere to be found.  While Michael, a respected prayer-group leader, played the part of grieving survivor, authorities became increasingly suspicious. There was blood evidence in the back of the family’s van. Was Blagg a cold-blooded killer? A religious fanatic? This is the terrifying true story of what happened when Jennifer and Abby Blagg were…

Nice Girl: The story of Keli Lane and her missing baby Tegan


Rachael Jane Chin - 2011
    Keli Lane, Australian water polo champion and elite private school teacher had it all -- a privileged social life on Sydney's Northern Beaches, a tightly knit circle of friends and a rugby hero for a boyfriend -- until her hidden double life was exposed. In secret, Keli carried three babies to term, giving birth on her own each time. Incredibly, her family, friends, colleagues -- even her boyfriend -- had no idea. Two babies were adopted but one, Tegan, disappeared without a trace. In December 2010, Keli Lane was found guilty of murder. In this probing, investigative work, journalist Rachel Chin sifts through Keli's background and the compelling drama that unfolded daily in the coronial inquest and criminal trial for answers to this baffling case. Who is Tegan's father? Why did Keli keep her pregnancies and births secret -- and how could her family and friends not know?Nice Girl explores all these questions and more, revealing a dark and bizarre story of secrets and lies.

Darker than Night: The True Story of a Brutal Double Homicide and an 18-Year-Long Quest for Justice


Tom Henderson - 2006
    When they did not return, their families and police suspected foul play. For 18 years, no one could prove a thing. Then, a relentless investigator got a witness to talk, and a horrifying story emerged.For nearly two decades, their killers went freeIn 2003, this bizarre case hit the glare of the criminal justice system, as prosecutors charged two brothers, Raymond and Donald Duvall, with murder. With no bodies ever found, the case hinged on the testimony of one terrified witness who saw a bloody scene unfold—and who was still nearly too frightened to talk.Then a witness told her chilling storyNow, the truth behind an 18-year-old mystery is revealed against the backdrop of an unusual, electrifyingly dramatic trial. Raymond and Donald Duvall bragged to friends that they killed their victims, chopped up their bodies and fed them to pigs. A Michigan jury soon had evidence of this brutally methodical execution—evidence that would lead a shocked courtroom through the heart of evil and beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Gone, Just Gone: Thirteen Baffling Disappearances


Harry M. Bobonich - 2015
    We bring you some cases you may have heard of, but others that will be new to you. A Pennsylvania DA goes for a drive and doesn’t return, years later he’s found to have passed on the early prosecution of some involved in the Penn State molestation scandal. Two young lovers in the 1970’s head off for an iconic rock festival and are never seen again—their classmates still wonder. The man behind the most important civil rights case before the landmark Brown decision steps into a cold rainy Chicago night and vanishes. A beautiful, but troubled, young Indian doctor goes missing in New York City on 9/11—or was it the night before? One of the richest and most unscrupulous men in the world falls out a small plane filled with his associates--or at least that was their story. Only one cadet in the history of West Point has gone missing and never been found—where in the world did Richard Cox go? As a bonus, you’ll read of people who went missing only to eventually turn up in the most unusual places.

No Lights, No Sirens: The Corruption and Redemption of an Inner City Cop


Robert Cea - 2005
    Rob Cea starts off as an idealistic young cop, a true believer in the system for which he works tirelessly. He is sadly mistaken. The system he tried so hard to appease ultimately led to his downfall and the ruination of his life.What separates this from other cop–and–robber stories is the brutal authenticity from the cop himself. We will see and hear exactly what is discussed in a patrol car. We will see how the law was栮d is汯utinely bent to make collars stick any way possible. And we will see how Cea slowly spirals to depths of hell.No Lights, No Sirens is simplistic in its scope: A young idealistic boy becomes a man through fire, and then becomes exactly what he has been chasing for so long, a hardened man possessed by demons. With rapid fire and gritty narrative, Cea writes about his fall to the depths, and his salvation. We see the dark side of detective work in New York's most crime–riddled neighbourhoods from a first–hand view never before seen.

A City Owned


O.J. Modjeska - 2018
     Police begin to suspect that their target is a rogue operator who has emerged from their own ranks. And then, all hell breaks loose in Los Angeles… An arrest in the strangling murders of two co-eds across state lines finally leads to a break in the case, but the mild-mannered suspect remembers nothing about the crime of which he is accused. His attorney and a team of psychiatrists are convinced this is no lust murderer, but a mentally ill man tormented by an evil alter personality, the terrifyingly malevolent sexual sadist “Steve”. But what if Steve is the final triumphant act in a psychopath’s lifelong career in deception? None are prepared for the dark journey through the mazes of the human mind it will take to unlock the door to justice. From the author of the aviation disaster ebook bestseller “Gone: Catastrophe in Paradise”, “A City Owned” is the first installment of the two-part series “Murder by Increments”, the true story of the worst case of serial sex homicide in American history.

The Mind of a Madman: Norway's Struggle to Understand Anders Breivik


Richard Orange - 2012
    When he was arrested, he claimed to act on behalf of the Knights Templar, a militant network sworn to protect Europe from Islam. But Norwegian police could find no evidence such a group existed. Was Breivik a genuine terrorist, driven by far-right ideology, or a deluded madman? Over the next year, this question would draw in police specialists, lawyers, psychiatrists, and experts in the far-right, culminating in a trial that ceased to be simply about guilt or innocence. Instead, the court would confront a more troubling question: how could such brutal acts become possible for a young man brought up in some of the most privileged parts of Oslo? In "Mind of a Madman", journalist Richard Orange draws on his own court reporting, three court psychiatric reports, police interviews, and transcripts from the trial to give the most complete account yet of a shocked society's attempt to understand the killer.

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.

Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod, and the Trial of Chris McCowen


Peter Manso - 2011
    A former Vassar girl and scion of a prominent local family, Christa had abandoned a glamorous career as a fashion writer for a simpler life on the Cape, where she had an affair with a married fisherman and had his child. After her murder, evidence pointed toward several local men who had known her. Yet in 2005, investigators arrested Christopher McCowen, a thirty-four-year-old African-American garbage collector with an IQ of 76. The local headlines screamed, “Black Trash Hauler Ruins Beautiful White Family” and “Black Murderer Apprehended in Fashion Writer Slaying,” while the sole evidence against McCowen was a DNA match showing that he’d had sex with Worthington prior to her murder. There were no fingerprints, no witnesses, and although the state medical examiner acknowledged there was no evidence of rape, the defendant was convicted after a five-week trial replete with conflicting testimony, accusations of crime scene contamination, and police misconduct—and was condemned to three lifetime sentences in prison with no parole. Rarely has a homicide trial been refracted so clearly through the prism of those who engineered it, and in Reasonable Doubt, bestselling author and biographer Peter Manso is determined to rectify what has become one of the most grossly unjust verdicts in modern trial history. In his riveting new book he bares the anatomy of a horrific murder—as well as the political corruption and racism that appear to be endemic in one of America’s most privileged playgrounds, Cape Cod. Exhaustively researched and vividly accessible, Reasonable Doubt is a no-holds-barred account of not only Christa Worthington’s murder but also of a botched investigation and a trial that was rife with bias. Manso dug deep into the case, and the results were explosive. The Cape DA indicted the author, threatening him with fifty years in prison. The trial and conviction of Christopher McCowen for rape and murder should worry American citizens, and should prompt us to truly examine the lip service we pay to the presumption of innocence . . . and to reasonable doubt. With this explosive and challenging book Manso does just that.

Gangster: The biography of international drug trafficker John Gilligan


John Mooney - 2001
    The book is an extraordinarily account of how a young Dubliner became a multi-millionaire criminal. It uses first-hand interviews with Gilligan, his thugs, friends, family, enemies, anti-drugs activists, members of the IRA and the police. It tells of violence, kidnapping, shootings, criminal espionage, drug dealing and how criminal gangs vied for power to control the Irish trade in drugs. Shocking, fascinating and frightening, 'Gangster' also tells the story behind the murder of Veronica Guerin, the crime reporter. Fully updated and revised with new photographs.

Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders


Jerry Allen Potter - 1995
    This "devastating rebuttal to Fatal Vision" (Boston Phoenix) demonstrates that the jury was not privy to crucial evidence in the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret Captain convicted of the murders of his wife and two young daughters.

Killing for Pleasure: The Definitive Story of the Snowtown Serial Murders


Debi Marshall - 2006
    Two bodies buried in a suburban backyard. A further two found in the bush. Such was the findings of one of South Australia's most horrific murder trials.Informed by material never seen before - an interview with Bunting's last lover Elizabeth Harvey, and with the Crown's key eye-witness James Vlassakis and with details of the torture and crimes not previously released - this is a tensely woven and microscopic examination of tawdry lives and tragic deaths.Four men who tortured and killed for fun, for power. Four men who kept each other's dark secrets for years. By the time the police investigation concluded, the story had invited comparison with the nightmare of Rosemary and Fred West, the British House of Horrors. Details of what the killers did to their victims before and after their deaths were deemed so depraved that suppression orders were in place throughout the trial. But the killers were not insane. They made deliberate choices to kill and lived in a culture of complete anarchy, sadistic violence, deviance and chaos.Journalist and author Debi Marshall explores the killers' psychopathic makeup in minute and harrowing detail. She charts the victims' exposure to generational paedophilia, incest, unemployment and hopelessness. Marshall covers the exhaustive trials and interviews the lawyers who ran them. Through interviews, she captures the voices of the victim's families and examines the police and forensic investigation and then wades into the social structure that spawned the people in this story.This book was used as a primary source for the acclaimed Australian feature film, Snowtown.