Book picks similar to
The Jaidyn Leskie Murder by Michael Gleeson


true-crime
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Murder on Easey Street: Melbourne’s Most Notorious Cold Case


Helen Thomas - 2019
    Two young women are brutally murdered. The killer has never been found. What happened in the house on Easey Street?On a warm night in January, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett were savagely murdered in their house on Easey Street, Collingwood – stabbed multiple times while Suzanne’s sixteen-month-old baby slept in his cot. Although police established a list of more than 100 ‘persons of interest’, the case became one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in Melbourne.Journalist Helen Thomas was a cub reporter at The Age when the murders were committed and saw how deeply they affected the city. Now, forty-two years on, she has re-examined the cold case – chasing down new leads and talking to members of the Armstrong and Bartlett families, the women’s neighbours on Easey Street, detectives and journalists. What emerges is a portrait of a crime rife with ambiguities and contradictions, which took place at a fascinating time in the city’s history – when the countercultural bohemia of Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip brushed up against the grit of the underworld in one of Melbourne’s most notorious suburbs.Why has the Easey Street murderer never been found, despite the million-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest? Did the women know their killer, or were their deaths due to a random, frenzied attack? Could the murderer have killed again? This gripping account addresses these questions and more as it sheds new light on one of Australia’s most disturbing and compelling criminal mysteries.‘An overdue examination of the Easey Street murders that adds tantalising new information to known and forgotten facts.’ Andrew Rule, journalist and co-author of UnderbellyHelen Thomas has been a journalist for more than forty years. In 2005, Thomas spent months researching the Easey Street murders for Radio National’s Background Briefing, shedding new light on the investigation. She is the manager of ABC News Radio and author of five books, including Moods: The Peter Moody Saga (2016).

Hospital Beat - A Police Officer's stories from inside a busy British hospital


Jonathan Nicholas - 2011
    Until now! PC Jonathan Nicholas, a serving police officer, has worked an inner-city hospital beat for six years. He has decided to reveal some of the incidents he has dealt with and has collected them together in this book. Weird, shocking, moving, and often amusing, these incidents are a fictional tale based on real incidents and real people. Using information drawn from personal recollection, his police notebook, prosecution files, and anecdotes from staff, patients, and offenders, it is a collection of stories that have never been told before. The book reveals all the behind-the-scenes enquiries and efforts undertaken by this particular hospital police officer, with the invaluable assistance of the hospital staff themselves, in order to ensure such places remain safe and relatively crime-free. Television dramas about hospitals are never like this! A work of adult crime fiction, Hospital Beat is a unique insight into modern policing inside a British hospital and will appeal to fans of humorous ‘I never knew that’ writing. Author Jonathan takes writing inspiration from Dirk Bogarde.

Inside 25 Cromwell St


Stephen West - 1995
    The two oldest surviving children of Fred and Rosemary West tell the terrifying story of life at 25 Cromwell Street.How does a serial killer stay concealed within a family for 23 years? What kind of family could allow this to happen? Here Stephen and Mae West tell a compelling story of family life tested to destruction.Their unpredictable world of brutality, sexual abuse and violence finally came apart with the most shattering series of discoveries any child could be asked to face.As body after body was removed from 25 Cromwell Street, Stephen and Mae West were forced to confront the truth about their family including, for Mae, the unbearable knowledge that she might easily have been the next victim.

Bad Blood: Freedom and Death in the White Mountains


Casey Sherman - 2009
    A spasm of violence that took only a few minutes to play out leaves a community divided and searching for answers. From the author of newly released Boston Strong: A City s Triumph Over Tragedy, about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Bad Blood is the riveting account of the long-standing feud between Franconia, New Hampshire, police officer Bruce McKay, 48, and Liko Kenney, 24. In May 2007, Kenney shot and killed Officer McKay, following a dramatic chase that began with a routine traffic stop. Kenney, cousin of ski legend Bode Miller, was then shot and killed by a shadowy passerby. Almost immediately, the tragic incident revealed deep tensions within this otherwise quiet community in the White Mountains with charges that Kenney was a hell-raiser and mentally unstable and counter-charges that Officer McKay was a rogue cop who dispensed justice as a way to settle personal scores. Striving to get at the truth of the story, the author uncovers a complicated mix of personalities and motivations. Local and statewide interests clash while regional and national media and even YouTube viewers supply ready stereotypes to fit their agendas. Amid larger questions of the meaning of individual freedom we are, ultimately, helpless witnesses to an inevitable clash of characters."

Young Blood: The Story of the Family Murders


Bob R. O'Brien - 2002
    After years of speculation and rumour, for the first time the real-life expose about this famous series of murders in Adelaide can be told by the man who solved the case. South Australia has an international reputation for being the home of some very strange murders. But during the 1970s this capital city was shocked when a series of young men, all fit and healthy, disappeared from its streets one by one. their bodies were found dumped in the countryside outside the city. All were mutilated and some were dismembered. A group of prominent SA judges and businessmen, believed to be gay, were suspected of being involved with the killings (they weren t). this group were dubbed the Family. the author he detective who investigated the murder of the most high profile of the victims (the son of the city s pre-eminent tV newsreaders) ventually arrested accountant Bevan Von Einem, who is still in gaol for his crimes.

Who Killed Epstein? Prince Andrew or Bill Clinton (War On Drugs Book 5)


Shaun Attwood - 2021
    

Vanished at Sea: The True Story of a Child TV Actor and Double Murder


Tina Dirmann - 2008
    A retired probation officer and a stay-at-home mom, they were looking forward to entering the next phase of their golden years. Their plan: To sell their home--a 55-foot, $435,000 yacht--and start a new life on land...and spend as much time with their grandchildren as possible. The Hawks were thrilled when a young man named Skylar Deleon wanted to buy the boat for himself, his wife, and their two kids. Little did Thomas and Jackie know that this unemployed, former childhood actor and dishonorably discharged Marine had another devious plan in mind: To lure the couple out to sea, force them to sign away their life savings, throw them overboard, and leave them

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.

Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: The Uncensored Story of the JonBenet Murder and the Grand Jury's Search for the Truth


Lawrence Schiller - 1999
    A brilliant portrait of an inscrutable family thrust under the spotlight of public suspicion and an affluent, tranquil city torn apart by a crime it couldn't handle, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town uncovers the mysteries that have bewildered the nation.Why were the Ramseys, the targets of the investigation, able to control the direction of the police inquiry?Can the key to the murder be found in the pen and writing pad used for the ransom note?Was it possible for an intruder to have killed JonBenét?

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.

A Child Called Hope: The true story of a foster mother's love (HarperTrue Life - A Short Read)


Mia Marconi - 2014
    The illegitimate child was her father, a lost soul who she idolised. Protecting him instilled in her an instinct to care for the vulnerable and, after a chance meeting with a chaotic foster family, she decided fostering was her vocation.In an incredible twist of fate, the first baby she fostered was born to an unmarried Italian girl. Then came Hope, so badly damaged by her teenage mother’s alcoholism she was in hospital for a year. Finally discharged and settled in Mia’s happy home, what happened next would make Mia question if she could carry on.www.harpertrue.co.uk

Perfect Stranger


Kay Schubach - 2012
    He sweeps her off her feet with promises the one thing her younger boyfriend won't give her – a baby. She takes the biggest risk of her life, leaving all certainties behind for love.All too quickly, the romance turns sour, and Simon goes from charming to controlling, from magnetic to threatening. By the time Kay uncovers his violent past, Simon has decided he will not let her go – and he's not a man to be argued with. Trapped in a terrifying relationship, isolated from friends and family, Kay must decided what she values most, and fight for it.

Prescription: Murder! Volume 1: Authentic Cases From The Files of Alan Hynd


Alan Hynd - 2014
    These stories, the first of three short collections, are unified by a single theme: they all involve physicians. And not for the autopsy, but as perpetrators or accused perpetrators. You may never see your family care giver again in the same light. Told in the characteristic wry, anecdotal reportorial style that made Alan Hynd famous in his day (two wartime best sellers in 1943, contributions to The Reader's Digest, Colliers, Coronet, The Saturday Evening Post, True, Liberty, The American Mercury and almost every true detective magazine in print) these tales will have you cringing one minute, laughing the next, and gasping in shock a moment later. Truly, no one could make up classics like these. Take for example, the murder ring of South Philadelphia in which a faith healer and two Lotharios helped restless wives rid themselves of abusive unwanted husbands...or the respected French war hero who was a pillar of the community by day but prowled brothels and music halls by night and was caught with a cadaver sealed within the walls of his home....or the traveling physician who married a farmer's ex-wife and had four step-sons, then three, then two, then...... And finally, as a bonus track, relax and savor the wickedly evil doings of "Sister Amy Archer" at the Archer convalescent home in Connecticut, where old folks checked out just a little too quickly for comfort. The events eventually became the basis of "Arsenic and Old Lace," the hit play and iconic movie. As the old adages go, you couldn't make this stuff up... and true crime is always farther out there than fiction. (With illustrations)

Tragedy in the North Woods: The Murders of James Hicks (True Crime)


Trudy Scee - 2009
      Jennie Cyr disappeared in 1977. Jerilyn Towers vanished in 1982. Lynn Willette never came home on a night in 1994. Each woman had a relationship with James Hicks, who in 2000 confessed to murdering them, dismembering their bodies and burying the remains alongside rural roads in Aroostook County. This is their story. Trudy Irene Scee follows Hicks from the North Woods to west Texas, detailing three decades of evasion, investigation and prosecution. She interviews police officers and victims’ families—and meets Hicks at the state prison in Thomaston, where he remains remorseless as he lives out his days behind bars. Thoroughly researched and carefully documented, Tragedy in the North Woods is the definitive history of one of Maine's most ruthless killers.   Includes photos!

Long Island’s Vanished Heiress: The Unsolved Alice Parsons Kidnapping (True Crime)


Steven Drielak - 2020
    The crime shocked the nation and was front-page news for several months. J. Edgar Hoover personally assigned his best FBI agents to the case, and within a short time, Parsons's husband and their live-in housekeeper, Anna Kupryanova, had become prime suspects. Botched ransom attempts, clashes between authorities and romantic intrigue kept the investigation mired in drama. The crime remained unsolved and has captivated Long Island audiences ever since. Former Suffolk County detective Steven C. Drielak reveals previously classified FBI documents and pieces together the mystery of the Alice Parsons kidnapping.