Darkness Descending: The Murder of Meredith Kercher


Paul Russell - 2010
    On 4 December 2009, twenty-two-year-old American, Amanda Knox, and her twenty-five-year-old Italian former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty of murdering British student, Meredith Kercher, and were sentenced to twenty-six and twenty-five years in jail, respectively. Meredith was brutally stabbed to death in November 2007, in the apartment in Perugia that she shared with Amanda and two other girls. The details of the killing caught the world's attention with far-fetched rumour, and cold-hearted butchery, taking centre stage.The subject of intense speculation, 'Foxy Knoxy' was pilloried for her hard-partying, promiscuous lifestyle, while her well-dressed lover, Sollecito, collected knives, and was obsessed with violent comics. But that alone did not make them killers. Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, twenty-two, was found guilty of murder, and sexual assault, in a separate trial in October 2008, and sentenced to 30 years in jail. But evidence shows he could not have acted alone.In Darkness Descending TV producer, Paul Russell, and critically acclaimed crime writer, Graham Johnson, team up with leading Italian forensics expert, General Luciano Garofano, to reveal the full truth behind this sensational murder, and its trial. They skilfully unravel all the details, and study all the personalities, in this case that has stunned the world. Complex, and some say controversial, DNA evidence is explained in simple language and, bit by bit, a story emerges of brutality and jealousy in a university town where all was not what it seemed. Their findings make gripping reading.

Women Who Kill: A Chilling Casebook of True-Life Murders


Al Cimino - 2019
    But this disproportion can make their crimes seem all the more shocking. In this chilling casebook, Al Cimino explores 34 female murderers. We meet 'Angel of Death' Kristen Gilbert who induced multiple cardiac arrests among her patients while working as a hospital nurse, Enriqueta Mart�, the 'Vampire of Barcelona' who killed children to make cosmetics, and many more. These case studies give riveting insight into the lives and motives of women who decided to commit the ultimate transgression. In many of these cases, the women had suffered years of abuse and psychological breakdown before their eventual crimes. Other times their heinous acts seemed to spring from nowhere, with an unpredictability that is haunting. The gruesome details within these pages are not for the faint hearted.

Gang of One


Gary Mulgrew - 2012
    Initially known as the 'Enron guy', Mulgrew attempts to survive the prison gang culture and preserve his own sanity. Driven by his desire to return to his son in England, he is increasingly haunted by the heart-breaking disappearance of his daughter. Meanwhile the dangers around him grow ever closer.Told with wit and humanity, GANG OF ONE, reveals a man constantly confronted by the moral and physical challenges of prison life in America, where evryone is encouraged to turn their back and 'see nuthin'

Beyond Bad


Sandra Lee - 2002
    Cruel and evil, Katherine Knight showed no mercy when she butchered her lover in a crime that put her behind bars in an Australian prison for a record life sentence.Swinging from a meat-hook, John Price's entire skin was in one piece, including his hair, face, ears, nose, mouth, and genitals. Slashes and stab holes tore through the human pelt, a testimony to the wounds he suffered before dying.Knight, a 44-year-old abattoir worker, had stabbed father-of-three John Price 37 times, skinned his body, cooked his head, and served him up as a meal for his children. Drawing on first-hand accounts, Beyond Bad tells what motivated Knight to commit such a heinous act and how it rocked the small town where she lived. This is a horrifying story of love, lust, revenge, and murder that is all the more shocking because it really happened.©2002 Sandra Lee; (P)2003 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Murder In The Family


Jeremy Josephs - 1995
    On the night of 10 October 1987 Nicholas and Elizabeth Newall went out to dinner with their sons to celebrate her 48th birthday. It was the last time that the parents were seen alive. Sometime during that evening, they were bludgeoned to death at their home, their bodies removed, leaving only bloodstains behind. For six years Roderick Newall denied all responsibility for the murder - even after his dramatic arrest on the high seas by a Royal Navy frigate, followed by extradition from Gibraltar to stand trial on Jersey. But he could no longer live a lie, and took detectives to a beauty spot on the island where he had buried his parents with the help of his younger brother, Mark. What drove Roderick to murder his apparently loving parents? And why should Mark Newall have been prepared to put his loyalty to his brother above that to his parents, thus becoming an accomplice to murder? MURDER IN THE FAMILY is the gripping account of Jersey's most notorious and fascinating murder case: the hunt to track down and convict the Newall brothers is a thriller without parallel. Jeremy Josephs has had extensive co-operation from those close to the case and the Newall family in writing this enthralling book.

Money Tree


Gordon Ferris - 2014
    At its heart is the story of Anila Jhabvala, a destitute woman in a dying village in central India, and her struggle against the daily embrace of usury. Into her fraught existence blunder two westerners: Ted Saddler, a has-been American reporter living off the faded glory of a Pulitzer Prize, and Erin Wishart, a hard-bitten Scottish banker with a late-developing conscience. As the tension mounts, their three storylines interweave and fuse in a thundering and moving climax. In pointing up the gulf between rich and poor, and the misguided efforts of western institutions to meddle in developing countries, Gordon pays homage to Professor Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Peace and founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Meredith: Our Daughter's Murder, and the Heartbreaking Quest for the Truth


John Kercher - 2012
    Since then her murder, and the subsequent trial, have been a source of constant intrigue and media speculation all around the world, with the spotlight famously focusing on the accused, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.Now, Meredith's father, John, speaks out for the first time and tells the world about the beautiful daughter he and his family so tragically lost. This book is a celebration of Meredith's life. It is also a father's story of losing a beloved daughter, and the first account of the torment the family have suffered and their ongoing quest for justice.

Barrenjoey Road


Neil Mercer - 2021
    An idyllic beachside community. A series of abductions and rapes. So what happened to Trudie Adams?Back in the 1970s, Sydney's Northern Beaches felt like a slice of paradise to those lucky enough to live there. Bordered on one side by the glistening blue of the Pacific, and on the other by stunning rugged bushland, it was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone. No wonder the area was known as 'the Insular Peninsula'. So, when a popular local girl, 18-year-old Trudie Adams, disappeared one night while hitchhiking home from the surf club dance, her family, friends and community were devastated. It just seemed wrong that something so terrible could happen in a place so perfectly picturesque.But as police began to investigate, the dark underbelly of the peninsula was exposed. It was a place where surfers ran drugs home from Bali, teenagers hitchhiked everywhere due to a lack of public transport, predatory men prowled the streets, and countless young women were abducted and raped, crimes rarely reported or, if they were, rarely investigated.Inspired by the Walkley Award-shortlisted #1 podcast and acclaimed ABC TV series, and containing information never previously revealed, Barrenjoey Road is a compelling expose of why the disappearance of Trudie Adams was never solved. It takes us all the way to the top, from a criminal perpetrator with a lifelong record and links to organised crime who was never formally accused, to police corruption at the highest level.

Dismembered


Susan D. Mustafa - 2011
    I wanted to keep those legs."One by one, investigators found the women's bodies. Each one carefully posed. Each one brutally mutilated. An arm here. A leg there. A breast, nipples, a tattoo. The killer was cutting his victims to pieces. . ."At that point, I pretty much went for the head."For ten years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the killings went on. Women of slight stature were hunted down, bludgeoned and strangled. And what the killer did with their bodies in the privacy of his car, his home, his kitchen, and his shower was beyond anything police could imagine."I was pure evil."When investigators finally caught mild-mannered, Star Trek fan Sean Vincent Gillis, he couldn't wait to tell his story. In the presence of shocked veteran detectives, Sean told them every detail of his killings, everything he did with the bodies. . . And he smiled the whole time. . .Includes 16 pages of shocking photographs. Warning: Contains graphic details.

Tears of the Silenced


Misty Griffin - 2014
    Misty and her sister were kept as slaves on a mountain ranch and subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse, and extreme physical violence. Their step-father kept a loaded rifle by the door to make sure the young girls were too terrified to try to escape. No rescue would ever come since the few people who knew they existed did not care.When Misty reached her teens, her parents feared she and her sister would escape and took them to an Amish community. Devastated to again find herself in a world of fear, cruelty, and abuse, Misty was sexually assaulted by the bishop. As Misty recalls, "Amish sexual abusers are only shunned by the church for six weeks, a punishment that never seems to work... I knew I had to get help, and one freezing morning in early March, I made a dash for a tiny police station in rural Minnesota. After reporting the bishop, I left the Amish and found myself plummeted into a strange modern world with only a second-grade education and no ID or social security card."

The Murders of Christopher Watts


Cheryln Cadle - 2020
    Cheryln Cadle contacted him and started visiting him in prison. Christopher started writing her letters from his prison cell in Wisconsin. These letters had his confessions of things he had never told anyone else. Now she shares the letters and the truth about what happened that fateful night in Frederick Colorado to Shanann, Nico, Bella and Celeste Watts at the hands of their father. Was he just a monster or was it truly his girlfriend that he wanted to start a life with the reason he was willing to kill his family?

Sold in Secret: A mother’s desperate search to find the men who trafficked and killed her daughter


Karen Downes - 2018
    Because I would never, ever know peace again.' Charlene Downes was 14 when she went missing in Blackpool's seedy underbelly. Once a happy-go-lucky schoolgirl, she had become a truant - hanging out with the wrong crowd by the takeaway shops and pier. But Charlene's mum, Karen, always knew her typical teenage daughter would come home.Until one day she didn't.Karen has been searching for 15 years, campaigning for the truth of what happened to her daughter. To this day, Karen and her family have no body, no convictions and no answers. Arrests were made and a murder trial took place, but no one has ever been brought to justice.On the 15th anniversary of Charlene's disappearance, Karen shares this heartbreaking account of every parent's worst nightmare.

Lost Boys of Hannibal: Inside America's Largest Cave Search


John Wingate - 2017
    Three modern day Tom Sawyers, with no caving expertise but an abundance of bravado, made Hannibal ground zero for a terrifying calamity that would leave its traumatic mark for half a century. Joel Hoag, his brother Billy, and their friend Craig Dowell vanished after exploring a vast and complex maze cave system that had been exposed by highway construction. Fifty years later, their fate remains the ultimate unsolved mystery.

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery


Robert Kolker - 2013
    Lost Girls is a portrait of unsolved murders in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them.

The Cartel


Stephen Breen - 2017
    However, Christy Kinahan will never be fêted in the financial press. For his business - drugs, guns, money-laundering, murder - also makes him Ireland's leading criminal.While Kinahan kept a low profile as he grew his empire, by the time his crime cartel shot to public attention in 2010 it was known to European police forces for over a decade. In that year police raided members' homes and premises in Spain, Ireland the UK. By then Kinahan and his sons Daniel and Christopher Jr were already among the richest men in Europe, with an estimated joint worth of €750m.However, events in February 2016 made Kinahan a household name. A daring and deadly gun attack in a suburban Dublin hotel - an attack targeting Daniel Kinahan (who escaped) - stunned the public and exposed the depth of enmity between the Kinahans and the family and associates of the veteran Dublin criminal, Gerry Hutch. Despite an intense garda crack-down on the gangsters' activities, the body count continues to rise.The Cartel gives behind-the-scenes story of that initial Spanish-led raid on the Kinahans. The authors have had exclusive access to the wiretaps that tracked the cartel for two years and talked to key officers who investigated them. They expose the criminal clan's aims and actions - in members' own words - and reveal the surprising truths behind how they built their empire.And The Cartel brings the story bang up-to-date to explain the origins of and fall-out from the feud with the Hutches, one of the most violent and vicious Ireland has ever known - and one that could be the undoing of the Kinahans.The authors' combined depth of knowledge - Stephen Breen has been a crime correspondent for over 15 years and in addition to writing about crime for over a decade, Owen Conlon is a fluent Spanish speaker - has culminated in a detailed and gripping account of double-crossing, vengeance and murder.