Acker’s own life hung in the balance, but it was already too late for his college-age daughter, Tammy, savagely stabbed eleven times and pinned by a kitchen knife to her bedroom floor. Three men had breached Dr. Acker’s alarm and security systems and made off with the fortune he had stashed away over his lifetime.The killers—part of a three-man, two-woman gang of the sort not seen since the Barkers—stopped counting the moldy bills when they reached $1.9 million. The cash came in handy soon after when they were caught and needed to lure Kentucky’s most flamboyant lawyer, the celebrated and corrupt Lester Burns, into representing them. Full of colorful characters and desperate deeds, A Dark and Bloody Ground is a “first-rate” true crime chronicle from the author of Murder in Little Egypt (Kirkus Reviews).

    sexually tortured and murdered 33 boys. His friends and neighbors in his unassuming Illinois community never suspected a thing. Gacy was a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure, leading an outwardly normal life, but secretly brutalizing dozens of young men in a hidden lair, and concealing their bodies under the floorboards of his suburban home.Through extensive personal interviews with those who knew Gacy, veteran true-crime scribe Clifford L. Linedecker takes us on a shocking ride through Gacy's life, delving deep into the man's troubled past, recounting his appalling series of murders, and recreating the drama of his trial-- which resulted in his execution by lethal injection in 1994. Gruesome and horrifying, The Man Who Killed Boys reveals stark terror set amid the daily lives of an ordinary community.Documented with an 8-page photo archive

    Photographs would show him across the country: a slight, Midwestern man with a twisted little smile, a man who had lived for ten years in his own world of murder and depravity.Here is the grisly true story of Ed Gein, the killer whose fiendish fantasies inspired Alfred Hitchcock's “Psycho”—the mild-mannered farmhand bound to his domineering mother, driven into a series of gruesome and bizarre acts beyond all imagining. In chilling detail, Deviant explores the incredible career of one of the most twisted madmen in the annals of American crime—and how he turned a small Wisconsin farmhouse into his own private playground of ghoulishness and blood.From the Heartland of America comes a true story more horrifying than any movie or novel…Harold Schechter's acclaimed true-crime chronicle…DEVIANT

    Manson...It started with a college course assignment, then escalated into a dangerous obsession. Eighteen-year-old honor student Jason Moss wrote to men whose body counts had made criminal history: men named Dahmer, Manson, Ramirez, and Gacy.Dear Mr. Dahmer...Posing as their ideal victim, Jason seduced them with his words. One by one they wrote him back, showering him with their madness and violent fantasies. Then the game spun out of control. John Wayne Gacy revealed all to Jason -- and invited his pen pal to visit him in prison...Dear Mr. Gacy...It was an offer Jason couldn't turn down. Even if it made him...The book that has riveted the attention of the national media, this may be the most revealing look at serial killers ever recorded and the most illuminating study of the dark places of the human mind ever attempted.

    The criminals covered here all perpetrated crimes with a peculiar twist, among them Enriqueta Marti, who kidnapped children then boiled away their flesh and crushed their bones to make ingredients for her lucrative “magic potions;” and Randy Kraft—better known as the Scorecard Killer—who was a computer genius by day and a deranged psychopath by night with more than 150 victims to his name. From high-profile murders to long-forgotten slayings, these are the world’s most peculiar crimes.

    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.

    Horrific crimes, depraved witnesses and sordid accounts of FBI agents who gave their allegiance to the mob boss emerged from the muck as families of 19 murder victims endured the presentation of broken skulls and jaws along with photos from the morgue. At center stage was the defendant, who had been listed and protected by the FBI as a secret informant. He claimed the government had given him a free pass, but prosecutors fought to keep the trial away from questions of who made Bulger what he became and how. In an extraordinary measure of their outrage, the families of the victims cheered Bulger’s own attorneys as they savaged the government’s “cover-up” and the deals prosecutors had given to Bulger’s former associates to win testimony.In the first book to explore the trial in a larger context, WBUR investigative reporter David Boeri weaves his daily trial dispatches into the complete backstory of Bulger’s ruthless ascent to power, the men and the agency who made that possible, and the families of victims who were victimized again and again by the government’s protection of the killer. Boeri’s storytelling is informed by 26 years of national award-winning reporting on the Bulger case. He aggressively dug into FBI corruption and tracked the Bureau’s delayed, often inept search for the 16-year fugitive.Years before Bulger was arrested in Santa Monica, Bulger travelled to California to follow his own tips in search of Whitey and showed the lack of FBI effort and enterprise. His investigation of crimes aided and abetted by FBI agents took Boeri to old murder scenes of Bulger victims in Oklahoma, Florida and Massachusetts. He followed detectives in the difficult and painful search for the bones of Bulger victims long ago buried. He sought out the families to learn what they had endured and sought out Bulger’s criminal associates even tracked some down who were in the Witness Protection Program to chronicle Bulger the boss and Bulger the killer. In “Bulger On Trial,” Boeri brings the reader into the same close contact with Bulger’s corrupt FBI handler, the younger brother who made a parallel rise to political power, the families, the criminals and the saga that links them all.

    Police arrive on the doorstep of your house, 25 Cromwell Street, with a warrant to search the garden for the remains of your older sister you didn't know was dead. Bones are found and they are from more than one body. And so the nightmare begins. You are the daughter of Fred and Rose West.'Mae, I mean this ... I'm not a good person and I let all you children down ...' Rose West, HM PRISON DURHAMIt has taken over 20 years for Mae West to find the perspective and strength to tell her remarkable story: one of an abusive, violent childhood, of her serial killer parents and how she has rebuilt her life in the shadow of their terrible crimes.Through her own memories, research and the letters her mother wrote to her from prison, Mae shares her emotionally powerful account of her life as a West. From a toddler locked in the deathly basement to a teen fighting off the sexual advances of her father, Mae's story is one of survival. It also answers the questions: how do you come to terms with knowing your childhood bedroom was a graveyard? How do you accept the fact your parents sexually tortured, murdered and dismembered young women? How do you become a mother yourself when you're haunted by the knowledge that your own mother was a monster? Why were you spared and how do you escape the nightmare?

    Written by Tom Jackman, the local investigative journalist who covered the story, and Troy Cole, the chief investigating officer, "Rites Of Burial" tells the gruesome true story of Robert Berdella, a serial killer whose inhuman crimes of murder and dismemberment might have served to inspire Jeffrey Dahmer's Milwaukee slaughter.

    So get ready for another deliciously dark sampling of some of the most fascinating true murder cases of the first half of the 20th Century. These stories, the SECOND 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 case of the man who used rattlesnakes to speed the demise of a fading relationship, a case where non-barking dogs pointed out a killer, and the Great Swope poison case, where a man's in-laws just couldn't wait for their inheritance. As a bonus, consider "Pretty: Louie Amberg, the Brooklyn, N.Y., psychopath of the 1920s and '30s, as well as an unusual couple in Southern California kept the neighbors up at night --- and gossiping. Pulp non-fiction? Maybe. True crime is always more macabre than any novelist could imagine. So sit back and enjoy these forays into some of the darkest aspects of human nature. (With illustrations)

    Strangers would stop and stare at her in the street and she could entrance people from a very early age. But looking back at photos of Rose as a child, you struggle to accept that she grew up to one of the country's most notorious female criminals.In ROSE, Jane Carter Woodrow goes right back to the start in her life to try and piece together what happened to turn Rose West into the violent monster she became. Jane has gained unprecedented access to the family and has revealed a fascinating story of how there was always something 'not quite right' about Rose...And perhaps that's not too surprising... Rose's childhood reads like one of the most grim misery memoirs. Her father was a violent schizophrenic and her mother received electric shock therapy for severe clinical depression, the whole way through her pregnancy with Rose. Jane has uncovered a horrific hidden story of a twisted family and how her upbringing made her a perfect partner for Fred West when they met when Rose had just turned 16. She was to kill for the first time a few months later.This is a gripping, unputdownable read that sheds light for the first time on the story behind what turned Rose West into one of the country's most vicious and deadly serial killers.

    Realizing that there was something very malevolent about the couple, she left their employment soon after, glad to be rid of them. The story should have ended there, but a month, later she was abducted by the Wests and suffered violent sexual abuse at their hands before being told that she would be killed and buried. Through a combination of luck and quick thinking, depite the trauma of what had happened, Caroline managed to escape to freedom. This is her story of those fateful days and the appalling aftermath.

    Soon the Florida teen's strange story went viral. Dubbed the "Hiccup Girl" by the media, she gained international sympathy and appeared on a slew of popular TV shows. Eventually, Jennifer's hiccups went away--and so did her fame. Depressed and craving affection, Jennifer hooked up with the wrong people and slipped into drug dealing and street life--a downward spiral that led to the murder of an innocent young man. Now, renowned investigative journalist M. William Phelps expertly recounts Jennifer's shocking true story of thwarted desires, betrayed trust, and deadly manipulation. "Phelps is the king of true crime." --Lynda Hirsch, Creators Syndicate columnist"Phelps dares to tread where few others will: into the mind of a killer." --TV RageIncludes 16 Pages Of Dramatic Photos

    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.

    He has confronted, interviewed and researched dozens of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and James Earl Ray - for a landmark study to understand their motives. To get inside their minds. He is Special Agent John Douglas, the model for law enforcement legend Jack Crawford in Thomas Harris's thrillers Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and the man who ushered in a new age in behavorial science and criminal profiling. Recently retired after twenty-five years of service, John Douglas can finally tell his unique and compelling story.