Book picks similar to
Blood Highway by Sheila Johnson
true-crime
non-fiction
e-kind
open-library-daisy
The Poison Tree: A True Story of Family Terror
Alan Prendergast - 1986
One cold November night, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, fifteen-year-old Richard Jahnke Jr., ROTC leader and former Boy Scout, waited for his parents to return from celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the night they met. When his father got out of the car, the boy blasted him through the heart with a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. Richard’s seventeen-year-old sister, Deborah, was sitting on the living room couch with a high-powered rifle—just in case her brother missed. Hours later the Jahnke kids were behind bars. Days later they made headlines. So did the truth about the house of horrors on Cowpoke Road. Was it cold-blooded murder? Or self-defense? Richard Jahnke Sr., special agent for the IRS, gun collector, and avid reader of Soldier of Fortune, had been subjecting his wife, Maria, and both children to harrowing abuse—physical, psychological, and sexual—for years. Deborah and her brother conspired to finally put a stop to it themselves. But their fate was in the hands of a prejudiced and inept judicial system, and only public outcry could save them. Written with the full and revealing cooperation of the Jahnkes, this finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime is “the ultimate family nightmare, played out in the heartland of America. . . . From the night of the murder through both trials, convictions and both youngsters’ eventual release . . . it’s gripping reading” (Chicago Tribune).
One of the Family
John George Pearson - 2003
Moreover, he was as legendary a figure on the streets of New York as on the streets of London.Pearson persuaded the mysterious criminal leader to talk to him - and the result was a story even more extraordinary than that of the Kray twins. Here Pearson reveals the true story of the Englishman who became the adopted son of Joey Pagano, the head of one of the major New York crime families. Here the Englishman tells the story that no-one else dared to tell.
A Dangerous Place: The Story of the Railway Murders
Simon Farquhar - 2016
In September 1970, two boys met in the playground on their first day at secondary school in North London. They formed what would be described at the Old Bailey thirty years later as ‘a unique and wicked bond’. Between 1982 and 1986, striking near lonely railway stations in London and the Home Counties, their partnership took them from rape to murder. Three police forces pooled their resources to catch them in the biggest criminal manhunt since the Yorkshire Ripper Enquiry.A Dangerous Place is the first full-length account of the crimes of John Duffy and David Mulcahy. Told by the son of one of the police officers who led the enquiry, exhaustively researched and with unprecedented access, this is the story of two of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century and the times they operated in. It is the story of the women who died at their hands. It is the story of the women who survived them, and who had the courage to ensure justice was done. And it is the story of a father, told by a son.
Ingrid Bergman
Grace May Carter - 2016
In between, there were four children (including actress Isabella Rossellini), three husbands, and passionate affairs with war photographer Robert Capa, Wizard of Oz director Victor Fleming, and Spellbound co-star Gregory Peck. Over her forty-seven-year career, Ingrid Bergman performed in fifty-five movies - in five languages and seven countries - and eleven stage productions, picking up three Oscars along the way. In the words of one biographer, she was "arguably the most international star in the history of entertainment." And, without a doubt, one of the most misunderstood.
Farewell
Horton Foote - 1999
His adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay Tender Mercies earned him Academy Awards. He received an Indie Award for Best Writer for The Trip to Bountiful and a Pulitzer Prize for The Young Man from Atlanta. In his plays and films, Foote has returned over and over again to Wharton, Texas, where he was born and where he lives, once again, in the house in which he grew up. Now for the first time, in Farewell, Foote turns to prose to tell his own story and the stories of the real people who have inspired his characters. His memoir is both a celebration of the immense importance of community and evidence that even a strong community cannot save a lost soul. Farewell is as deeply moving as the best of Foote's writing for film and theater, and a gorgeous testimony to his own faith in the human spirit.
Stop The Ride, I Want To Get Off: The Autobiography of Dave Courtney
Dave Courtney - 2000
Dave Courtney - the original behind Vinnie Jones's character in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - tells all in his no-holds-barred bestselling autobiography.From the streets of southeast London to bare-knuckle fights; from the funeral of Ronnie Kray to drug-deals turned sour in Holland - Dave Courtney's story is like no one else's.
Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise
Barry Manilow - 1987
sweet life adventures on the way to paradise by barry manilow
Olive Oatman: Explore The Mysterious Story of Captivity and Tragedy from Beginning to End
Brent Schulte - 2019
She is the girl with the blue tattoo.The story behind the distinctive tattoo is the stuff of legends. Some believed it was placed on her face during her captivity, following the brutal murders of her family members and the kidnapping of her and her sister. Others believe it was placed on her after her return.Rumors swelled. Her tattoo became a symbol of Native barbarianism and the triumph of American goodness, but like many stories of that era, the truth is far more complicated.This short book details the murders, her captivity, the aftermath, and her baffling return to her captors. Unravel the mystery of the woman who would become famous for all the wrong reasons and discover what her life story says about cultural identity, the power of resiliency, and what happens when fact and fiction bend and twist to muddy the waters.Read on to find out the truth!
Deadly Greed: The Riveting True Story of the Stuart Murder Case, Which Rocked Boston and Shocked the Nation
Joe Sharkey - 1991
On October 23, 1989, affluent businessman Charles Stuart made a frantic 911 call from his car to report that he and his seven-months-pregnant wife, Carol, a lawyer, had been robbed and shot by a black male in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston. By the time police arrived, Carol was dead, and the baby was soon lost as well. The attack incited a furor during a time of heightened racial tension in the community. Even more appalling, while the injuries were real, Stuart’s story was a hoax: He was the true killer. But the tragedy would continue with the arrest of Willie Bennett, a young man Stuart identified in a line-up. Stuart’s deception would only be exposed after a shocking revelation from his brother and, finally, his suicide, when he jumped into the freezing waters of the Mystic River. As the story unraveled, police would put together the disturbing pieces of a puzzle that included Stuart’s distress over his wife’s pregnancy, his romantic interest in a coworker, and life insurance fraud. In an account that “builds and grips like a novel” (Kirkus Reviews), New York Times journalist Joe Sharkey delivers “a picture of a man consumed by naked ambition, unwilling to let anyone or anything get in his way” (Library Journal). Revised and updated, this ebook also includes photos and a new epilogue by the author.
Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected
Thomas J. Foley - 2012
Foley’s twenty-year pursuit of murderous Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, and of Foley’s key role in exposing the FBI’s protection of Bulger’s criminal empire.June 23, 2011. The news of the notorious gangster Whitey Bulger’s capture—after sixteen years on the FBI’s Most Wanted list—swept the nation. Many breathed a sigh of relief. But for Thomas J. Foley, a former Massachusetts state police colonel and the investigator who sparked Bulger’s flight from Boston, the moment was bittersweet. The FBI may have caught Bulger, but as Foley had painfully discovered almost two decades before, they were also responsible for his escape. It has been known that Whitey Bulger was a secret informant for the FBI, but it has never been revealed—until now—that the FBI was actually actively protecting Bulger from Foley, effectively derailing Foley’s efforts to stop Bulger’s horrific crime sprees time and again. At one point, the FBI even presented Foley with a plaque at a holiday party that read “the Most Hated Man in Law Enforcement,” a not-so-subtle suggestion that he and his team should lay off their investigation. Most Wanted is a true-life thriller, and Foley is the hero at its center. His investigative efforts resulted in criminal convictions of a half-dozen of Boston’s most notorious thugs and also led to the conviction of John Connolly, one of the FBI agents who abetted Bulger; Connolly is now serving a forty-year prison sentence. In this book, Foley, a cop’s cop, honestly recounts how his wide-eyed admiration for the nation’s top law enforcement agency was gradually transformed by dark realities he didn’t want to believe.
Buried Secrets: A True Story of Drug Running, Black Magic, and Human Sacrifice
Edward Humes - 1991
Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Humes draws on exclusive access to the principals in the case and DEA materials to recreate this compelling, national headline-grabbing horror. 16 pages of never-before-seen photographs.
Crime Squad: Life and Death on London's Front Line
Mike Pannett - 2016
“Crime Squad takes readers on an unforgettable ride as Mike, an innocent lad from the Yorkshire Dales, learns to grow up fast and stay alive on the mean streets of London.” Weebly “A great read… gave a great feel of policing in the 80's and 90's in London, particularly with the change in drug culture and guns.” Netgalley “Well-written and informative, giving an insight into the workings of the police force in London in 1980s. Recommended.” Wendy Rhodes - Reviewer “A rollercoaster read of life on the front line.” Sir Hugh Orde OBE QPM “An accurate and fascinating picture of police work at the sharp end.” Detective Superintendent John Jones (rtd) “Gripping from first to last.” Andy Trotter OBE QPM London 1988: PC Mike Pannett, fresh out of training school, had suspected life in the Metropolitan Police was going to be a bit different from rural North Yorkshire, but the 23-year-old had no idea by just how much. Sent south of the river to Battersea, then top of London’s crime league tables, Mike was thrown straight into the deep end – during his first drugs raid he ended up staring down the wrong end of a double-barrelled shotgun. Mike’s arrival in London coincided with the explosion in crack cocaine use. In the early 1990s, Yardies – criminal gangs from Jamaica and the USA - flooded into the capital, starting in Battersea, where they brought all manner of guns with them, along with a live-fast die-young attitude. Rivals were ruthlessly eliminated and whole neighbourhoods fell under the control of drug gangs. Mike and his police colleagues fought back with extraordinary valour and inventiveness and with the support of the local community they started to turn the tide – but then came the unthinkable crime: the murder in 1993 of PC Patrick Dunne, one of Mike’s colleagues, by Gary Nelson, aka ‘Tyson’, a criminal the national press described as ‘the most dangerous man ever to walk to the streets of Britain.’ Mike was drawn into the long and exceptionally dangerous hunt for Nelson that would go on to cost the life of another police officer. Crime Squad takes readers on an unforgettable ride as Mike, an innocent lad from the Yorkshire Dales, learns to grow up fast and stay alive on the mean streets of London.
The Lost Child by David Pelzer
Dave Pelzer - 1997
It is a story about a boy lost in life, the system and finally found. It is a moving and troubling sotry to read
Aaron Hernandez's Killing Fields: Exposing Untold Murders, Violence, Cover-Ups, and the NFL's Shocking Code of Silence
Dylan Howard - 2019
For the first time, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields will reveal the real, hitherto unknown motive for the killing of Odin Lloyd—the only crime for which Hernandez was ever convicted and a revelation so shocking it will shake the foundations of the NFL itself. It will also unpick a pattern of violence and brutality stretching back to his time as a teenager at the University of Florida, revealing further shooting victims, evidence of his involvement in the double murder of Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado in 2012. Featuring new interviews with Hernandez’s cellmates, serving police investigators, prosecutors, psychologists, attorneys—as well as key witnesses including Hernandez’s drug dealer, a male stripper he hired days before the killing of Lloyd—plus extensive testimony from relatives of Hernandez’s victims, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields is the exhaustive, definitive account of the rise and fall of a man undone by his own appetite for violence, gangsterism, power, drugs, and self-destruction. This is the real Aaron Hernandez story—and perhaps just the beginning of a whole new murder investigation.
The Night the Defeos Died: Reinvestigating the Amityville Murders
Ric Osuna - 2002
Once there, the police discovered six members of the DeFeo family -- father, mother and four of their five children -- shot and killed execution style. The surviving son, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr., was eventually charged and tried for the murder of his family and now is serving six concurrent life sentences. Some said a strong supernatural force in the DeFeo home drove Butch DeFeo to kill his family, while others claimed Butch DeFeo killed to receive an inheritance. The Night the DeFeos Died offers the true story behind this tragedy and exposes Butch DeFeo did not act alone in the commission of this crime. It also shows that the supernatural stories created about the famed Amityville house were nothing, but a ruse concocted for Butch DeFeo's defense that later grew into a cottage industry. The whole truth regarding the story has never been revealed, until the publication of Ric Osuna's book. From mob involvement to a corrupt judicial system, The Night the DeFeos Died reveals the full details of the DeFeo murders, including how they were a culmination of substance abuse and domestic violence.