Book picks similar to
Fiendish Killers: Perpetrators Of The Worst Possible Evil by Anne Williams
nonfiction
true-crime
crime
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Killer Families: True Crime: Murder By Dads, Moms, Kids & Spouses
Sylvia Perrini - 2014
A place where they feel protected and loved. Yet for many this is simply not the case. The true stories in this short book demonstrate that the family environment can be a very dangerous place indeed. Not just for children suffering from child abuse, but also for mothers, fathers, wives and husbands. In the United States, one of the most treacherous places for a woman is in her own home. Women may be afraid of strangers, but it's a husband, a lover, a boyfriend, or someone they know who is most likely to hurt them and they are at the highest risk of suffering violence or murder when they are divorcing or separating from a partner. Men too can suffer abuse from their wife or partner but the difference in physical size and strength puts a woman at greater risk than a man. For children, the greatest danger is not an unknown stranger, but their immediate families. Is your family safe?
Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America
Les Standiford - 2011
In the aftermath of that six-year old's abduction and slaying in 1981, everything about the nation's regard and response to missing children changed.The shock of the crime and the inability of law enforcement to find Adam's killer put an end to innocence, and altered our very perception of childhood itself - gone forever are the days when young children burst out the doors of American homes with a casual promise to be home by dark. And, due in large part to the efforts of Adam's parents, John and Reve Walsh, the entire mechanism of law enforcement has transformed itself in an effort to protect our children.Before Adam went missing, there were no children's faces on milk cartons and billboards, no Amber Alerts, no national Center for Missing and Abused Children, no national databases for crimes against children, no registration of pedophiles - in fact, it was easier to mobilize the FBI to search for a stolen car or missing horse than for a kidnapped child. Such facts may be sad testimony to the weariness of a modern world, but there is also an uplifting aspect to Adam's story - the 27 years of undaunted effort by decorated Miami Beach Homicide Detective, Joe Matthews, to track down Adam's killer and bring justice to bear at long last.Bringing Adam Home tells the story - the good, the bad, and the ugly - of what it took for one cop to accomplish what an entire system of law enforcement could not. Matthews' achievement is a stirring one, reminding us that such concepts as hard work, dedication, and love, survive, and that goodness can prevail.
The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases
Michael Capuzzo - 2008
Good friends and sometime rivals William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter decided one day over lunch that something had to be done, and pledged themselves to a grand quest for justice. The three men invited the greatest collection of forensic investigators ever assembled, drawn from five continents, to the Downtown Club in Philadelphia to begin an audacious quest: to bring the coldest killers in the world to an accounting. Named for the first modern detective, the Parisian eugène François Vidocq-the flamboyant Napoleonic real-life sleuth who inspired Sherlock Holmes-the Vidocq Society meets monthly in its secretive chambers to solve a cold murder over a gourmet lunch. The Murder Room draws the reader into a chilling, darkly humorous, awe-inspiring world as the three partners travel far from their Victorian dining room to hunt the ruthless killers of a millionaire's son, a serial killer who carves off faces, and a child killer enjoying fifty years of freedom and dark fantasy. Acclaimed bestselling author Michael Capuzzo's brilliant storytelling brings true crime to life more realistically and vividly than it has ever been portrayed before. It is a world of dazzlingly bright forensic science; true evil as old as the Bible and dark as the pages of Dostoevsky; and a group of flawed, passionate men and women, inspired by their own wounded hearts to make a stand for truth, goodness, and justice in a world gone mad.
The Storms: Adventure and tragedy on Everest
Mike Trueman - 2015
The young army helicopter pilot was helping to move his friend’s yacht from Northern Ireland to the south coast of England. But as they sailed out into the Irish Sea, the sky turned progressively darker and the winds gathered pace.Over the next twenty-four hours the two young sailors battled to survive force-10 gales in what became known as the Fastnet disaster and which claimed the lives of fifteen sailors off the coast of Ireland. Almost seventeen years later, Trueman was at Camp 2 at 6,400 metres on Mount Everest as the May 1996 tragedy unfolded high above him. As stricken guides, clients and Sherpas tried to survive the fierce storms which engulfed the upper mountain, Trueman was able to descend and – using his twenty-four years of experience as an officer in the British Army – coordinate the rescue effort from Base Camp. The Storms is the remarkable memoir of a British Army Gurkha officer. Trueman, a veteran of twenty expeditions to the Himalaya, gives a candid account of life inside expeditions to the highest mountain in the world. He gives a unique personal perspective on the 1996 Everest storm, as well as on the fateful day in May 1999 when Briton Mike Matthews disappeared high on the mountain after he and Trueman had summited.
The Face Reader: Discover Anyone's Personality, Compatibility, Talents, andChallenges ThroughFace Reading
Patrician McCarthy - 2007
Whether working with executives from Fortune 500 firms or readying the nation’s top attorneys to choose the ideal juries for their clients, Patrician McCarthy has built a reputation for her ability to help others determine a person’s personality, potential, and inherent talents by analyzing his or her facial structure and features. Now McCarthy shares her understanding of this ancient knowledge with readers everywhere.Literally meaning face (mien) reading (shiang), mien shiang is a powerful means of both self-discovery and a way to understand others. Taoist ancients said, “the face is a mirror that records your past, reflects your present, and forecasts your future.” McCarthy introduces five essential influences in our lives revealed by the face and enables you to interpret and understand these influences. With the practice of Mien Shiang, you will live in a harmony of mind, body, and spirit.
The Strange History of Bonnie and Clyde
John Treherne - 1984
This history cuts through hype and mythology and examines the outlaws' liberal and dysfunctional sex life, their astonishing ability to elude a 1000-man posse, the contradictory accounts of the mythic ambush that resulted in their deaths and the extraordinary growth of Bonnie and Clyde legend.
Perfect Victim: The True Story of "The Girl in the Box" by the D.A. Who Prosecuted Her Captor
Christine McGuire - 1989
. . most thought-provoking."--BooklistIn 1997 twenty-year-old Colleen Stan left home to hitchhike from Oregon to California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and extraordinary crime.This is Colleen's incredible true story, told by the determined young district attorney who prosecuted the man who had forced her to endure years of sexual perversion . . . and held her captive in a coffin-like box under his and his wife's bed. A story of riveting psychological intensity and gripping courtroom drama, Perfect Victim reveals the whole truth about Collen Stan's real-life nightmare . . . and the psychopath who enslaved her body and her mind."Horrifying!"--The Cincinnati Post"Hard to put down!"--Chicago Tribune"A gripping and disturbing story of the secret life of apparently normal people. At once, horrific and engrossing."--Vincent Bugliosi, author of
Helter Skelter
The Sum of My Parts
James Sanford - 2011
At first I tried to deny my condition (trying to treat a tumor with hot baths and ice packs). Eventually, I decided I would learn as much about my illness as possible while trying to keep my emotions on hold.What followed was an experience that finally forced me to deal with issues about my body that I had tried to ignore for decades. Along the way I dealt with a physician who gave me ridiculous advice and acquaintances who asked unbelievable questions. But I was also fortunate to be surrounded by people who supported me and doctors who helped me through the process.
Rise of the Footsoldier
Carlton Leach - 2008
If trouble comes calling, Carlton isn't afraid to let his fists do the talking and woe betide anyone who crosses him, or those close to him. At last Carlton gives the full account of his life including how his story has been made into a hugely successful film. Born and raised in East London, Carlton was a key member of the notorious Essex Boys gang and the West Ham InterCity Firm, one of the most violent hooligan gangs to trouble the football terraces during the 1980s. He's been shot at, stabbed, glassed—he's even had an axe in his head. Yet the event that really brought turmoil into his life was the murder of his best friend in the infamous Range Rover murders. Carlton vowed that he would find those responsible and make them pay. There isn't much that Carlton hasn't seen or experienced in his life and his tales of violence, gang wars and close calls with death will have you on the edge of your seat. He knows how close he has come to dying and has therefore shut the door on a gangland life. He may have changed but, as he himself says, "I'll always need to exercise the Carlton Leach brand of justice. It's in me."
Street Justice
Chuck Zito - 2002
From Hells Angel to celebrity bodyguard. The revealing autobiography of an American man.Chuck Zito comes by his reputation honestly as one of the toughest, most uncompromising men ever to sit astride a Harley. Now, with tales both hilarious and chilling, violent and truthful, Zito tells his life story in his own words.From growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn and the Bronx, where fighting was a way of life, to becoming president of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels, to the wild and crazy life of protecting some of the world's biggest celebrities, Zito might be seen as a latter-day outlaw, the last of a dying breed of men. But throughout his tempestuous days, one thing defined him: his unfailing sense of justice, of what's really right and what's really wrong. That's how Zito found himself facing his biggest challenge: refusing to cooperate with a federal investigation into his brothers, the Hells Angels, and in the process losing the very thing he cherished most-his freedom.Zito's astonishing recovery from this experience, and the unique kind of stardom he forged based on hard work and sheer will, is a testament to his courage, his ambition, and his indomitable heart-a testament now recorded unflinchingly in Street Justice.
Escaping the Arroyo
Joyce Nance - 2012
The next morning, the girls were found in a desolate mountain arroyo; one raped and murdered, the other savagely stabbed 33 times and left for dead. As fear engulfed the University of New Mexico's quiet campus, police had few clues to assist them in tracking down the vicious killer. This book is based on the true story of what happened that night in the Sandia Mountains, a shockingly brutal crime that changed the city of Albuquerque forever. It is a gritty tale of unspeakable violence and the relentless search for justice, but it is also the story of a young woman's incredible will to live ... and her life-long struggle to escape the legacy of that deadly arroyo.
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.
Green River Serial Killer: Biography of an Unsuspecting Wife
Pennie Morehead - 2007
Gary Ridgway, who has become known as "The Green River Serial Killer" by the rest of the world.For fourteen happy years, Judith shared her life with an attentive and kind husband, never suspecting there was a secret side to the man she loved until the storybook romance of her life turned into a terrifying nightmare. Gary Ridgway masterfully managed his two identities: one that included romantic vacation, bicycling, and raising Poodles with his wife, the other that included obsessions with a two-decade habit of soliciting prostitutes and young runaway girls near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, strangling those who angered him. Subsequent to his arrest in 2001, Gary confessed to murdering 48 females, in a deal that spared his life. In addition, he alluded to his having killed many more - too many to remember!'Green River Serial Killer - Biography of an Unsuspecting Wife' examines America's most deadly serial killer through the loving eyes of his wife. Also included in this exclusive, authorized biography, are photographs from the Ridgway private albums, letters handwritten by Gary from prison, and the author's own professional analysis of his handwriting.
And Then the Darkness
Sue Williams - 2005
The only witness was Peter′s girlfriend, Joanne Lees, who was found wandering the highway, her hands bound in front of her and tape matted in her hair. The only clue was a pool of blood found by police at the back of the couple′s Kombi.Joanne′s account of her ordeal - the apparent murder of her partner, her binding and gagging, and her miraculous escape into the bush away from her burly attacker and his dog - provoked a frenzy of media interest and a huge police operation, but as clues to the attacker′s identity were few and far between and police blunders mounted, doubts about Joanne′s story began to surface. Was this seemingly innocent English backpacker a liar, after all?Three years on, the saga continues with the trial of Bradley Murdoch, a gun-happy drifter from Western Australia, numerous conspiracy theories and, finally, the discover of some vital genetic evidence.
Evil Intentions
Ronald Watkins - 1992
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.