A Death in White Bear Lake: The True Chronicle of an All-American Town


Barry Siegel - 1990
    The autopsy report ruled peritonitis was the cause, but the startling photos of the boy suggested murder.How could the Jurgens kill a small child and get away with it? Determined to find answers, detectives Ron Meehan and Greg Kindle tracked down old witnesses and rebuilt the case brick by brick until they exposed the demons that drove an adopted parent to torture and eventually murder a helpless child. Just as compelling, they investigated why so many people watched and did absolutely nothing. A vivid portrait of an all-American town that harbored a killer, A Death in White Bear Lake is also the absorbing story of two detectives who refused to give up until they had the killer cold.

Tormented


Lizzie Scott - 2012
    No-one prepared us for this nightmare' The scream, when it came, was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was so piercing it made every hair on my body stand on end, and the memory of the terror I felt then, in that instant, has never gone away. I flew out of my bed and ran into the girls’ room, convinced that something truly, utterly devastating was happening to one of the children. It was.

Dancing with the Octopus: The Telling of a True Crime


Debora Harding - 2020
    From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.

The Beast: A Chilling True Story of a Psychopathic Child Killer (Ryan Green's True Crime)


Ryan Green - 2021
    He kidnapped, raped and killed six children and teenagers in a single month. While the previous missing children had been treated like runaways, there was now no question that somebody was abducting children in the Lower Mainland area, and the media went berserk.The police immediately came under scrutiny for failing to connect the previous disappearances. The missing person cases were passed to homicide detectives, and a whole new investigation began. The police were now hunting a serial killer and Clifford Olson Junior was one of the main suspects.From the age of seventeen, Clifford Olson Junior spent only 1,501 days outside of prison or jail. If his claims are to be believed, he averaged about one murder every ten days. During his imprisonment, he was assessed on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, a tool designed to evaluate psychopathy. The standard threshold is 25-30. He scored a 38 out of 40, the highest rating ever recorded.The Beast is a chilling account of Clifford Olson Junior and one of the most disturbing true crime stories in Canada’s history. Ryan Green’s riveting narrative draws the reader into the real-live horror experienced by the victims and has all the elements of a classic thriller.CAUTION: This book contains descriptive accounts of torture, abuse and violence. If you are especially sensitive to this material, it might be advisable not to read any further.

Zodiac


Robert Graysmith - 1986
    A sexual sadist who taunted police with anonymous notes. A madman who was never apprehended. This is the first, complete account of Zodiac's reign of terror. Is he still out there?

In The Minds Of Murderers


Paul Roland - 2007
    It also explodes the myth of the motiveless crime and challenges the popular belief that all killers are crazy.

Who Killed These Girls?: The Twenty-Five-Year History of Austin's Yogurt Shop Murders


Beverly Lowry - 2016
    On December 6, 1991, the naked, bound-and-gagged bodies of four girls--each one shot in the head--were found in an "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt!" shop in Austin, Texas. Grief, shock, and horror spread out from their families and friends to overtake the city itself. Though all branches of law enforcement were brought to bear, the investigation was often misdirected, and after eight years only two men (then teenagers) were tried; moreover, their subsequent convictions were eventually overturned, and Austin PD detectives are still working on what is now a very cold case. Over the decades, the story has grown to include DNA technology, false confessions, and other developments facing crime and punishment in contemporary life, but this story belongs to the scores of people involved, and from them Lowry has fashioned a riveting saga that reads like a Russian novel, comprehensive and thoroughly engrossing.

Ed Gein: Psycho


Paul Anthony Woods - 1995
    None of them has been used as the ultimate ogre in countless children's stories and off-color jokes, and none of them has been found guilty of as many unspeakable atrocities as Ed Gein.Ed Gein--Psycho! is his story. This is his legend.

Cop: A True Story


Michael L. Middleton - 1994
    In this brutally honest portrait, Sergeant Michael Middleton--a now-retired veteran of the LAPD--tells the gripping tale of his two decades on some of the America's meanest streets.

American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century


Maureen Callahan - 2019
    John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history. The FBI considered his behavior unprecedented. Described by a prosecutor as "a force of pure evil," Keyes was a predator who struck all over the United States. He buried "kill kits"--cash, weapons, and body-disposal tools--in remote locations across the country. Over the course of fourteen years, Keyes would fly to a city, rent a car, and drive thousands of miles in order to use his kits. He would break into a stranger's house, abduct his victims in broad daylight, and kill and dispose of them in mere hours. And then he would return home to Alaska, resuming life as a quiet, reliable construction worker devoted to his only daughter.When journalist Maureen Callahan first heard about Israel Keyes in 2012, she was captivated by how a killer of this magnitude could go undetected by law enforcement for over a decade. And so began a project that consumed her for the next several years--uncovering the true story behind how the FBI ultimately caught Israel Keyes, and trying to understand what it means for a killer like Keyes to exist. A killer who left a path of monstrous, randomly committed crimes in his wake--many of which remain unsolved to this day.American Predator is the ambitious culmination of years of interviews with key figures in law enforcement and in Keyes's life, and research uncovered from classified FBI files. Callahan takes us on a journey into the chilling, nightmarish mind of a relentless killer, and to the limitations of traditional law enforcement.

Daughter of the White River:: Depression-Era Treachery and Vengeance in the Arkansas Delta


Denise White Parkinson - 2013
    In 1931, Spence shocked Arkansas when she avenged her father's murder in a DeWitt courtroom. The state soon discovered that no prison could hold her. For the first time, prison records are unveiled to provide an essential portrait. The legend of Helen Spence refuses to be forgotten--despite her unmarked grave.

Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum


Mark Stevens - 2011
    There is Edward Oxford, who shot at Queen Victoria, and Richard Dadd, the brilliant artist and murderer of his father. There is also William Chester Minor, the surgeon from America who killed a stranger in London, and then played a key part in creating the world's finest dictionary. Finally, there is Christiana Edmunds, ‘The Chocolate Cream Poisoner’ and frustrated lover.To these four tales are added new ones, previously unknown. There were five women who went on to become mothers in Broadmoor, giving birth to life when three of them had previously taken it. Then there were the numerous escapes, actual and attempted, as the first doctors tried to assert control over their residents.These are stories from the edge of where true crime meets mental illness. Broadmoor Revealed recounts what life was like for the criminally insane, over one hundred years ago.

She Wanted It All


Kathryn Casey - 2005
    in a second conspiracy to commit murder.

Killing for Company: The Case of Dennis Nilsen


Brian Masters - 1985
    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.

Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession


Sarah Weinman - 2020
    With podcasts like My Favorite Murder and In the Dark, bestsellers like I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and Furious Hours, and TV hits like American Crime Story and Wild Wild Country, the cultural appetite for stories of real people doing terrible things is insatiable.Acclaimed author of The Real Lolita and editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America) and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin), Sarah Weinman brings together an exemplary collection of recent true crime tales. She culls together some of the most refreshing and exciting contemporary journalists and chroniclers of crime working today.  Michelle Dean’s “Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick” went viral when it first published and is the basis for the TV show The Act and Pamela Colloff’s “The Reckoning,” is the gold standard for forensic journalism.  There are 13 pieces in all and as a collection, they showcase writing about true crime across the broadest possible spectrum, while also reflecting what makes crime stories so transfixing and irresistible to the modern reader.