Submerged: Ryan Widmer, his drowned bride and the justice system


Janice Hisle - 2018
    Her husband of four months is accused of murder. What happened in their tiny suburban bathroom—and why—was never resolved. A compelling true-crime drama, based on exclusive new information, Submerged exposes hidden angles of a case that captivated and divided an ordinary American community, tore apart two families and tested the criminal justice system. Compelled by conscience and curiosity, former Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Janice (Morse) Hisle—who covered the saga of Ryan and Sarah Widmer from the start—returns 10 years later to dig deep to tell the untold story: dozens of interviews, 6,000 pages of trial transcripts and previously unrevealed records such as: • Ryan’s first written statement about Sarah’s death • attorneys’ notes and trial-preparation documents • Ryan’s personal journal, notes and correspondence • more than a thousand pages of police notes and reports Submerged will draw you into the depths of a stranger-than-fiction story that you will ponder long after turning the final page.

The Last Gangster: My Final Confession


Charlie Richardson - 2013
    Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies.The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box.Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

No Encore!: Musicians Reveal Their Weirdest, Wildest, Most Embarrassing Gigs


Drew Fortune - 2019
    The embarrassment is palatable, but perseverance is the most touching part of these stories. These awful things that happened don't interrupt the dream. The dream of performing and stardom. The dream of connecting with an audience. No Encore! is a glimpse into the analog past; a trip to a distant world when artists made albums and suites of songs you listened in order." —Bret Easton Ellis   “They hated us and started throwing cups, bottles, change, chairs, and anything that wasn’t nailed down.” —Dean Ween This hilarious, sometimes horrifying, collection spans four decades and chronicles the craziest, druggiest, and most embarrassing concert moments in music history—direct from the artists who survived them.  “In the midst of my insanity, I thought it would be a very romantic gesture to go into Fiona Apple’s dressing room and write a message on her wall in my own blood.” —Dave Navarro From wardrobe malfunctions to equipment failures, from bad decisions to even worse choices, this is a riveting look into what happens when things go wrong onstage and off. “Ozzy had a sixty-inch teleprompter with the song lyrics, and that got stolen, along with microphones, snare drums and cymbals. Our drummer at the time was stabbing people in the neck with his drumstick.” —Zakk Wylde No Encore! is an unflinchingly honest account of the shows that tested the dedication to a dream—from Alice Cooper’s python having a violent, gastric malfunction on stage to Lou Barlow’s disastrous attempt to sober up at Glastonbury, from Shirley Manson’s desperate search for a bathroom to the extraordinary effort made to awaken Al Jourgenson as Ministry was taking the stage. As Hunter S. Thompson famously wrote, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”  “I go to exit the venue, and there’s 25 people marching towards us. It’s about 3:00 AM, and they weren’t there to be nice. They were carrying bats, boards, chains, hammers, and they were coming for us.” —Dee Snider

Britain's Most Notorious Hangmen


Stephen Wade - 2009
    Britain has always been a land of gallows, and every town had its hanging post and local 'turn off man.' First these men were criminals doing the work to save their own necks, and then later they were specialists in the trade of judicial killing. From the late Victorian period, the public hangman became a professional, and in the twentieth century the mechanics of hanging were streamlined as the executioners became adept at their craft. Britain's Most Notorious Hangmen tells the stories of the men who worked with their deadly skills at Tyburn tree or at the scaffolds in the prison yards across the country. Most were steeled to do the work by drink, and many suffered deeply from their despised profession. Here the reader will find the tale of the real Jack Ketch, the cases of neck-stretchers from the drunks like Curry and Askern, to the local workers of the ropes, Throttler Smith and the celebrated Billington and Pierrepoint dynasty. Along with some of the stories of famous killers such as William Palmer and James Bloomfield Rush, here are the bunglings, failures and desperate lives of the notorious hangmen, some who could entertain the vast crowds enjoying the show, and others who always faced the task as a terrible ordeal.

The Furnace Girl: The Mysterious case of Elfrieda Knaak


Kraig W. Moreland - 2018
    The Furnace Girl is Kraig Moreland's theory of what really happened to Elfrieda Knaak, as told to and beautifully written by Toby Jones, It is a stranger-than-fiction story, told through the eyes of Griff Morgan, a young orphan boy, whose harrowing journey makes him an accidental witness to what still remains one of the most puzzling, unsolved crimes of the early 1900s.   In this fictionalized account of the mystery, Griff and his young sister land at the Lake Bluff Orphanage, where they must learn to navigate their new surroundings and face their fears. The 12-year-old Griff stumbles upon unlawful activity throughout the town, from Elfrieda’s illicit relationship with a married man, (and prime suspect) to characters so dark that he feels his safety slipping away with every day.  The Furnace Girl appeals to crime buffs and those looking for a powerful coming-of-age story that pulls on even the toughest of heartstrings.

My Life In His Hands: Based on a true story (The Sarah Rosmond Story #1)


Sarah Rosmond - 2017
     This is my true story about living with a monster, a monster that only those in my household would have ever had the unfortunate chance to meet, the monster I called my daddy!!! We cannot choose who we are related to, but we can sure as hell despise them. My story is hard to read in parts I am not going to lie, but was even harder to live it. It has taken 35 years but I am living proof that just because your life starts our feeling pointless and a punishment that you don't have to accept it. As an adult. you are the only person in control of your life and only you can make the changes if they are needed. My life was in his hands for a long time!!! Now you have chance to hold my life in your own... If my book can help just one person, then I feel that my horrible childhood might have a purpose and not just be a punishment. I will say that have no regrets, what happened in my life has happened and can never be undone

True Crime UK: Real Criminal Cases From Great Britain (True Crime International English)


Adrian Langenscheid - 2020
    

Journey To Hell: Inside the World's Most Violent Prison System


Donald MacNeil - 2006
    The pay was good and the work was easy - or so he thought. Then the truth was revealed: he had to sail to South America to collect one of the biggest shipments of cocaine ever bound for the UK. And to the gangsters who hired him, refusal was not an option.There followed a harrowing journey to Venezuela, where almost £50 million of coke was waiting. But someone had tipped off the authorities. Donald and his fellow crewman were arrested, convicted of drug smuggling and sentenced to six years in the notorious island prison of San Antonio.He soon discovered why Venezuela’s prisons are the most violent in the world, a nightmare gulag where hundreds are killed and thousands maimed every year in riots, vendettas and petty disputes. Thrown into a filthy, over-crowded dormitory known as Pavilion 4, and surrounded by armed gangs, crack addicts, death and disease, he faced a daily fight to survive. Ferocious guards beat prisoners indiscriminately and many cut themselves in “blood strikes” to protest against the scarce food, undrinkable water and lack of medical care. Finally a war broke out between two prison compounds, involving guns, machetes and even grenades.Through it all, and despite witnessing the brutal killing of his friend and mentor, MacNeil clung to the belief that one-day he would be home. Journey To Hell is a harrowing but compelling account of man’s extraordinary will to survive in a world gone mad.

Cocky: The Rise & Fall of Curtis Warren, Britain's Biggest Drug Baron


Tony Barnes - 2000
    He forged direct links with the the cocaine cartels of Columbia, the heroine godfathers of Turkey, the cannabis cultivators of Marocco and the Ectasy manufacturers of Holland and Eastern Europe. His drugs went around the world, from the clubs of Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin to the golden beaches of Sydney.This acclaimed and best-selling biography uncovers his meteoric rise from street mugger to the richest and most successful British criminal who has ver been caught. It relates how the Liverpool mafia became the UK's foremost drug importers; tells how Warren survived gang warfare and how he corrupted top-level police officers; unveils the inside story of the biggest and most successful British law enforcement operation ever undertaken; and reveals the explosive contents of the covert wiretaps that brought his global empire crashing down. Thoroughly revised and updated, COCKY is a shocking insight into organized crime and an important investigation into a contemporary international drug baron.'Compelling' - The Observer. Shortlisted for the Macallan Gold Dagger for Crime Non-fiction.

The Ghosts of the Orphanage


Christine Kenneally - 2018
    Some didn’t make it out alive. After hearing whispers that seemed almost too awful to believe, BuzzFeed News investigative reporter Christine Kenneally embarked on a years-long journey to find out what really went on in these institutions. What she discovered was even more horrifying than the legend: the systematic abuse and even the alleged murder of children by nuns. Her searing report, which is part investigation, part true crime drama, part ghost story, cracks open a secret history of American life — and adds a vast new dimension to the Catholic church’s mistreatment of children. From a world shrouded in secrecy, Kenneally tells the story of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, and of Sally Dale, the plucky redhead who was the apple of the nuns’ eyes. Until they decided to make an example of her, administering daily torments, isolating her from the rest of the world, and convincing her that she would never escape. Of all the children who passed through St. Joseph’s, she may have been there the longest. The horrors she suffered and the deaths she said she witnessed did not come into full view until the day, decades later, when she attended a St Joseph’s reunion. Then the past came flooding back like a torrent. Along with scores of other survivors, and guided by an idealistic young lawyer, Sally somehow found the courage to come forward and tell the world what she had experienced. She wanted more than anything else to be heard and believed. But she was going up against one of the most powerful institutions in the world, and she was in for the fight of a lifetime. The legal battle that ensued upended every assumption that the people of Burlington had. Could memory be trusted? Could forgetting be forgotten? Could a pleasant community turn a blind eye to evil? And could nuns, the very women charged with protecting these most vulnerable members of society, have instead tortured or even killed them? The Catholic sex abuse scandal – which most recently yielded a grand jury report on how the church hid the crimes of hundreds of priests — shattered the silence that for so long had protected the church. But the truth about what went on inside its orphanages has somehow remained all but unspoken, even as other countries have undertaken huge national inquiries. In the US, there has been no reckoning. The orphanages’ dark secrets, like the dead children who haunt survivors’ dreams, still lay buried. Until now. Through painstaking reporting, based in thousands of pages of documents — many of them secret — and interviews with survivors, Kenneally connects what happened at St. Joseph’s to similar accounts that emerged from seven countries across three continents, revealing a terrible matrix of corroboration.

White Picket Monsters: A Story of Strength and Survival


Bev Moore Davis - 2021
    

Who Killed Epstein? Prince Andrew or Bill Clinton (War On Drugs Book 5)


Shaun Attwood - 2021
    

Mad Frank and Sons


David Fraser - 2016
    It includes the story of Frank's beloved sister, Eva, who was a top-class West End shoplifter, and his sons David and Patrick, who reveal in shocking detail the full extent of the family's network and the influences that shaped them.With sawn-off shotguns as toys, the Kray twins as family friends and a mother who urged them as teenagers to 'get out of bed and rob a bleedin' bank', it is little wonder that the Fraser boys were heavily involved in organized crime by the time they were in their twenties. Packed with new information, and featuring some of the most famous names in the London underworld, this is a fascinating slice of gangland history seen through the eyes of Frank Fraser and his two renegade sons.

Nikitta: A Mother’s Story - The Tragic True Story of My Daughter's Murder


Marcia Grender - 2016
    Marcia and her partner Paul, Nikitta’s father, rushed to the scene but there was nothing they could do. Firefighters had already discovered Nikitta’s body in the wreckage of the home she’d lovingly built with her childhood sweetheart. To add to their agony, Nikitta had been eight months’ pregnant. The fully formed yet unborn baby girl she’d already named Kelsey May was gone, too.But it soon became apparent Nikitta’s death was far from an accident. Within hours, the investigation became a murder inquiry and Ryan’s cousin Carl Whant was the prime suspect. Whant had been openly infatuated with Nikitta and boasted that he thought of her every time he had sex.As her world collapsed around her, Marcia could only watch in horror. Shortly after Whant was charged with murder, child destruction, rape and arson, she began charting her feelings in a searingly honest diary, the contents of which are published for the first time in this book.Marcia painstakingly recalls the agony of holding her granddaughter for the first time in a police mortuary, but being unable to see her dead daughter because of the shocking state in which Whant had left her. She charts the pain of laying them both to rest, knowing she will have to face their killer every day in court when Whant’s case comes to trial. For the first time, she opens up about her turbulent relationship with Ryan and the devastating revelations which almost cause her world to shatter for a second time. But, above all, she speaks of the indescribable hell of learning to live without the most important thing in her life.

The Murder of Billie-Jo


Sion Jenkins - 2008
    Her foster father, Sion Jenkins, who had just been appointed headteacher of the local boys' secondary school, was arrested and charged with the murder. In July 1998 he was convicted and sent to prison for life. The case went on to become one of the most controversial in British criminal justice history. After a momentous legal battle, in which there were altogether an unprecedented six court hearings, he was finally acquitted in February 2006. Jenkins was lambasted in newspaper and television reports. So the real facts of the case were buried under an avalanche of innuendo and misinformation. Now, for the first time, this book puts on record his version of what actually happened.