Book picks similar to
Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case by A.M. Rosenthal
true-crime
non-fiction
psychology
crime
Killer Cop: The Deviant Deputy Who Kidnapped, Raped and Killed
Ryan Green - 2018
He told them it was illegal to hitchhike in the area and that he would take them back to safety. He lied.Schaefer took them to a remote wooded area where he drew his gun, tied them up, gagged them and looped nooses around their necks. Schaefer received a call on his police radio and had to leave the girls but he vowed to return and finish what he
Murder in Battle Creek: The Mysterious Death of Daisy Zick (True Crime)
Blaine Lee Pardoe - 2013
No fewer than three witnessescaught a glimpse of the killer, yet today, it remainsone of Michigan’s most sensational unsolved crimes. The act of puresavagery rocked not only the community but also the Kellogg Company, where sheworked. Here, Blaine Pardoe artfully takes the reader into this true crime thriller. Utilizing long-sealed policefiles and interviews with the surviving investigators,the true story of the investigation can finally be told. Who were thekey suspects? What evidence does the police still have on this five-decades-oldcold case? Just how close did this murder come to being solved? Is the killerstill alive? These questions and more are masterfully brought to the forefrontfor true crime fans and armchair detectives.
I Would Find a Girl Walking
Kathy Kelly - 2011
And here I am, single, haveing no fun at all. Then I would go out riding around and I would find a girl walking..."-Gerald StanoHis licence plate read: No riders except blondes, brunettes, and redheads. With his flared polyester pants, open nylon shirt, and disco music on his eight track, Gerald Stano believed he was quite the ladies' man. And should a girl dare fracture his ego, he killed her.By the time he was twenty-eight, Gerald confessed to murdering up to forty women over an eleven-year period. How they died was left to the moment: strangled, stabbed, drowned, or shot. Why? They crossed Gerald's path and were tossed out like trash. But there were other troubling questions: How did this obsessive loner lure so many women into his car? And how could so many appalling crimes go unconnected for so long?Based on exclusive access to the killer-and extensive correspondence with him-as well as interviews with the lead investigator and the victims' families, this is a revealing, shocking, and unflinching portrait of a man who fancied himself one of the greatest lady-killers of them all.
The Lost Brothers: A Family's Decades-Long Search
Jack El-Hai - 2019
The Klein brothers—Kenneth Jr., 8; David, 6; and Danny, 4—never came home. When two caps turned up on the ice of the Mississippi River, investigators concluded that the boys had drowned and closed the case. The boys’ parents were unconvinced, hoping against hope that their sons would still be found. Sixty long years would pass before two sheriff’s deputies, with new information in hand and the FBI on board, could convince the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to reopen the case.This is the story of that decades-long ordeal, one of the oldest known active missing-child investigations, told by a writer whose own research for an article in 1998 sparked new interest in the boys’ disappearance. Beginning in 2012, when deputies Jessica Miller and Lance Salls took up the Kleins’ cause, author Jack El-Hai returns to the mountain of clues amassed through the years, then follows the trail traced over time by the boys’ indefatigable parents, right back to those critical moments in 1951. Told in brisk, longform journalism style, The Lost Brothers captures the Kleins’ initial terror and confusion but also the unstinting effort, with its underlying faith, that carried them from psychics to reporters to private investigators and TV producers—and ultimately produced results that cast doubt on the drowning verdict and even suggested possible suspects in the boys’ abduction. An intimate portrait of a parent’s worst nightmare and its terrible toll on a family, the book is also a genuine mystery, spinning out suspense at every missed turn or potential lead, along with its hope for resolution in the end.
Son of Sam: Based on the Authorized Transcription of the Tapes, Official Documents and Diaries of David Berkowitz
Lawrence D. Klausner - 1980
true crimes
The Trials of Walter Ogrod: The Shocking Murder, So-Called Confessions, and Notorious Snitch That Sent a Man to Death Row
Thomas Lowenstein - 2017
Plucked from her own front yard, Barbara Jean was found dead less than two and a half hours later in a cardboard TV box dragged to a nearby street curb. After months of investigation with no strong leads, the case went cold. Four years later it was reopened, and Walter Ogrod, a young man with autism spectrum disorder who had lived across the street from the family at the time of the murder, was brought in as a suspect.Ogrod bears no resemblance to the composite police sketch based on eyewitness accounts of the man carrying the box, and there is no physical evidence linking him to the crime. His conviction was based solely on a confession he signed after thirty-six hours without sleep. “They said I could go home if I signed it,” Ogrod told his brother from the jailhouse. The case was so weak that the jury voted unanimously to acquit him, but at the last second—in a dramatic courtroom declaration—one juror changed his mind. As he waited for a retrial, Ogrod’s fate was sealed when a notorious jailhouse snitch was planted in his cell block and supplied the prosecution with a second supposed confession. As a result, Walter Ogrod sits on death row for the murder today.Informed by police records, court transcripts, interviews, letters, journals, and more, award-winning journalist Thomas Lowenstein leads readers through the facts of the infamous Horn murder case in compelling, compassionate, and riveting fashion. He reveals explosive new evidence that points to a condemned man’s innocence and exposes a larger underlying pattern of prosecutorial misconduct in Philadelphia.
The Witch of Delray: Rose Veres & Detroit’s Infamous 1930s Murder Mystery
Karen Dybis - 2017
Political scandals, rumrunners and mobs lurked in the shadows of the city’s soaring architecture and industrious population. As the Great Depression began to take hold, tensions grew, spilling over into the investigation of a mysterious murder at the boardinghouse of Hungarian immigrant Rose Veres. Amid accusations of witchcraft, Rose and her son Bill were convicted of the brutal killing and suspected in a dozen more. Their cries of innocence went unheeded—until one lawyer, determined to seek justice, took on the case. Author Karen Dybis follows the twists and turns of this shocking story, revealing the truth of Detroit’s own Hex Woman.
The Strange Case Of Dr. H.H. Holmes
John Borowski - 2005
H.H. Holmes" contains three fully illustrated, unabridged primary source books, plus Holmes' published confession as originally documented shortly before his execution. For the first time in over a century, these materials are again available - and all in one book. HOLMES' OWN STORY by Herman W. Mudgett - 1895 In this autobiography, Holmes recounts his childhood years, and life's trials and tribulations. THE HOLMES-PITEZEL CASE by Detective Frank Geyer - 1896 Included are rare court transcripts, expert witness testimony, and in-depth criminal and legal detection methods utilized in the trial against Holmes. THE HOLMES CASTLE by Robert Corbitt - 1895 Robert Corbitt entered the Holmes "castle" when the investigation into the horrors first began. Learn what made Corbitt believe that Holmes was innocent. THE CONFESSION OF H.H. HOLMES - 1896 Holmes gives the media what they want...a confession. UNABRIDGED - ILLUSTRATED
The Good-Bye Door: The Incredible True Story of America's First Female Serial Killer to Die in the Chair
Diana Britt Franklin - 2006
When the State of Ohio strapped its first woman into the electric chair, Hahn gained a place in the annals of crime as the nation's first female serial killer to be executed in the chair.Told here for the first time in riveting detail is Anna Marie's gripping story, an almost unbelievable tale of multiple murders, deceit, and greed.Born in Bavaria in 1906, Anna Marie brought shame to her pious family when, as a teenager, she gave birth to an illegitimate son, Oscar. She was shipped off to America in 1929 where she initially lived with elderly relatives in Cincinnati. A year later she married Philip Hahn, a Western Union telegrapher, with whom she bought a new house and opened a delicatessen/bakery.Pressed economically by the Great Depression, the ever-resourceful Anna Marie found other ways to get the money to support her passionate pasttime--betting on horses. She tried burning down the house, then the deli, for the insurance; and she tried killing her husband, also for the insurance. Then she took to befriending the neighborhood elderly, latching on to their life savings before feeding them arsenic with deadly results.For weeks her Cincinnati trial for "the greatest mass murder in the history of the country" was a front-page sensation across the nation. A thousand or more curiosity seekers came daily to the courthouse to try to get just a glimpse of her. Nearly 100 witnesses gave damning testimony against her, and the jury's guilty verdict put her on the path to the electric chair. Finally, after a year, all appeals were exhausted, and Anna Marie, age 32, was executed on December 7, 1938, at the state penitentiary in Columbus.True crime buffs, historians, legal professionals, and others seeking an extraordinary story will find The Goodbye Door a compelling addition to true crime literature.
I, a Squealer: The Insider's Account of the "Pied Piper of Tucson" Murders
Richard Bruns - 2018
The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and The Righteous Brothers filled the airwaves. Television shows like "The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriett" and "The Andy Griffith Show" mirrored the innocence of life in the dusty city of Tucson, Az. But the sunbaked desert surrounding Tucson was hiding a sinister secret. A psychopath names Charles Schmid, later nicknamed the "Pied Piper of Tucson" by Life Magazine, would steal that innocence away, along with the lives of three beautiful teenage girls.In this firsthand account written in 1967, Richard Bruns shares the evolution of his friendship with Schmid, the details of getting involved way in over his head, and how he finally summoned the courage to blow the whistle to end the deadly rampage that shocked the nation and changed the city of Tucson forever.
My Brother's Keeper: A Thirty-Year Quest To Bring Two Killers To Justice
Chris Russo Blackwood - 2017
Little did he know his quest would consume a fortune and take thirty years to reach its dramatic conclusion.Thwarted at first by the fact that his brother’s body could not be located and a new district attorney reluctant to prosecute as a result, Kergen had to keep track of the killers from New Orleans’ notorious French Quarter to Las Vegas and points in between and wait for a break in the case that seemed like it would never come. Then nearly thirty years later, science, detective work and especially a brother's love and tenacity would combine for a resolution that would end in a dramatic trial in which one of the killers' diary would be a star witness.
Strangler
Corey Mitchell - 2007
Then he wanted the whole world to know it. After brutally killing a 16-year-old girl, he called the local NBC and told an editor precisely where to find the body.
Cincinnati's Savage Seamstress: The Shocking Edythe Klumpp Murder Scandal
Richard O. Jones - 2014
When investigators learned that her estranged husband was living with an older divorcee, Edythe Klumpp, they wasted no time in questioning her. When she failed a lie detector test, Edythe spilled out a confession. Although it did not fit the physical evidence, she was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair. Governor Michael V. DiSalle put his political career on the line to save Edythe from the death penalty, personally interviewing the prisoner while she was under the influence of truth serum." But was it the truth? Richard O Jones separates the facts from the fiction in this comprehensive book about the Klumpp murder."
Shallow Grave in Trinity County
Harry Farrell - 1997
Explores the tragic story of a small California town rocked by the 1955 murder of fourteen-year-old Stephanie Bryan, whose killer turned out to be college student Burton Abbott, who lived nearby.
A Monster Of All Time: The True Story of Danny Rolling, The Gainesville Ripper
J.T. Hunter - 2018
They dreamed of beginning careers and starting families. They had a lifetime of experiences in front of them. But death came without warning in the dark of the night. Brutally ending five promising lives, leaving behind three gruesome crime scenes, the Gainesville Ripper terrorized the University of Florida, casting an ominous shadow across a frightened college town. What evil lurked inside him? What demons drove him to kill? What made him 'A Monster of All Time'? JT Hunter is a bestselling true crime author and attorney living in Florida. His books include: Devil in The Darkness: True Story of Serial Killer ISRAEL KEYES The Country Boy Killer: The True Story of Serial Killer Cody Legebokoff In Colder Blood: True Story of the Walker Family Murder as depicted in Truman Capote’s, In Cold Blood Deadly Deception: True Story of Tampa Serial Killer, Bobby Joe Long Death Row Romeo: The True Story of Serial Killer Oscar Ray Bolin The Vampire Next Door: True Story of the Vampire Rapist and Serial Killer All JT's books are available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback and Audiobook editions