It started with a broken conveyor belt. When the mechanical malfunction brought eighteen-year-old McDonald’s employee Derek Wood into the restaurant’s back room, he saw the safe and got a dangerous idea. It would be so easy to prop the back door open, allowing two friends to sneak inside and steal the money. Wood assumed there was at least $200,000 in the cashbox—an incredible haul for just a few minutes’ work—but things would not go according to plan.   The robbery went wrong from the start, and within minutes, a fast-food restaurant in the wilds of Nova Scotia was turned into a bloodbath. Wood and his accomplices attacked the employees, killing three instantly and leaving the fourth for dead. In the safe, where they had expected to find a fortune, there was barely $2,000. They fled the scene, instigating a manhunt that would captivate the nation.   In the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Onion Field, this stunning work of true crime tells the story of the small-town murder that shocked a nation. Phonse Jessome brings a trained journalist’s eye to the case, which remains one of the most horrifying incidents of suburban violence in recent history.

    For the quiet town of Ipswich it was fifty days of fear and soul seatching, from the disappearance of the first victim to the dramatic arrest of the lead suspect, Steve Wright.Journalist Paul Harrison and Professor of Criminology David Wilson arrived in Ipswich just as the first body was discovered. Their on-the-scene access, and Professor Wilson's unique experience as a profiler, meant that they were first to put forward the explosive theory that a serial killer was at large.In 'Hunting Evil' Harrison and Wilson take the reader to the heart of the story. Both visited the sites where the killer disposed of his victims' bodies; both walked the red-light area of Ipswich; and both talked to those who were closest to the victims and to Steve Wright. They explore the reasons why someone will kill and kill again and, perhaps most important of all, explain how serial killers target the most vulnerable in our society, and what can be done to make our communities safer for everyone.With sensitive portraits of the victims, a close examination of the police investigation, and full details of the trial, 'Hunting Evil' is the definitive account of a national tragedy.

    He was one of the first soldiers to encounter the fledgling insurgency in Iraq. After years of military service he returned to New Orleans to tend bar and deliver groceries. In the weeks before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, he met Addie Hall, a pretty and high-spirited bartender. Their improvised, hard-partying endurance during and after the storm had news outlets around the world featuring the couple as the personification of what so many want to believe is the indomitable spirit of New Orleans.But in October 2006, Bowen leaped from the rooftop bar of a French Quarter hotel. A note in his pocket directed the police to the body of Addie Hall. It was, according to NOPD veterans, one of the most gruesome crimes in the city’s history. How had this popular, handsome father of two done this horrible thing?Journalist Ethan Brown moved from New York City to the French Quarter in order to investigate this question. Among the newsworthy elements in the book is Brown’s discovery that this tragedy—like so many others—could have been avoided if the military had simply not, in the words of Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, “absolutely and completely failed this soldier.” Shake the Devil Off is a mesmerizing tribute to these lives lost.

    A friendship grew from their shared lust for sadistic brutality, and once released, they teamed up to hunt human prey. In March, 1998, in Pensacola, Florida, while quietly watching TV, Leighton Smitherman was shot in the back by assailants hiding outside his home. Amazingly, he survived, not knowing that he'd been chosen at random by would-be-thrill-killers. Their next target wasn't so lucky. Justin Livingston, 20, died from multiple stab wounds - some more than six inches deep. The horror peaked on 7 May 1999, when Rodgers went on a date with pretty Jennifer Robinson, 18, with Lawrence tagging along. The young woman was drugged and assaulted first by Rodgers, then Lawrence, before Rodgers shot her execution-style. But the worse was yet to come, an unspeakable act of mutilation that followed in the bloody footsteps of one of the most infamous serial killers of our time...

    Once the old, cantankerous Sam Clevenger and his wife, Charlotte, hired Frank Willson and John Johnson to help with the move, their fate took a dark turn. These true events were documented by journalists through the 1887 trial and well into the 1900s, and stories have been told of Sam’s unfound treasure for nearly 130 years. But, this is the first detailed, documented, and vetted account of their bizarre and fascinating tale.

    It is a gory, grotesque tale befitting a Stephen King novel. It is also a David and Goliath saga—the story of a young lawyer fresh from the Public Defender’s Office whose first client in private practice turns out to be the worst serial killer in our nation’s history. Sam Amirante had just opened his first law practice when he got a phone call from his friend John Wayne Gacy, a well-known and well-liked community figure. Gacy was upset about what he called “police harassment” and asked Amirante for help. With the police following his every move in connection with the disappearance of a local teenager, Gacy eventually gives a drunken, dramatic, early morning confession—to his new lawyer. Gacy is eventually charged with murder and Amirante suddenly becomes the defense attorney for one of American’s most disturbing serial killers. It is his first case. This is a gripping narrative that reenacts the gruesome killings and the famous trial that shocked a nation.

    Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family—and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood. Finally, roughly his father’s age when he died, and a seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died “after visiting friends,” the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael’s all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity—and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father’s buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he’d imagined with the one he comes to know—and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother.A stirring portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets, After Visiting Friends is the story of a son who goes in search of the truth and finds not only his father, but a rare window into a world of men and newspapers and fierce loyalties that no longer exists.

    Soon after Martha's body was discovered, attention focused on members of the Skakel family, who lived across the street from the Moxleys. Ethel Skakel and Robert Kennedy had married in Greenwich, and the two families were close. Thomas Skakel, Ethel's nephew, was the last known person to see Martha alive. The murder weapon, a ladies' golf club, came from the Skakel household. When the Greenwich police tried to pursue its investigation, however, the community closed in upon itself. Lawyers were summoned, walls went up, information was suppressed, and no one was charged. And yet, continuing to haunt Greenwich, the case refused to go away--until, twenty-three years later, following the publication of this book, a grand jury was convened, and two years after that a man--Thomas's brother Michael--was finally indicted for the crime.This revised edition now brings the Martha Moxley murder case to a close. Updated to include the indictment, trial, and conviction of the murderer, Greentown offers the suspenseful and chilling account of a terrible crime. More than that, while relating a tale of seductive power, it uses the murder to tell the heartrending story of a family and a community responding to the unthinkable.