There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second City. Life was cheaper than a quart of illicit gin in the gangland capital of the world. But two murders that spring were special - worthy of celebration. So believed Maurine Watkins, a wanna-be playwright and a "girl reporter" for the Chicago Tribune, the city's "hanging paper." Newspaperwomen were supposed to write about clubs, cooking and clothes, but the intrepid Miss Watkins, a minister's daughter from a small town, zeroed in on murderers instead. Looking for subjects to turn into a play, she would make "Stylish Belva" Gaertner and "Beautiful Beulah" Annan - both of whom had brazenly shot down their lovers - the talk of the town. Love-struck men sent flowers to the jail and newly emancipated women sent impassioned letters to the newspapers. Soon more than a dozen women preened and strutted on "Murderesses' Row" as they awaited trial, desperate for the same attention that was being lavished on Maurine Watkins's favorites. In the tradition of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City and Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City, Douglas Perry vividly captures Jazz Age Chicago and the sensationalized circus atmosphere that gave rise to the concept of the celebrity criminal. Fueled by rich period detail and enlivened by a cast of characters who seemed destined for the stage, The Girls of Murder City is crackling social history that simultaneously presents the freewheeling spirit of the age and its sober repercussions.

    Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house on F street in Sacramento, taking in the city's homeless. But when corpses were dug up in her garden, it became clear the "kind-hearted" landlady was, in fact, a psychotic killer.Carla Norton is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller PERFECT VICTIM, which the FBI put on their Behavioral Sciences Unit reading list. She served as the special sections editor for the San Jose Mercury News and has written for numerous publications. She has an MFA from Goddard College and has twice served as a judge for the Edgar Awards. THE EDGE OF NORMAL, which won a Royal Palm Literary Award, is her highly anticipated debut novel to be released in September 2013. She lives in California and Florida."Brilliant... A classic!" --Ann Rule“Stunning... Disturbed Ground reads as smoothly as the most seamless blockbuster novel … Bravo!” --Jeffrey Deaver

    16 pages of photos.

    Then she took her own little sister prisoner, stole her grandmother's money, and began a three-day orgy of sex and junk food. From the heinous crime itself to the sensational trial, here is the graphic and shocking account of one of the most bizarre killings ever committed in the state of New York.

    He became first controlling, then violent, and Cathy found herself trapped in a terrifyingly abusive marriage. Eventually, for the sake of her young son, she found the strength to escape. Then in 2006 she saw on TV that her ex-husband was a serial killer.

    on March 1, 2008, Terry Caffey awoke to find his daughter’s boyfriend standing in his bedroom with a gun. An instant later the teen opened fire, killing Terry’s wife, his two sons, and wounding him 12 times, before setting the house ablaze. Terry fell into deep depression and planned to kill himself, but God intervened. Upon visiting his burned-out property, Terry noticed a scorched scrap of paper from one of his wife’s books leaning against a tree trunk. The page read: “[God, ] I couldn’t understand why You would take my family and leave me behind to struggle along without them. And I guess I still don’t totally understand that part of it. But I do believe that You’re sovereign; You’re in control.” That page was like a direct message from God, and it turned Terry’s life around. Now, one year later, Terry is remarried, the adoptive father of two young sons, and working to rebuild his relationship with his 17-year-old daughter, who is currently serving two life sentences in a Texas state penitentiary for her involvement in the crimes. Terror by Night tells the compelling story of how Terry Caffey found peace after his wife and sons were brutally murdered and his teenage daughter implicated in the crime. Sharing never-before-told details about the night of the crime and subsequent murder trial, it explains how Terry was able to forgive the men who murdered his family, and how he even interceded with the prosecutors on their behalf. A powerful example of how the power of forgiveness can bring healing after tragedy and great loss, it shows how God can bring good out of even the darkest tragedies.

    Local writer Mark Gribben reveals how Dr. James Howard Snook was captured and interrogated, including his gory confession of Theora Hix's death. During the trial, the details of the illicit love affair were so salacious that newspapers could only hint about what really led to the coed's murder and the professor's ultimate punishment. For the first time, read the full account of this astonishing story, from scandalous beginning to tragic end.

    For the first time, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields will reveal the real, hitherto unknown motive for the killing of Odin Lloyd—the only crime for which Hernandez was ever convicted and a revelation so shocking it will shake the foundations of the NFL itself. It will also unpick a pattern of violence and brutality stretching back to his time as a teenager at the University of Florida, revealing further shooting victims, evidence of his involvement in the double murder of Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado in 2012. Featuring new interviews with Hernandez’s cellmates, serving police investigators, prosecutors, psychologists, attorneys—as well as key witnesses including Hernandez’s drug dealer, a male stripper he hired days before the killing of Lloyd—plus extensive testimony from relatives of Hernandez’s victims, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields is the exhaustive, definitive account of the rise and fall of a man undone by his own appetite for violence, gangsterism, power, drugs, and self-destruction. This is the real Aaron Hernandez story—and perhaps just the beginning of a whole new murder investigation.

    Children were not allowed outside to play without adult supervision. But then he was captured, tried, convicted, and put away for life in prison. The community could finally breathe again. They are out of danger. Until the day the convicted killer escapes prison and rains terror upon anyone and everyone in his way. The manhunt pursues, the killer kills, and earns the title of a serial killer. This is the story of Allan Legere—a monster. Inside Bonus - the story of Andrea Yates from the book, "Parents Who Killed Their Children"

    But the ghoulish nature of his art—as well as extensive evidence—points to another name, one that’s left its bloody mark on the pages of history: Jack the Ripper. Cornwell has collected never-before-seen archival material—including a rare mortuary photo, personal correspondence and a will with a mysterious autopsy clause—and applied cutting-edge forensic science to open an old crime to new scrutiny.Incorporating material from Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed, this new edition has been revised and expanded to include eight new chapters, detailed maps and hundreds of images that bring the sinister case to life.

    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.

    Manson...It started with a college course assignment, then escalated into a dangerous obsession. Eighteen-year-old honor student Jason Moss wrote to men whose body counts had made criminal history: men named Dahmer, Manson, Ramirez, and Gacy.Dear Mr. Dahmer...Posing as their ideal victim, Jason seduced them with his words. One by one they wrote him back, showering him with their madness and violent fantasies. Then the game spun out of control. John Wayne Gacy revealed all to Jason -- and invited his pen pal to visit him in prison...Dear Mr. Gacy...It was an offer Jason couldn't turn down. Even if it made him...The book that has riveted the attention of the national media, this may be the most revealing look at serial killers ever recorded and the most illuminating study of the dark places of the human mind ever attempted.

    On Mother’s Day, 1985, the bodies of Kathryn Eastburn and her two young daughters were found in their Fayetteville, North Carolina, home. Katie, an air force captain’s wife, had been raped and stabbed to death. Kara and Erin’s throats had been slit. Their toddler sister, Jana, was the only survivor of a bloody killing spree that terrified a community still reeling from the conviction, six years prior, of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald for the savage slayings of his pregnant wife and two daughters.   The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department soon focused its investigation on US Army soldier Tim Hennis. Detectives and local prosecutors built their case on circumstantial evidence and a jury convicted Hennis and sentenced him to death. But his defense team refused to give up. Piece by piece, they discredited the state’s case, exposing false testimony, concealed evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct. At a second trial, Hennis was found not guilty and released from death row.   But an even more stunning turn of events was yet to come. Twenty-five years after the murders, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation tested a crucial piece of DNA evidence from the crime scene. The shocking results led to an unprecedented third trial to determine Tim Hennis’s guilt or innocence.   From the initial discovery of the horrifying scene at 367 Summer Hill Road to the controversial change of jurisdiction that allowed Hennis to be prosecuted for an astonishing third time, author Scott Whisnant chronicles every development in this intricate, disturbing, and still-evolving case. Has the mystery of who killed Katie, Kara, and Erin Eastburn been solved beyond a reasonable doubt? Read Innocent Victims and decide for yourself.

    But he was an A student, a Deans’ Award winner. How could this happen?CNN could not get the story. The Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and all others came up empty because Steve’s friends and professors knew very little. He had reinvented himself in his final five years. But David Vann, investigating for Esquire, went back to Steve’s high school and junior high friends, found a life perfectly shaped for mass murder, and gained full access to the entire 1,500 pages of the police files. The result: the most complete portrait we have of any school shooter. But Vann doesn’t stop there. He recounts his own history with guns, contemplating a school shooting. This book is terrifying and true, a story you’ll never forget.

    He called for help, but it was too late. Two trials and eight years later, the founder of the largest reform synagogue in southern New Jersey became the first rabbi ever convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.In a gripping examination of the misuses of the pulpit and the self-delusions of power, Arthur J. Magida paints a devastating portrait of a manipulative man who used his position of trust in the temple to attract several mistresses -- and to befriend a lonely recovering alcoholic, whom he convinced to kill his wife "for the good of Israel."The Rabbi and the Hit Man straddles the juncture of faith and trust, and confronts issues of sex, narcissism, arrogance, and adultery. It is the definitive account of a charismatic clergyman who paid the ultimate price for ignoring his own words of wisdom: "We live at any moment with our total past ... What we do will stay with us forever."