Book picks similar to
Wasted by Suzy Spencer


true-crime
non-fiction
crime
lgbt

Seven Days of Rage: The Deadly Crime Spree of the Craigslist Killer (48 Hours Mystery)


Paul LaRosa - 2006
    But Philip Markoff, the handsome, clean-cut, twenty-two-year-old med student who hired Brisman on Craigslist, had different plans. On April 14, 2009, guests notified management of a woman screaming on the twentieth floor, and Brisman was found in a pool of blood, with several bullet wounds to her torso and…plastic restraints around her wrist.Hotel surveillance video captured Markoff’s image, and an additional tip helped police connect him to attacks on several other women, including a prostitute who was tied up at a Boston hotel, and the assault of an exotic dancer in Rhode Island, both of which bear a striking similarity to the Brisman murder.A skillful blend of hard journalism and fascinating yet chilling true-crime narrative, this headline-making story will appeal to fans of Ann Rule.

Internet Slave Master


John Glatt - 2001
    An entrepreneur and Eagle Scout, he was even honored as 'Man of the Year" at a Kansas City charity. To some of the women he met on the Internet, he was known as Slavemaster--a sexual deviate with a taste for sadomasochistic rituals of extreme domination and torture.Masquerading as a philanthropist, he promised women money and adventure. For fifteen years, he trawled the Web, snaring unsuspecting women. They were never seen again. But in the summer of 2000, the decomposed remains of two women were discovered in barrels on Robinson's farm, and three other bodies were found in storage units. Yet the depths of Robinson's bloodlust didn't end there. For authorities, the unspeakable criminal trail of Slavemaster was just beginning... Internet Slave Master is a true story of sadistic murder in the Heartland, told by true crime master John Glatt.

Sleep, My Child, Forever: The Riveting True Story of a Mother Who Murdered Her Own Children


John Coston - 1995
    Louis, Missouri, mother who murdered her two sons—and nearly killed her daughter. Ellen Boehm, a single mom from St. Louis, Missouri, appeared devoted to her children. But in reality, she was unequipped for motherhood, financially strapped, and desperate. Within a year of each other, her sons, ages two and four, died mysteriously, and Boehm’s eight-year-old daughter suffered a near-fatal mishap when a hair dryer fell into the girl’s bath. While neighbors wondered how Boehm remained so calm through it all, Det. Sgt. Joseph Burgoon of St. Louis Homicide had darker suspicions.   Burgoon soon unraveled a labyrinth of deception, greed, and obsession that revealed a cold-blooded killer whose get-rich-quick scheme came at the cost of her children’s lives. Boehm had taken out insurance policies on her children with six different companies totaling nearly $100,000. Using police reports, case documents, and photos, veteran journalist John Coston recreates the events that led to one mother’s unspeakable acts of filicide—and a cop’s relentless pursuit of the truth.

Evil Next Door: The Untold Stories of a Killer Undone by DNA


Amanda Lamb - 2010
     An abundance of DNA evidence. A three-and-a-half year search for a killer who was always so close-yet untouchable. After the rape and murder of Raleigh, North Carolina, resident Stephanie Bennett, police had ample DNA evidence. They also had a suspect: the man next door. But for more than three years, he eluded them by refusing to hand over a DNA sample, wiping down anything he touched and even planting decoy samples. This is the gripping story of how a team of detectives finally tripped him up-and brought closure to an innocent young woman's family.

A Mother's Trial


Nancy Wright - 1984
    Reprint.

A Need to Kill: Confessions of a Teen Murderer


Michael W. Cuneo - 2011
    One night, he waited until they were asleep…then entered the house with a knife. Alec burst into the master bedroom and stabbed Tom and Lisa Haines first. Then he attacked Kevin, who fought for his life. Meanwhile, at the end of the hall, Kevin’s sister Maggie awoke to the sound of violence—and was the only one who made it out alive. Clean-cut and academically gifted, Alec seemed to have no motives, no history of psychosis—and no remorse. Some believed he was a serial killer in the making, a soulless monster plagued by “demons.” Now, for the first time, acclaimed author Michael W. Cuneo shares the inside story—with shocking details of Alec’s confession to his father, disturbing messages to his classmates, and chilling excerpts from his diaries—and takes you inside the dark, troubled mind of this teenage killer.

Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men


Harold Schechter - 2018
    She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn’t merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. They’d been butchered.Hell’s Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter’s gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery—and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare.

Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias


Jane Velez-Mitchell - 2013
    The grisly nature of his death made instant headlines: with twenty-nine knife wounds, his throat slit, and a gunshot to the head, Travis was left to die. The prime suspect in the case was Alexander’s ex-girlfriend, the attractive and soft-spoken Jodi Arias. Though Arias initially said that she was nowhere near the scene of crime, little about this case was as it seemed, and before long she had been caught lying to police. As the investigation progressed, her lies evolved multiple times before finally resting on an appalling claim: she had killed Travis in self-defense. Along the way, startling details emerged about the Mormon couple’s relationship, and soon graphic stories of their lurid sexual encounters and jealousy-driven blowouts revealed a dark side to their life together. These revelations launched a trial filled with sex and deception but also raised substantial questions about Arias’s deceit, as people from across the country struggled to understand the bizarre world of Jodi Arias.Now, award-winning broadcast journalist and bestselling author Jane Velez-Mitchell, a veteran of some of the most storied court cases in recent memory, goes behind the scenes of the trial and into the mind of a killer. Using insider accounts from friends who knew Travis and Jodi, Velez-Mitchell turns her sharply-focused lens on Arias and offers her seasoned perspective on the case’s most pressing questions. Separating fact from fiction, she reports on the bizarre and explicit stories that have both shocked and fascinated the American public—from Jodi’s romantic history before meeting Travis, to their torrid sex life together, to the complicated role their Mormon faith played in the relationship’s demise. With unbridled access to the evidence and the case’s key players, Velez-Mitchell unearths Jodi’s contentious life with those closest to her, examining the paranoid and erratic behavior behind each relationship and illustrating the disturbing pattern of a murderer in the making.Complete with photos from the case and Jane Velez-Mitchell’s fresh insights on the crime, Exposed takes readers behind closed bedroom doors to uncover the truth behind the secret and sordid life of Jodi Arias.

Jeffrey Dahmer: The Gruesome True Story of a Hungry Cannibalistic Rapist and Necrophiliac Serial Killer (Real Crime by Real Killers Book 3)


Ryan Becker - 2017
    Necrophiliac. Kidnapper. Killer.The stories of serial killers often begin with terrible upbringings and sad events of trauma, but not all have such unfortunate beginnings. Some simply develop their evil on their own and become tainted without anyone realizing it.Jeffrey Dahmer was a man described by his own father as the result of a child becoming lost in the maelstrom while nobody paid attention, of a child who was strange and apathetic but who nobody bothered to ask why......The results were catastrophic.Seventeen men lost their lives and were defiled even after death because of the desires of a neglected young boy who just wanted to fulfill his needs. The following is the tale of said child, the same young man who grew up to become the infamous Milwaukee Cannibal, one of the worst serial killers in humanity's history.Jeffrey Dahmer: The Gruesome True Story of a Hungry Cannibalistic Rapist and Necrophiliac Serial Killer (Vol 3) is a book that recounts the tale of the Milwaukee Cannibal, a man capable of committing the most truly degrading acts on his victims before and even after death; a man who to his last days - and long after - still haunts the city of Milwaukee with the memories of his horrific murders.Be warned, reader, you aren't just about to read about Jeffrey Dahmer and his acts.You are about to walk into his very mind.

I Will Find You: Solving Killer Cases from My Life Fighting Crime


Joe Kenda - 2017
    Joe Kenda, star of Homicide Hunter, shares his deepest, darkest, and never before revealed case files from his 19 years as a homicide detective.Are you horrified yet fascinated by abhorrent murders? Do you crave to know the gory details of these crimes, and do you seek comfort in the solving of the most gruesome? In I WILL FIND YOU, the star of Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda shares his deepest, darkest, and never-before-revealed case files from his two decades as a homicide detective and reminds us that crimes like these are very real and can happen even in our own backyards. Gruesome, macabre, and complex cases. Joe Kenda investigated 387 murder cases during his 23 years with the Colorado Springs Police Department and solved almost all of them. And he is ready to detail the cases that are too gruesome to air on television, cases that still haunt him, and the few cases where the killer got away. These cases are horrifyingly real, and the detail is so mesmerizing you won't be able to look away. The tales in I WILL FIND YOU will shock you like the best horror stories-divulging insights into the actions, motivations, and proclivities of nature's most dangerous species. Don't mind the blood.

Pure Evil - How Tracie Andrews murdered my son, decieved the nation and sentenced me to a life of pain and misery


Maureen Harvey - 2007
    His girlfriend, Tracie Andrews, claimed he had been murdered in a road rage attack and, days later, appeared at a press conference making an emotional appeal for witnesses to the crime. During the days following the attack, the horrific truth about what really happened that night became apparent. It was Tracie who had killed Lee and then tried to cover her tracks with a web of lies. In this compelling and harrowing book, Maureen shares the turmoil of a bereaved mother trying to come to terms with the brutal murder of her son while at the same time fighting to bring his killer, who she had welcomed into her home, to justice. She also reveals little-known facts about the investigation and speaks of how her shattered family came through their grief and began to rebuild their lives.

To Die For: The Shocking True Story of Serial Killer Dana Sue Gray


Kathy Braidhill - 2000
    Dropping thousands of dollars on a shopping binge or a luxurious day spa was nothing out of the ordinary for Dana-nor for many wealthy women. But Dana wasn't wealthy-she was an unemployed nurse. She was also a serial murderess, who preyed upon elderly women, violently killed them, then used their credit cards to embark on wild, post-murder spending sprees.Women serial killers are rare-there are only 36 documented cases-and those, like Dana Sue Gray, who murder so brutally that veteran police officers are shaken by the bloodiness of the crime scene, are even rarer. Now, in an exposé as shocking and fascinating as its subject matter, author Kathy Braidhill explores the stunning story of Dana Sue Gray, one of the most dangerous, deadly, and disturbed women in history.

Always In Our Hearts: The Story Of Amy Grossberg, Brian Peterson, The Pregnancy They Hid And The Baby They Killed


Doug Most - 1999
    But in November of their Freshman Year, the two young lovers spent a night in a Delaware motel room where, after hiding her pregnancy from her family and her friends for nine months, Amy gave birth to a baby boy. Only she and Brian knew the child even existed . . . until the next morning when the newborn's corpse turned up in the motel dumpster. The case caused a countrywide outrage, and the teenagers ended up in court, desperately fighting for their lives and ultimately against each other...

Vanished at Sea: The True Story of a Child TV Actor and Double Murder


Tina Dirmann - 2008
    A retired probation officer and a stay-at-home mom, they were looking forward to entering the next phase of their golden years. Their plan: To sell their home--a 55-foot, $435,000 yacht--and start a new life on land...and spend as much time with their grandchildren as possible. The Hawks were thrilled when a young man named Skylar Deleon wanted to buy the boat for himself, his wife, and their two kids. Little did Thomas and Jackie know that this unemployed, former childhood actor and dishonorably discharged Marine had another devious plan in mind: To lure the couple out to sea, force them to sign away their life savings, throw them overboard, and leave them

Poisoned Love


Carlton Smith - 2008
    In 2003, her husband Chuck died of an apparent stroke. Only a month later, she married Chaz Higgs, an ER nurse who, it was later revealed, had attended to her late husband just before his death. Three years later, fifty-year-old Kathy died after a heart attack—the result, her family and friends believed, of a stressful political campaign. But when an autopsy of Kathy’s body revealed no signs of heart disease, investigators dug deeper into Kathy’s case…only to find the presence of a powerful, paralyzing emergency-room drug in Kathy’s system. A jury would later charge Nurse Chaz with murder in the first degree. But could Kathy’s first husband also have been the victim of Chaz’s treachery? And just how much did Kathy know? This is the shocking true story of a family torn apart by lies, medical crime, and POISONED LOVE.