Book picks similar to
Playing With Fire: The True Story of a Nurse, Her Husband, and a Marriage Turned Fatal by John Glatt
true-crime
crime
non-fiction
nonfiction
Casino: Screenplay
Nicholas Pileggi - 1996
The film makes daring use of voice-over and rapidly shifting points of view and time frame, leaving conventional film language far behind.
First Degree Rage
Paula May - 2020
The key suspect is a police officer in NC. It is written by Paula May, who was the lead detective in the case.
Those Days in January: The Abduction and Murder of Meredith Hope Emerson
John Cagle - 2020
The search would last only five days before the worst came to pass. Gary Hilton, suspected in the deaths of three more hikers across the Southeast, was arrested for her murder. What was once a small mountain town had fallen into the sights of a serial killer. Less than a month later, Hilton would plead guilty and be sentenced to life in prison in one of the swiftest cases in Georgia history. Lead investigator John Cagle shares the details of the investigation from start to finish in this day-by-day account. Witness the struggle firsthand to seek justice for Meredith, all while protecting her memory from the opportunists, sensationalist reporters, and unscrupulous practices that threatened to deny her the dignity she deserves. Discover not only the facts of her murder, but the impact on the personal lives of those who worked tirelessly to find her. For them, those days in January will never end.
INCONVENIENCE GONE: The Short Tragic Life Of Brandon Sims
Diane Marger Moore - 2018
Jones was employed, confident, talented, smart, assertive and involved in many community activities in Indianapolis, Indiana. In contrast, when he was last seen, Brandon Sims, an only child, was a serious, quiet, thin boy who rarely maintained eye contact with his mother. After that night, he was never seen again. His body has never been found. For years Jones lied to her friends about Brandon, telling some that he was living with his father and others that he was staying with his grandmother in another state. When Brandon's father, who had been in jail, came looking for Brandon, Michelle's shocked friends confronted her. She confessed that Brandon was dead. She repeated her story of how Brandon died to a detective, after she admitted herself to the local psych unit. Days later she checked out of the unit and refused to reveal where he had hidden Brandon's body. She was sure she had gotten away with murder. And she would have except the detective didn't believe her story. He enlisted the help of a novice prosecutor because no experienced prosecutor would take the case. In Indiana, no one had ever been convicted of murder without a body. That prosecutor has written a book that reads like a mystery novel instead of the real murder prosecution. Truth is stranger than fiction where Santeria curses, the law and politics are only a few of obstacles to justice.
Never Let Them See You Cry
Edna Buchanan - 1992
Buchanan describes murder, mayhem and madness in Miami.
Hunter S. Thompson: The Playboy Interview
Hunter S. Thompson - 2012
It covered jazz, of course, but it also included Davis’s ruminations on race, politics and culture. Fascinated, Hef sent the writer—future Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Alex Haley, an unknown at the time—back to glean even more opinion and insight from Davis. The resulting exchange, published in the September 1962 issue, became the first official Playboy Interview and kicked off a remarkable run of public inquisition that continues today—and that has featured just about every cultural titan of the last half century.To celebrate the Interview’s 50th anniversary, the editors of Playboy have culled 50 of its most (in)famous Interviews and will publish them over the course of 50 weekdays (from September 4, 2012 to November 12, 2012) via Amazon’s Kindle Direct platform. Here is the interview with the journalist Hunter S. Thompson from the November 1974 issue.
Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain
Carroll Pickett - 2002
Carroll Pickett, working with two time Edgar Award-winner and New York Times best selling author Carlton Stowers, provides this eloquent, unflinching look at capital punishment.Within These Walls is the powerful memoir of Rev. Pickett, who spent fifteen years as the death house chaplain at "The Walls," the Huntsville unit of the Texas prison system. In that capacity Rev. Pickett ministered to 95 men before they were put to death by lethal injection. They came with sinister nicknames like "The Candy Man" and "The Good Samaritan Killer," some contrite, some angry-a few who might even have been innocent. All of them found in Rev. Pickett their last chance for an unbiased confessor who would look at them only as fellow humans, not simply as the convicted criminals the rest of society had already dismissed them as. This first-hand experience gave Rev. Pickett the unique insight needed to write an impassioned statement on the realities of capital punishment in America. The result is a thought-provoking and compelling book that takes the reader inside the criminal mind, inside the execution chamber, and inside the heart of a remarkable man who shares his thoughts and observations not only about capital punishment, but about the dark world of prison society.
Queen City Gothic: Cincinnati's Most Infamous Murder Mysteries
J.T. Townsend - 2009
But when the killer is never captured, a family's paralyzing grief only compounds. Years pass. Pain grows. Time heals nothing. Parents, spouses, and children of the victims never find peace. Investigators continue to lie awake night after night, year after year, thinking, "If only..." Cold cases fascinate us because of the endless possibilities. What if Alice Hochhausler hadn't driven her daughter home from work while a strangler was running loose? What if Oda Apple's wife hadn't sent him to the corner drugstore? What if Linda Bricca hadn't been so beautiful - and her husband not a workaholic? J. T. Townsend takes us on a sinister journey through thirteen cases, which took place in Cincinnati, Ohio, between 1904 and 1971. You'll meet Frances Brady, a pretty bride-to-be gunned down at her own front door. Tommy Coby, age eight, who arrived home to an empty house, and learned later his parents were lying dead in their car. Patty Rebholz, a popular cheerleader, who was bludgeoned in a neighbor's backyard while walking to break up with her teenage boyfriend. What do these cases have in common? A fleeting, irrational act of violence with no resolution. Somebody literally got away with murder. Each episode took place in sheer moments--but hundreds of innocent people still remember, still mourn, and are still haunted by horrible, unbearable images. Townsend's riveting accounts include never-before-published details from police files and insights from both investigators and witnesses. Finally someone has managed to put all of the pieces together. Whodunit? We'll never know for sure--but we can certainly make some informed, calculated guesses. Meanwhile, on these pages, each victim returns to vibrant life, becomes as real to us as to those loved ones they left behind--and still cries out for justice.
Daddy's Girl: The Campbell Murder Case
Clifford Irving - 1988
With no witnesses and only allegations of family greed, incest, and sexual abuse, the murder remains unsolved for years. The most likely suspects, the victims' youngest daughter Cindy, and her ex-Marine boyfriend, David West, had an alibi the police could not crack. And then West fell in love with Kim Paris, a sexy ex-stripper turned private investigator. She coaxed a confession from him that led to a complex murder case exploding into national news. Clifford Irving wrote: "I started out in Houston as a writer on assignment . . . but I became an investigator, a friend to many of the dramatis personae, and a trial witness. As a result, to my discomfort, I helped to determine the outcome of events . . ." The story of Cindy, a tortured woman, and David, a man determined to do the right thing even if it required multiple murder, is as spectacular and thrilling a true-crime courtroom drama as you will ever read.
Murders of Merseyside
Tom Slemen - 2011
In this compelling study of true crime, Liverpool's most popular author Tom Slemen recounts some of the most intriguing and baffling murders of Merseyside such as:• The baffling case of the Victorian canned corpse• The magistrate's beautiful granddaughter who was killed by a crazed admirer• The condemned man who was hanged twice• Frederick Deeming - the Rainhill psychopath who wiped out his own family and danced on their grave with his next victim• The bizarre link between a South Seas cult and the housewife who was stabbed fourteen times in her Knotty Ash home by a killer who struck under the cover of a fog• The unsolved case of the superintendent and his son who died of gunshot wounds under mysterious circumstances - in a police station• The enigmatic murder of Julia Wallace - and a very credible solution• The only assassination of a British prime minister - by a Liverpool businessman Plus many more fascinating murder cases.This fascinating book is a must for all readers of true crime in general and Liverpudlians and Merseysiders in particular.
Without Honour: The True Story of the Shafia Family and the Kingston Canal Murders
Rob Tripp - 2012
A father, mother and son convicted of murder. The shocking truth about the “ honourless crime” that stunned a nation.On the morning of June 30, 2009, police in a small eastern Ontario city made a ghastly discovery: four females dead in a car submerged in a shallow canal. Sisters Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar Shafia, 17, Geeti Shafia, 13, and Rona Mohammad Amir, 50, floated serenely inside the car, seemingly the victims of a terrible accident. That morning, Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba and their son, Hamed, arrived at the Kingston police station to report the four missing. In a sweeping covert investigation that spanned three continents, police uncovered layers of lies in the Shafias’ story and they developed a horrifying theory: Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona had been the victims of a meticulously plotted family murder � Canada’ s first mass honour killing.In Without Honour, award-winning journalist Rob Tripp draws on three years of exhaustive research and exclusive interviews to make sense of a senseless crime in a way no other writer could. His unprecedented access tells a story beyond anything the jury heard: a story about a patriarch who fled war and strife in Afghanistan but who did not leave behind his devotion to repressive tradition. Tripp was the first journalist on the scene as the news broke and the only reporter to attend every day of court sessions, through to the convictions of Shafia, Tooba and Hamed on four counts each of first-degree murder, fuelled by what Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger called a “ twisted notion of honour.” In this gripping and compassionate account, Tripp reveals the heartbreaking and stunning truth about the desperate lives of four women who died in the pursuit of freedom.
Cold Cases: Solved Volume 1: 18 Fascinating True Crime Cases
Robert Keller - 2021
What happens to them is beyond your most terrifying nightmares.You’re History: The discovery of a human skull panics a killer into a confession. Perhaps he should have waited for the coroner’s report.Cold-Blooded: Karen was the former wife of an American icon. But celebrity is no shield against a determined psychopath.The Janitor: When a preteen girl goes missing from a school, suspicion falls on the one person all of the female students are wary of – the creepy janitor.A Bullet for Your Broken Heart: Roy Joe had been dealt many tribulations in his life. None of them, though, was as bad as Carolyn.The Other Ripper: For years, Joan was thought to be a victim of Britain’s most notorious slayer. Her killer turned out to be a different psychopath entirely.Young Blood: Two teenagers meet up for a moonlight tryst in an abandoned building. One of them won’t make it out alive.Neighborhood Monster: It was a simple errand, a quick run to the store in a safe neighborhood. It should not have cost a little girl her life.Plus 10 more horrific true murder cases. Scroll up to grab a copy of Cold Cases: Solved Volume 1.
Murder at 40 Below: True Crime Stories from Alaska
Tom Brennan - 2001
Drawn from police files, eyewitness accounts, and news reports, these stories introduce extreme criminals in an extreme land. Meet church-going big-game hunter Robert Hanson, who stalked topless dancers for more than a decade, and Robert Stroud, a construction worker who killed a bartender in Juneau, later to become the nationally known "Birdman of Alcatraz."
Zodiac
Robert Graysmith - 1986
A sexual sadist who taunted police with anonymous notes. A madman who was never apprehended. This is the first, complete account of Zodiac's reign of terror. Is he still out there?
Amy: My Search for Her Killer: Secrets & Suspects in the Unsolved Murder of Amy Mihaljevic
James Renner - 2006
Thousands of volunteers, every available police officer, and scores of FBI officers descended upon the town to hunt for the girl. Her picture was everywhere--anyone who watched the local TV news then remembers the photograph of the girl with the sideways ponytail dangling from one side of her smiling face. That image also became indelible in the mind of an eleven-year-old boy almost fifty miles away. James Renner never forgot Amy. Even at that young age, he vowed to find her. Tragically, Amy Mihaljevic was found dead a few months later. Her killer, however, was never found. The case remains unsolved. That cold case never left the mind of the impressionable young boy, who grew up and became a reporter for an alternative weekly magazine in Cleveland. Fifteen years after Amy's body was found, Renner picked up the leads himself and began trying to solve the crime. Filled with myste