Book picks similar to
Unabomber: On the Trail of America's Most-Wanted Serial Killer by John E. Douglas
true-crime
non-fiction
nonfiction
crime
A Death in Belmont
Sebastian Junger - 2006
Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim's house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the Belmont murder, but the terror of the Strangler continues.On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvo—the man who would eventually confess in lurid detail to the Strangler's crimes—is also in Belmont, working as a carpenter at the Jungers' home. In this spare, powerful narrative, Sebastian Junger chronicles three lives that collide—and ultimately are destroyed—in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.
The Shadow of Death: The Hunt for a Serial Killer
Philip E. Ginsburg - 1993
It is the definitive account of how police and forensic psychologists work to track a killer, and it is the harrowing story of bucolic innocence lost when murder becomes a fact of small-town life. In this brilliant work of true-crime reportage, Philip E. Ginsburg, acclaimed author of the bestselling Poisoned Blood, re-creates for us the terror of the small communities unnerved by inexplicable murders that begin to occur with horrifying regularity. Ginsburg takes us deep into the lives of the women who died, so that we share the pain of their families and friends as the connections among the several deaths become chillingly clear. He introduces us to the most up-to-date methods today's police use to bring a serial killer to justice, making real the close-knit world of the small-town policemen for whom there is no distinction between the personal and professional when their own families are in danger. And, most harrowing of all, Ginsburg paints an indelible portrait of the psychologist who must burrow inside the mind of the unknown serial killer, and who must identify with the murderer even as he works with the police to capture him. Philip E. Ginsburg's new book is imbued with the same unerring sense of dramatic pacing and "bang-up investigative reporting" that made Poisoned Blood "one of the most riveting true-crime stories in memory," according to Publisher's Weekly. The Shadow of Death is superb and mesmerizing true-crime writing.
The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime
Michael H. Stone - 2019
Michael Stone's groundbreaking 22-level Gradations of Evil Scale, a hierarchy of evil behavior first introduced in the book The Anatomy of Evil, Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato, a fellow violence and serious psychopathology expert, here provide even more detail, using dozens of cases to exemplify the categories along the continuum. The New Evil also presents compelling evidence that, since a cultural tipping-point in the 1960s, certain types of violent crime have emerged that in earlier decades never or very rarely occurred. The authors examine the biological and psychiatric factors behind serial killing, serial rape, torture, mass and spree murders, and other severe forms of violence. They persuasively argue that, in at least some cases, a collapse of moral faculties contributes to the commission of such heinous crimes, such that "evil" should be considered not only a valid area of inquiry, but, in our current cultural climate, an imperative one. They consider the effects of new technologies and sociological, cultural, and historical factors since the 1960s that may have set the stage for "the new evil." Further, they explain how personality, psychosis, and other qualities can meaningfully contribute to particular crimes, making for many different motives.Relying on their extensive clinical experience, and examination of writings and artwork by infamous serial killers, these experts offer many insights into the logic that drives horrible criminal behavior, and they discuss the hope that in the future such violence may be prevented.
Smooth Talker: Trail of Death
Steve Jackson - 2016
Thirty years of dead ends. Until one rookie investigator began piecing it all together. One morning in July 1974, Anita Andrews, the owner and bartender at Fagiani’s Cocktail Lounge in Napa, California was found dead in her bar–raped, beaten, and stabbed to death in a bloody frenzy. She’d last been seen alive the night before talking to a drifter who sat at the end of the bar, playing cards and flirting with her. But the stranger, along with Anita’s Cadillac, had disappeared. Unable to locate a suspect, police investigators sadly watched the case grow cold over the years. "Jackson writes with muscle and heart.--New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen Meanwhile a month after Anita’s murder, young Michele Wallace, was driving down a road in the mountains near Crested Butte, Colorado, when she gave two stranded motorists, Chuck Matthews and a man named Roy, a ride. Dropping Matthews off at a bar in Gunnison, she agreed to take “Roy” to his truck. She was never seen alive again, nor could a massive search of the mountains locate her remains. The trail leading to her killer also ran into deadends. Fourteen years later, Charlotte Sauerwin, engaged to be married, met a smooth-talking man at a Laundromat in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. The next evening, her body was found in the woods; she’d been raped, tortured, and her throat slashed. The police suspected her fiance, Vince LeJeune, though he proclaimed his innocence to anyone who would listen. Meanwhile, the man from the Laundromat couldn’t be located. The three murders would remain unsolved, eating at the hearts, minds and lives of the women’s families, friends and communities. Then in the early 1990s, a rookie Gunnison County sheriff’s investigator named Kathy Young began looking into the Wallace case and identified a suspect named Roy Melanson, a serial rapist from Texas. It would lead her and other investigators looking into murders and rapes in other states to a serial killer who struck again and again with seeming impunity. SMOOTH TALKER is the story of Melanson, his depredations, and the intrepid police work that went into bringing him to justice not just in Colorado, but California and Louisiana.
The Most Dangerous Animal of All
Gary L. Stewart - 2014
Stewart decided to search for his biological father. His quest would lead him to a horrifying truth and force him to reconsider everything he thought he knew about himself and his world.Written with award-winning author and journalist Susan Mustafa, The Most Dangerous Animal of All tells the story of Stewart's decade-long hunt. While combing through government records and news reports and tracking down relatives and friends, Stewart turns up a host of clues—including forensic evidence—that conclusively identify his father as the Zodiac Killer, one of the most notorious and elusive serial murderers in history.For decades, the Zodiac Killer has captivated America's imagination. His ability to evade capture while taunting authorities made him infamous. The vicious specificity of his crimes terrified Californians before the Manson murders and after, and shocked a culture enamored with the ideals of the dawning Age of Aquarius. To this day, his ciphers have baffled detectives and amateur sleuths, and his identity remains one of the twentieth century's great unsolved mysteries.The Most Dangerous Animal of All reveals the name of the Zodiac for the very first time. Mustafa and Stewart construct a chilling psychological profile of Stewart's father: as a boy with disturbing fixations, a frustrated intellectual with pretensions to high culture, and an inappropriate suitor and then jilted lover unable to process his rage. At last, all the questions that have surrounded the case for almost fifty years are answered in this riveting narrative. The result is a singular work of true crime at its finest—a compelling, unbelievable true story told with the pacing of a page-turning novel—as well as a sensational and powerful memoir.
Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer
Elliott Leyton - 1986
This case-study approach -- based on years of immersion in the killers' diaries, confessions, psychiatric interviews, statements to the press, videotapes, and photographs -- led the way in defining serial and mass murders not as the acts of alien creatures with deranged minds but rather as personalized protests by alienated men against the society that they believe has excluded them. Leyton also provides an analysis of the Washington, D.C. sniper case. While uncovering the central themes of modern culture that motivated their deeds, Leyton provides vivid and chilling portraits of Edmund Kemper, Ted Bundy, Albert DeSalvo, and David Berkowitz, serial murderers whose prolonged killing campaigns provided them revenge against the world and celebrity careers; and other mass murderers whose brief but horrific murder sprees constituted their own enigmatic suicide notes. The author shows that the motives of multiple murderers are not simply sexual or psychotic; but rise from the very core of American mass culture.
The Lost Boy
Duncan Staff - 2007
The two people responsible, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, were tried in a sensational case and have become notorious as the human face of evil. It is a story that has captivated for forty years. Four children were murdered by Hindley and Brady, the body of one of their victims, Keith Bennett, has never been found. In The Lost Boy Duncan Staff has produced the nearest to a definitive book on the subject we will ever read.In 1999 Duncan Staff made a documentary on the Moors murders for BBC2. In the course of producing this programme he, as a matter of course, invited Myra Hindley to put across her side of the story. Much to his surprise, she agreed. What followed was a correspondence in which Hindley spoke candidly about some aspects of her crimes. The programme aired, concluding unquestioningly with a reaffirmation of her guilt. After her death, her estate sent Duncan Myra Hindley's unpublished papers - which proved a window into the disturbed world of Hindley and Brady. Drawing on this unique resource, and combined with extensive research, the co-operation of the families of the victims, the police and expert witnesses Duncan Staff has written this authoritative investigation into these infamous crimes.The Lost Boy is the compelling story of some of the twentieth-century's most notorious crimes. Duncan Staff has undertaken an exhaustive, and sensitive, exploration into all aspects of these murders and their long-felt aftermath. It also presents for the first time a compelling theory about the location of the final resting place of the Moors Murderers' last victim, Keith Bennett.
H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil
Adam Selzer - 2017
It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century. Although Holmes is just as famous now as he was in 1895, this deep analysis of contemporary materials makes clear how much of the previously known story came from reporters who were nowhere near the action, a dangerously unqualified new police chief, and lies invented by Holmes himself.
The Crime of the Century
Dennis L. Breo - 1993
He broke in as his helpless victims slept, bound them one by one, and then stabbed, assaulted, and strangled all eight in a sadistic sexual frenzy. By morning only one young nurse had miraculously survived. The barbarity of the attack shocked a nation and opened a new chapter in the history of American crime: mass murder. Here is the never-before-told story of Richard Speck by the prosecutor who put him in prison for life."In the Crime of the Century," William J. Martin has teamed up with Dennis L. Breo to re-create the blood-soaked night that made American criminal history, offerning fascinating behind-the-scenes descriptions of Speck, his innocent victims, the desperate manhunt and massive investigation, and the trial that led to Speck's successful conviction. In 1991 Richard Speck died of a heart attack in prison, but the horror of his crime still haunts the conscience of a nation.
A Dangerous Place: The Story of the Railway Murders
Simon Farquhar - 2016
In September 1970, two boys met in the playground on their first day at secondary school in North London. They formed what would be described at the Old Bailey thirty years later as ‘a unique and wicked bond’. Between 1982 and 1986, striking near lonely railway stations in London and the Home Counties, their partnership took them from rape to murder. Three police forces pooled their resources to catch them in the biggest criminal manhunt since the Yorkshire Ripper Enquiry.A Dangerous Place is the first full-length account of the crimes of John Duffy and David Mulcahy. Told by the son of one of the police officers who led the enquiry, exhaustively researched and with unprecedented access, this is the story of two of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century and the times they operated in. It is the story of the women who died at their hands. It is the story of the women who survived them, and who had the courage to ensure justice was done. And it is the story of a father, told by a son.
Green River Serial Killer: Biography of an Unsuspecting Wife
Pennie Morehead - 2007
Gary Ridgway, who has become known as "The Green River Serial Killer" by the rest of the world.For fourteen happy years, Judith shared her life with an attentive and kind husband, never suspecting there was a secret side to the man she loved until the storybook romance of her life turned into a terrifying nightmare. Gary Ridgway masterfully managed his two identities: one that included romantic vacation, bicycling, and raising Poodles with his wife, the other that included obsessions with a two-decade habit of soliciting prostitutes and young runaway girls near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, strangling those who angered him. Subsequent to his arrest in 2001, Gary confessed to murdering 48 females, in a deal that spared his life. In addition, he alluded to his having killed many more - too many to remember!'Green River Serial Killer - Biography of an Unsuspecting Wife' examines America's most deadly serial killer through the loving eyes of his wife. Also included in this exclusive, authorized biography, are photographs from the Ridgway private albums, letters handwritten by Gary from prison, and the author's own professional analysis of his handwriting.
The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough
Anne E. Schwartz - 1991
16 pages of photographs.
Poison Mind
Jeffrey Good - 1995
Days later her two sons fell ill with the same horrifying symptoms. As Peggy lay writhing in an agony of slow death, the doctors' bewilderment turned to horror when they discovered the three had ingested massive doses of the fatal chemical thallium. But how were they poisoned? And by whom?Soon, the FBI's psychological profile pointed to the family's next door neighbor, George Trepal, an eccentric computer whiz and member of the high I.Q. club, Mensa. But why would a man who was married to a doctor and seemed to be living a normal life commit such a cold-blooded act? And how did he do it without leaving any evidence? It was a crime so brilliantly concealed, police feared he might get away with it. Now it was up to policewoman Susan Goreck to go undercover--an enter the twisted mind of a sadistic psychopath.
Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away with Murder
James B. Stewart - 1999
Stewart about serial killer doctor Michael Swango and the medical community that chose to turn a blind eye on his criminal activities.No one could believe that the handsome young doctor might be a serial killer. Wherever he was hired—in Ohio, Illinois, New York, South Dakota—Michael Swango at first seemed the model physician. Then his patients began dying under suspicious circumstances. At once a gripping read and a hard-hitting look at the inner workings of the American medical system, Blind Eye describes a professional hierarchy where doctors repeatedly accept the word of fellow physicians over that of nurses, hospital employees, and patients—even as horrible truths begin to emerge. With the prodigious investigative reporting that has defined his Pulitzer Prize-winning career, James B. Stewart has tracked down survivors, relatives of victims, and shaken coworkers to unearth the evidence that may finally lead to Swango's conviction.Combining meticulous research with spellbinding prose, Stewart has written a shocking chronicle of a psychopathic doctor and of the medical establishment that chose to turn a blind eye on his criminal activities.
The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History
Kevin M. Sullivan - 2009
legal system. This in-depth examination of Bundy's life and his killing spree that totaled dozens of victims is drawn from legal transcripts, correspondence and interviews with detectives and prosecutors. Using these sources, new information on several murders is unveiled. The biography follows Bundy from his broken family background to his execution in the electric chair.