With him when he was captured was his 14-year-old ex-girlfriend Caril Fugate. The question soon arose, was Caril a kidnapped victim, or a heartless accomplice?Appointed to her case, attorney John McArthur initially accepted the assignment out of a sense of constitutional duty. But as he delved deeper, he found that the truth was far more complicated than anyone was letting on. Up against incredible odds, and with a strong conviction of her innocence, McArthur remained with Caril and fought for her freedom for 18 years. For this service, he took no pay, accepting the case pro bono.This book follows the long struggle of McArthur, his partner Merril Reller, and John's son James as they took on the Nebraska legal system and a public that had already determined Caril's guilt before ever hearing a word of testimony. The story continues through all it influenced, such as Stephen King, who became a horror writer because of it, Bruce Springsteen, who wrote a whole album about it, Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, Martin Sheen, and Peter Jackson, who wrote his first major movie based on the Starkweather-Fugate incident.Pro Bono explores aspects of this incredible story that have never been revealed before, and sheds new light on these terrifying and complex events.

    When Betty Isaacs walked out on her twelve kids, the youngest were packed off to foster-homes--divided up, Carl Isaacs recalls, ""like sticks of firewood."" He was ten then and from the time when, a few years ... More later, his mother told him he couldn't come back and live with her (""Don't let's rock the boat""), he didn't care about anything. Foster-homes, reform schools, escapes--it all led at 19 to a Maryland prison where, lo and behold, there was his half-brother Wayne Coleman, 26, a shiftless and somewhat dim character with a violent streak. Wayne's prison sidekick was a surprise: a black convict named George Dungee, Wayne's homosexual lover (to Carl, the ""nigger fuck-boy""), doing time for non-support(!). The trio escaped, picked up 15-year-old Billy isaacs (himself a reform school runaway, but trying to go straight), and headed south. Aimless travel eventually brought them to a rural road near Donalsonville, Ga., where they tried to burglarize a house trailer belonging to Jerry and Mary Alday. Various Alday family members showed up unexpectedly, but Wayne had a solution--""Let's blow 'em away."" It was a challenge and, insane as it seems, Carl couldn't back down:he was the leader, and his status with his brothers was all he had. Five male Aldays murdered; Mary Alday gang-raped and murdered. Once it started, Carl made certain the woman was his ticket to the electric chair--he wanted it, anything but being raped again himself by the black studs in the general prison population. Carl, Wayne, and George all drew death sentences but, ten years later, still languish on Death Row amid legal appeals, while at least one Alday relative regrets not having accepted an offer of a lynching. Howard (American Saturday, Zebra) tries hard to elevate this senseless tragedy into something more than a simple horror story--where-did-they-go-wrong flashbacks to Carl's and Billy's childhoods, interspersed with scenes of the hard-working, God-fearing Aldays--but everything other than the gore here seems manufactured. - Kirkus

    On May 5, 1973, three men escaped from a Maryland prison and disappeared. Joined by a fifteen-year-old brother, they surfaced in Georgia, where they were spotted joyriding in a stolen car. Within a week, the four young men were arrested on suspicion of committing one of the most horrific murders in American history. Jerry Alday and his family were eating Sunday dinner when death burst through the door of their cozy little trailer. Their six bodies are only the beginning of Thomas H. Cook’s retelling of this gruesome story; the horrors continued in the courtroom. Based on court documents, police records, and interviews with the surviving family members, this is a chilling look at the evil that can lurk just around the corner.

    The defacto boss of the Colombo Mafia family since the 1970s, he oversaw gang wars, murders, and major rackets, even from prison. He is suspected of personally murdering as many as 60 people and ordering the hits of hundreds more. Sentenced to 139 years in the fed, he continued to exert power over a vast criminal empire from behind bars. His brutal rise and bloody reign is the stuff of legend.In this blistering street-level account, “Mafia survivor” Frank Dimatteo teams up with true-crime master Michael Benson to take down one of the most notorious figures in the American La Cosa Nostra. This is the real inside story of Carmine “The Snake” Persico,  from his crime-filled childhood on the streets of Brooklyn to the long-term jail sentences that didn’t stop him from controlling his criminal empire with the help of his brother, the equally kill-crazy Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico. His deadly teen years as leader of the fearsome Garfield Boys. His recruitment into the Profaci—later the Colombo—crime family. His bloody  betrayal of the Gallo brothers. His role in the hair-raising ambush-slaying of Albert Anastasia—the Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc.—as he sat in a barbershop chair getting a shave. The terror he struck into the hearts of the New York Mafia’s other families, and even his own crews. And the many courtroom trials where Persico walked after witnesses came down with sudden cases of amnesia.Today, Carmine “The Snake” Persico schmoozes with Ponzi king Bernard Madoff behind bars where at age 84 his legend, packed as it is with cold-blooded brutality, continues to inspire goodfellas everywhere.

    After being attacked by a 20-stone California biker in for stabbing a girlfriend, Shaun writes about the prisoners who befriend, protect and inspire him. They include T-Bone, a massive African American ex-Marine who risks his life saving vulnerable inmates from rape, and Two Tonys, an old-school Mafia murderer who left the corpses of his rivals from Tucson to Alaska. They teach Shaun how to turn incarceration to his advantage, and to learn from his mistakes.Resigned to living alongside violent, mentally-ill, and drug-addicted inmates, Shaun immerses himself in psychology and philosophy to try to make sense of his past behaviour, and begins applying what he learns as he adapts to prison life. Encouraged by Two Tonys to explore fiction as well, Shaun reads over a thousand books which, with support from brilliant psychotherapist Dr. O, speed along his personal development. As his ability to deflect daily threats improves, Shaun begins to look forward to his release with optimism and a new love waiting for him. Yet the words of Aristotle from one of Shaun’s books will prove prophetic: 'We cannot learn without pain'.

    It is the follow-up book to Police, Crime & 999, a book which still remains hugely popular today, with over 250 5-star Amazon reviews, and which garnered positive feedback from a number of national publications:‘Everything is included in this warts-and-all account. Very funny’ The Sun‘A treasure trove of a book – a wonderfully informative and addictive read, full of belly laughs’ The Non-Fiction Book ClubWARNING: Contains Humour & Traces of Nuts

    Shuler leads us through the twenty-eight days of terror and shocking events of one of the most notorious double murders and manhunts in South Carolina history. Shuler shares her own personal interactions with some of the key players in this famous manhunt and investigation. Also included are Bell’s chilling calls from area phone booths to the Smith family, along with his disconcerting interviews and bizarre actions in the courtroom, which show the dark, evil and criminal mind of this horrific killer. This case has been featured on the Discovery Channel’s FBI Files, episode “Cat and Mouse,” and in the CBS movie Nightmare in Columbia County, which can still be seen on Lifetime TV. It currently runs as the episode “Last Will” on Court TV’s Forensic Files.

      Jennie Cyr disappeared in 1977. Jerilyn Towers vanished in 1982. Lynn Willette never came home on a night in 1994. Each woman had a relationship with James Hicks, who in 2000 confessed to murdering them, dismembering their bodies and burying the remains alongside rural roads in Aroostook County. This is their story. Trudy Irene Scee follows Hicks from the North Woods to west Texas, detailing three decades of evasion, investigation and prosecution. She interviews police officers and victims’ families—and meets Hicks at the state prison in Thomaston, where he remains remorseless as he lives out his days behind bars. Thoroughly researched and carefully documented, Tragedy in the North Woods is the definitive history of one of Maine's most ruthless killers.   Includes photos!

    An excellent corrective to the Hollywood version of cops and crime.’ Miles Corwin ‘These are stories told by one cop to another - raw, unfiltered and funny. This book is both laugh-out-loud hilarious and moving.’ Jane Bussman WE ARE THE COPS is an adrenalin-fuelled ride through the lives of America’s police, told in the authentic voices of the cops themselves. The journey begins with the rookie’s first day on the job, and moves through the heartbreak of officers dying in the line of duty, the bloody reality of policing savage gang wars, the devastating consequences of drug crime, a gut-wrenching cop’s eye view of 9/11, and even an encounter with a runaway gorilla called Little Joe. These real-life stories from crime fighting’s front line come from cops of every rank, from chiefs to street cops, working in big cities and small towns all over the US. The result is a stunning montage of brutal, funny and sometimes tragic true events which paints a vivid and unforgettable portrait of life as an American cop.

    A woman had wanted to leave him. You're not going anywhere, he told her. Later that day, a police officer reports to the house and finds some human tissue and organs in a bag left out for garbage. The person of interest in the case is a steelworker named Sam Pirrera, who lives in the house. But who is the victim? Sam's current estranged wife, Danielle? It is known that they had a stormy relationship; Sam had assaulted her as his coke addiction returned. Forensic detectives find traces of blood in the basement, and then the entire corpse, dismembered, the parts hidden behind a false wall and packed in boxes, each of the parts wrapped and doused in gasoline. The victim's identity is discovered through prints to be a prostitute named Maggie Karer. The dismemberment, defensive mutilation, is so calculated and deliberate, the detectives wonder, are there more victims? But Pirrera's first wife was named Beverly, and a woman named Lesa Davidson shows up at the police station to say she hasn't heard from her daughter-Beverly-in eight years. And Sam's estranged wife, Danielle, who is in fact alive, tells police that Sam had once told her he had killed his first wife and dumped her parts in a vat of molten steel at a steel plant. Detectives now pursue a double murder case, led by veteran homicide detective Peter Abi-Rashed, who had once chased a young Sam Pirrera on the streets of Hamilton's east end many years before. The outcome is shocking - and a mystery remains.

    Norco ’80 tells the story of how five heavily-armed young men—led by an apocalyptic born-again Christian—attempted a bank robbery that turned into one of the most violent criminal events in U.S. history, forever changing the face of American law enforcement. Part action thriller and part courtroom drama, Norco ’80 transports the reader back to the Southern California of the 1970s, an era of predatory evangelical gurus, doomsday predictions, megachurches, and soaring crime rates, with the threat of nuclear obliteration looming over it all. A group of landscapers transforms into a murderous gang of bank robbers armed to the teeth with military-grade weapons. Their desperate getaway turned the surrounding towns into war zones. When it was over, three were dead and close to twenty wounded; a police helicopter was forced down from the sky, and thirty-two police vehicles were destroyed by thousands of rounds of ammo. The resulting trials shook the community to the core, raising many issues that continue to plague society today: from racism and the epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder within law enforcement to religious extremism and the militarization of local police forces.

    Cheryln Cadle contacted him and started visiting him in prison. Christopher started writing her letters from his prison cell in Wisconsin. These letters had his confessions of things he had never told anyone else. Now she shares the letters and the truth about what happened that fateful night in Frederick Colorado to Shanann, Nico, Bella and Celeste Watts at the hands of their father. Was he just a monster or was it truly his girlfriend that he wanted to start a life with the reason he was willing to kill his family?

    But inside, she longed for the church's handsome Pastor Gregory Shreaves, a former golf pro who sparked her most sinful thoughts.When Mary Jane let her feelings be known, the Pastor gently pushed her away. But her obsession only grew stronger when she became convinced that he was romantically involved with a younger church member, a woman named Rhonda Smith.Rhonda was doing volunteer work in the church office one day when she was shot to death in cold blood. The trail of evidence led police to Mary Jane, and soon other suspicions were raised: Was she also involved in the mysterious death of her own father fifteen years earlier? This is the shocking true story of love, worship, and murder in one American small town.

    He then went on to dispose of their tiny bodies into huge tanks filled with toxic crude oil.Nico Lee Watts, Chris and Shanann’s unborn son.No doubt, most of you watched the story unfold on the news, open-mouthed, in total shock. What could push a loving father to brutally murder his family? Surely there was some mistake? We all have preconceived ideas of how a monster should look–grotesque, hideously deformed, a crazed madman–not this handsome, mild-mannered, shy, polite gent who was often portrayed as the perfect husband and father.So, what happened?During this series we will look at the facts, the police investigation, the evidence, hear Chris Watts’ explanation and his reasoning. We will try to make some sense of what occurred during the early hours of August 13th 2018.We will endeavour to present to you all aspects of the case, right from the initial investigation and how it unfolded, to the first and subsequent confessions all transcribed word for word (where possible) from actual video and audio footage obtained from the FBI’s Discovery Files.

    In the tradition of “true crime” books, The Gamblers follows the fortunes of five men at the center of the ultra-fashionable Clermont Set including the infamous Lord Lucan who disappeared following the murder of his children’s nanny.