Triumph of Justice: The Final Judgment on the Simpson Saga


Peter Knobler - 1998
    Simpson civil trial, he was one of the few people in America who had paid little attention to the Simpson criminal trial. His first inclination was to turn down the case. But as friends and clients urged him to accept, as he got to know not only the Goldmans but the facts of the case and the human tragedy lurking behind it, Petrocelli realized this was something he had to tackle head on.Never having tried a murder case, putting his firm's considerable reputation at risk, confronting a media swarm for which he was totally unprepared, and facing an overwhelming financial disadvantage, Petrocelli nonetheless went on a personal and increasingly passionate mission to bring about justice. Triumph of Justice is a chronicle of that mission.  Petrocelli's insights, observations, and inside information not only show us how he convinced a jury to find O.J. Simpson liable for $33.5 million in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman--proving to the American people that their legal system does indeed work--he also makes the story a compelling and exciting legal read.Among the revelations detailed in these pages:Petrocelli's ten-day, no-holds-barred deposition of O.J. SimpsonWhat Petrocelli learned from the incendiary depositions and interviews of Kato Kaelin, Faye Resnick, Marcus Allen, A.C. Cowlings, and othersThe surprising realizations that emerged from a mock jury trial, which Petrocelli lostHis dramatic face-to-face courtroom confrontation with O.J. Simpson on the witness standWhat happened that night in BrentwoodPetrocelli also offers insight into the larger issues--of race, wealth, celebrity, and police competence--surrounding the case. He places the trial in its proper context and, in so doing, examines legal questions and issues about our justice system that affect and reflect upon every one of us.Triumph of Justice proves, conclusively, that O.J. Simpson told lie after lie and that he did indeed kill his ex-wife and an innocent man. It is the story you haven't heard about the trial you didn't see and is the closest, most in-depth look at an important murder case since Helter Skelter.

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man


Luke Harding - 2014
    The consequences have shaken the leaders of nations worldwide. This is the inside story of Snowden's deeds and the journalists who faced down pressure from the US and UK governments to break a remarkable scoop.From the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Hawaii, carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of secret-spilling in Hong Kong and his battle for asylum, Snowden's story reads like a globe-trotting thriller.

The Rabbi and the Hit Man: A True Tale of Murder, Passion, and Shattered Faith


Arthur J. Magida - 2003
    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."

Murder in Mayberry: Greed, Death, and Mayhem in a Small Town


Jack & Mary Branson - 2008
    Throw in lies, gossip, greed, international extradition struggles, and a conflicted federal agent, and the result is Murder in Mayberry. Lifting the veil on a picket-fenced, Bible Belt town, this chilling drama reveals a tale of secret lives and drug addiction, and is both an involving true crime story and the story of the author’s emotional journey from normal life to life turned upside down.

The Way of the Wiseguy


Joseph D. Pistone - 2004
    Perhaps no man alive knows the inner workings and lifestyle of wiseguys better than Pistone does, having spent six years infiltrating the Mafia as an undercover FBI agent. Now, years later, Pistone reassesses what the underworld was really about. Occasionally poignant, always in shocking detail, The Way of the Wiseguy gives readers a first-hand look at the thinking, psychology, and customs that make wiseguys a unique breed. The book is divided into anecdotes that reveal key principles of wiseguy life, including "Don't Volunteer You Don't Know Something," "Be a Good Earner," "Look Like You Mean Business," "It's Your Best Friend Who Will Kill You," and much more. The stories-more than 80 of them-are spellbinding, and the insights into this lawless realm of badguys are often uncannily relevant to the workings of the legitimate world of big business and everyday social discourses. Includes CD with shocking undercover surveillance audio from the Donnie Brasco operation (with commentary by author Joe Pistone).

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple


Jeff Guinn - 2017
    His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.

Dannemora: Two Escaped Killers, Three Weeks of Terror, and the Largest Manhunt Ever in New York State


Charles A. Gardner - 2019
    Aided by prison employee Joyce Mitchell, double murderer Richard Matt and cop-killer David Sweat slipped out of their cells, followed a network of tunnels and pipes under the thirty-foot prison wall, and climbed out of a manhole to freedom.For three weeks, the residents of local communities were virtual prisoners in their own homes as law enforcement from across the nation swept the rural wilderness near the Canadian border. The manhunt made front-page headlines--as did the prison sex scandal involving both inmates and Joyce Mitchell--and culminated in a dramatic and bloody standoff.Now Charles A. Gardner--a lifelong resident of the community and a former correction officer who began his training at Clinton and ultimately oversaw the training of staff in twelve prisons, including Clinton--tells the whole story from an insider's point of view.From the lax ethics and sexual hunger that drove Joyce Mitchell to fraternize with Matt and Sweat, smuggle them tools, and offer to be their getaway driver, to the state budget cuts that paved the way for prison corruption, to the brave and tireless efforts to bring the escaped killers to justice, Dannemora is a gripping account of the circumstances that led to the bold breakout and the twenty-three-day search that culminated in one man dead, and one man back in custody--and lingering questions about those who set the deadly drama in motion.

In the Name of the Children: An FBI Agent's Relentless Pursuit of the Nation's Worst Predators


Jeffrey L. Rinek - 2018
    Agent's Relentless Pursuit of the Nation's Worst Predators, which Rinek wrote with the journalist Marilee Strong, sounds warm and humane, qualities missing from much crime writing. Their book is a professional job, filled with illuminating details about the day-to-day operations of the bureau.--New York Times Book Review FBI Special Agent Jeff Rinek had a gift for getting child predators to confess. All he had to do was share a piece of his soul . . .In the Name of the Children gives an unflinching look at what it's like to fight a never-ending battle against an enemy far more insidious than terrorists: the predators, lurking amongst us, who seek to harm our children.During his 30-year career with the FBI, Jeff Rinek worked hundreds of investigations involving crimes against children: from stranger abduction to serial homicide to ritualized sexual abuse. Those who do this kind of work are required to plumb the depths of human depravity, to see things no one should ever have to see--and once seen can never forget. There is no more important--or more brutal--job in law enforcement, and few have been more successful than Rinek at solving these sort of cases.Most famously, Rinek got Cary Stayner to confess to all four of the killings known as the Yosemite Park Murders, an accomplishment made more extraordinary by the fact that the FBI nearly pinned the crimes on the wrong suspects. Rinek's recounting of the confession and what he learned about Stayner provides perhaps the most revelatory look ever inside the psyche of a serial killer and a privileged glimpse into the art of interrogation.In the Name of the Children takes readers into the trenches of real-time investigations where every second counts and any wrong decision or overlooked fact can have tragic repercussions. Rinek offers an insider's perspective of the actual case agents and street detectives who are the boots on the ground in this war at home. By placing us inside the heart and mind of a rigorously honest and remarkably self-reflective investigator, we will see with our own eyes what it takes--and what it costs--to try to keep our children safe and to bring to justice those who prey on society's most vulnerable victims.With each chapter dedicated to a real case he worked, In the Name of the Children also explores the evolution of Rinek as a Special Agent--whose unorthodox, empathy-based approach to interviewing suspects made him extraordinarily successful in obtaining confessions--and the toll it took to have such intimate contact with child molesters and murderers. Beyond exploring the devastating impact of these unthinkable crimes on the victims and their families, this book offers an unprecedented look at how investigators and their loved ones cope while living in the specter of so much suffering.

Shot in the Heart


Mikal Gilmore - 1994
    Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave." Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin. Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts


Neil W. White III - 2009
    The emotional, incredible true story of Neil White, a man who discovers the secret to happiness, leading a fulfilling life, and the importance of fatherhood in the most unlikely of places—the last leper colony in the continental United States.

The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood


David Simon - 1997
    But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a 20-year veteran of the urban drug war, tell the chilling story of this desolate crossroad.Through the eyes of one broken family--two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable 15-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough, Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the country and unflinchingly assess why law enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have accomplished so little. This extraordinary book is a crucial look at the price of the drug culture and the poignant scenes of hope, caring, and love that astonishingly rise in the midst of a place America has abandoned.

Innocence Lost


Carlton Stowers - 1990
    When Raffield's cover became suspect, word spread through a small circle of friends that the young officer would pay with his life. No one stopped it. On a rainy fall evening in 1987, Raffield was lured to an isolated field. Three bullets were fired-one unloaded into his skull. The baby-faced killer, Greg Knighten, stole eighteen dollars from Raffield's wallet, divided it among his two young accomplices, and calmly said, "it's done."With chilling detail, Carlton Stowers illuminates a dark corner of America's heartland and the children who hide there. What he found was an alienated subculture of drug abuse, the occult, and an unfathomable teenage rage that exploded at point blank range on a shocking night of lost innocence...

Ruby Ridge


Jess Walter - 1995
    By the next day three people were dead, and a small war was joined, pitting the full might of federal law enforcement against one well-armed family. Drawing on extensive interviews with Randy Weaver's family, government insiders, and others, Jess Walter traces the paths that led the Weavers to their confrontation with federal agents and led the government to treat a family like a gang of criminals. This is the story of what happened on Ruby Ridge: the tragic and unlikely series of events that destroyed a family, brought down the number-two man in the FBI, and left in its wake a nation increasingly attuned to the dangers of unchecked federal power.

Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder


Jerry Bledsoe - 1988
    Months later, another wealthy widow and her prominent son and daughter-in-law were found savagely slain in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Mystified police first suspected a professional in the bizarre gangland-style killings that shattered the quiet tranquility of two well-to-do southern communities. But soon a suspicion grew that turned their focus to family. The Sharps. The Newsoms. The Lynches. The only link between the three families was a beautiful and aristocratic young mother named Susie Sharp Newsom Lynch. Could this former child "princess" and fraternity sweetheart have committed such barbarous crimes? And what about her gun-loving first cousin and lover, Fritz Klenner, son of a nationally renowned doctor?

Betrayal in Blood


Michael Benson - 2006
      “Mommy . . . won’t be with us anymore.”   That’s what attorney Kevin C. Bryant, forty-five, told his two young sons in the spring of 2003. At the time, blond, pretty, twenty-six-year-old Tabatha Bryant was alive and well in an upscale suburb of Rochester, New York. But that was about to change—because Bryant knew his wife was cheating, and he intended to end the affair by ending her life. On June 14, 2003, he called 9-1-1 to report Tabatha slain by an unknown intruder who’d shot her in the eye with a .22 and repeatedly stabbed her in the neck and upper body. Soon, a drug bust led to Cassidy Green’s confession that she’d driven the getaway car. She fingered boyfriend Cyril Winebrenner as the killer.   Winebrenner and Kevin Bryant were buddies who’d regularly gone on cocaine-fueled sex binges with hookers. Astoundingly, Winebrenner was also the victim’s half-brother—but Bryant’s offer of $5,000 had convinced him that money is thicker than blood.   In a trial that shook “Country Club Row,” prosecutors would present evidence and testimonies that revealed even more sordid details, bringing the lawyer who tried to get away with murder to justice. Betrayal in Blood reveals the full story, from the author of numerous true crime accounts including Escape from Dannemora: Richard Matt, David Sweat, and the Great Adirondack Manhunt.