Book picks similar to
If Loving You Is Wrong: The Shocking True Story of Mary Kay Letourneau by Gregg Olsen
true-crime
non-fiction
crime
nonfiction
In Plain Sight: A True Story of Kidnapping and Rape
Anna D. Stoddard - 2020
Buried Memories: Katie Beers' Story
Katie Beers - 2013
Katie Beers was a profoundly neglected and abused child even before she was kidnapped on Long Island in 1992. Abducted by a family friend, she was held captive in an underground cell for 17 days and sexually abused. With smarts and strength, she slipped the bonds of captivity and began a new life.Katie, now a married working mother, has revealed her inspiring story of torment and recovery to the TV reporter who, as part of the original media frenzy covering the case, sought the ending to one of the most compelling sagas in New York criminal history. Katie, at the center of a national media storm, dropped out of sight 20 years ago and—until now—has never spoken publicly. Her appearance January on the Dr. Phil show and in People magazine to discuss her book is the first time she has ever spoken publicly. Katie is also expected to be featured in Newsday, the daily newspaper serving 3 million Long Islanders.The telling of her story, upon the 20th anniversary of her rescue (January 13th) offers enlightening hindsight into what enabled Katie to overcome a lost childhood. The book includes never-before told details of her ordeal and the shocking discovery of audio tapes recorded by her kidnapper during the captivity.
Chris & Nancy: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide & Pro Wrestling's Cocktail of Death
Irvin Muchnick - 2009
It laid bare the devastating prevalence of steroids and its effects on users. In order to tackle the whole story, dig up the facts, and connect the dots, Irvin Muchnick gives the most sensational scandal in pro wrestling history the full true-crime treatment in Chris and Nancy. Muchnick – the author of Wrestling Babylon and a co-author of Benoit: Wrestling with the Horror That Destroyed a Family and Crippled a Sport – has parsed public records and interviewed dozens of witnesses, inside and outside wrestling, to put together the first thorough and authoritative events of the gruesome June 2007 weekend in Fayette County, Georgia, during which World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy and their seven-year-old son Daniel, before proceeding to kill himself. But this book goes beyond the crime itself to answer some of the most important questions behind it. The biography of Benoit, a wrestler’s wrestler, makes it clear that his tragedy was a microcosm of the culture of drugs and death behind the scenes of one of North America’s most popular brand of sports entertainment. The author probes the story of the massive supplies of steroids and human growth hormone found in his home – all prescribed by a “doctor to the stars” who got indicted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and all dismissed by a WWE “wellness policy” that promoted everything except its talent’s wellness. The Benoit case led to unprecedented scrutiny of wrestling’s overall health and safety standards, by Congressional investigators and others, and this book is the primary source of what they found and what they should continue to look for. The ebook edition includes a new introduction that looks at recent events in sports, and further contextualizes the story of Chris Benoit and the figures surrounding his career.
Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society
Judy Christie - 2019
She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents--hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families.Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. In Before and After, Wingate and Christie tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art meeting life, long-silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with Wingate and Christie to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children's Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results.
The Last Book on the Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History’s Most Notorious Serial Killers
Ben Kissel - 2020
Deeply researched but with a morbidly humorous bent, the podcast has earned a dedicated and aptly cultlike following for its unique take on all things macabre. In their first book, the guys take a deep dive into history’s most infamous serial killers, from Ted Bundy to John Wayne Gacy, exploring their origin stories, haunting habits, and perverse predilections. Featuring newly developed content alongside updated fan favorites, each profile is an exhaustive examination of the darker side of human existence. With appropriately creepy four-color illustrations throughout and a gift-worthy paper over board format, The Last Book on the Left will satisfy the bloodlust of readers everywhere.
Chase Darkness with Me: How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders
Billy Jensen - 2019
Every story he wrote had one thing in common―they didn't have an ending. The killer was still out there.But after the sudden death of a friend, crime writer and author of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara, Billy became fed up. Following a dark night, he came up with a plan. A plan to investigate past the point when the cops had given up. A plan to solve the murders himself.You'll ride shotgun as Billy identifies the Halloween Mask Murderer, finds a missing girl in the California Redwoods, and investigates the only other murder in New York City on 9/11. You'll hear intimate details of the hunts for two of the most terrifying serial killers in history: his friend Michelle McNamara's pursuit of the Golden State Killer and his own quest to find the murderer of the Allenstown Four. And Billy gives you the tools―and the rules―to help solve murders yourself.Gripping, complex, unforgettable, Chase Darkness with Me is an examination of the evil forces that walk among us, illustrating a novel way to catch those killers, and a true-crime narrative unlike any you've read before.
Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial
Rabia Chaudry - 2016
Syed has maintained his innocence, and Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, has always believed him. By 2013, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in hopes of finding a journalist who could shed light on Adnan’s story. In 2014, Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, a Peabody Award-winning podcast with more than 500 million international listenersBut Serial did not tell the whole story. In this compelling narrative, Rabia Chaudry presents new key evidence that she maintains dismantles the State's case: a potential new suspect, forensics indicating Hae was killed and kept somewhere for almost half a day, and documentation withheld by the State that destroys the cell phone evidence -- among many other points -- and she shows how fans of Serial joined a crowd-sourced investigation into a case riddled with errors and strange twists. Adnan's Story also shares Adnan’s life in prison, and weaves in his personal reflections, including never-before-seen letters. Chaudry, who is committed to exonerating Adnan, makes it clear that justice is yet to be achieved in this much examined case.
Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery
Lisa Pulitzer - 2011
Five years to the day later, 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez was reported missing in Lima, Peru. Implicated in both crimes was one young man: Joran van der Sloot. This book looks at the man tied to two of the most sensational cases of the decade.
Beyond All Evil: Two Monsters, Two Mothers, A Love That Will Last Forever
June Thomson - 2011
On the same day, a few miles apart, their estranged husbands slaughtered their children. The murders were not driven by rage, or committed in moments of madness. They were planned, and carried out with chilling precision, to inflict the worst pain imaginable.June and Giselle did not know each other. Tragedy is all that binds them; they were destined to come together as ‘sisters’, united by pain, grief and a sense of loss so immense that it would drive both to the brink of madness.June’s life with Rab Thomson had been a dark and turbulent existence, characterised by mental torture, physical violence and rape. Giselle’s relationship with Ashok Kalyanjee had been a strange and distant affair, of lives spent apart before, during and after marriage.But both relationships had produced two beautiful children, and the women believed that their misery was in the past. Both mothers believed it was important to allow the fathers’ access to their children. On that fateful Saturday in May 2008, neither could have conceived that the men they had once loved would do anything to harm their children. But they were wrong, so terribly wrong.Nothing can bring their children back. But June and Giselle have one solitary comfort: they are no longer alone. Their lives may have been torn apart, but they have each other. Together, they are stronger.This is the story of their parallel journeys: of the dreadful days before, during, and after the murders of their children. Told in their own words, with searing honesty of their pain, and guilt, it is a story of endurance, friendship, and survival against the odds. It is not a story for the faint hearted, but it is a story that must be told, for in the end, it is a testament to the human spirit.
The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy
Stephen G. Michaud - 1983
Handsome, boyish and well-spoken, a law student with bright political prospects, Bundy was also a predator and sexual deviant who murdered and mutilated at least thirty young women and girls, many of them college coeds but at least two as young as twelve.
Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison For a Murder He Didn't Commit
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - 2016
What ensued was a media firestorm and a whodunit that transfixed the nation, providing daily debates—and cruel, dinner table entertainment. Now, forty years after Michael Skakel’s conviction, his cousin, acclaimed activist and writer Robert Kennedy, Jr., has taken matters into his own hands to get the charges dropped and clear his cousin’s name.This startling expose—a page-turning, true story of murder, romance, and fame—is the story of Skakel’s conviction that the public has never before been prevue to. It is the product of hundreds of interviews with Skakel and those who knew him, Martha Moxley, and what may have happened the night of the crime, Halloween eve. It also explores why Kennedy believes Skakel has yet to receive a fair trial, and why he demands the original verdict be overturned.This is a heart-wrenching story with a powerful cast of characters. It opens the doors for the public into what was once a “perfect” Greenwich community and how a crime shook an elite family. Kennedy presents the evidence through enlightening text, photographs, and new interviews, and allows readers to decide, given the facts, what they believe really happened to Martha and if, forty years after his crucifixion, Michael Skakel should finally walk free.
Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaskan Serial Killer
Walter Gilmour - 1991
As oil boom money poured into Anchorage, the city quickly became a prime destination for the seedier elements of society: prostitutes, pimps, con men, and criminals of all breeds looking to cash in. However, something even worse lurked in their midst. To all who knew him, Robert Hansen was a typical hardworking businessman, husband, and father. But hidden beneath the veneer of mild respectability was a monster whose depraved appetites could not be sated. From 1971 to 1983, Hansen was a human predator, stalking women on the edges of Anchorage society—women whose disappearances would cause scant outcry, but whose gruesome fates would shock the nation. After his arrest, Hansen confessed to seventeen brutal murders, though authorities suspect there were more than thirty victims. Alaska State Trooper Walter Gilmour and writer Leland E. Hale tell the story of Hansen’s twisted depredations—from the dark urges that drove his madness to the women who died at his hand and finally to the authorities who captured and convicted the killer who came to be known as the “Butcher Baker.”
In Colder Blood
J.T. Hunter - 2016
One was memorialized in Truman Capote’s classic novel, In Cold Blood. The other was all but forgotten. Dick Hickock and Perry Smith confessed to the first: the November 15, 1959 murder of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas. Despite remarkable coincidences between the two crimes, they denied committing the second: the December 19 murder of a family of four in Osprey, Florida. Over half a century later, a determined Florida detective undertakes exceptional efforts to try to bring closure to the long-cold case.
Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Dylan Howard - 2019
But while he was flying around the world on his private jet and hosting lavish parties at his private island in the Caribbean, he also was secretly masterminding an international child sex ring—one that may have involved the richest and most influential men in the world. The conspiracy of corruption was an open secret for decades. And then this summer, it all came crashing down. After his arrest on sex trafficking charges in July, it seemed Epstein’s darkest secrets would finally see the light. But hopes for true justice were shattered on August 10 this year, when he was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. The verdict: suicide. The timing: convenient, to say the least. Now, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales delivers bombshell new revelations, uncovers how the man President Trump once described as a “terrific guy” abused hundreds of underage girls at his mansions in Palm Beach and Manhattan… all while entertaining the world’s most powerful men—including President Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Donald Trump himself.
How much did they know about his perversions? And did they take part?
How might they have helped him to continue his abuse, and to escape justice for it?
What responsibility might they have for his sudden, shocking death?
And is there a shocking spy and blackmail story at the heart of the scandal?
The answers to these questions and more will be explored in Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales with groundbreaking new reporting, never-before-seen court files, and interviews with new witnesses and confidants. Combining the very best investigative reporting from investigative journalists Dylan Howard, Melissa Cronin and James Robertson—who have been covering the case for close to a decade—will send shockwaves through the highest levels of the establishment.
It's Not Me, It's You
Jon Richardson - 2011
(Women who leave wet teaspoons in sugar bowls need not apply)."I haven't woken up with a cup of tea by the bed for seven years. It seems such a small thing but it's one of a thousand things I miss about having someone around to take care of me. I have spent my entire adult life getting things the way I want them and all I want now is someone to give it all up for." Jon RichardsonIs your filing faultless? Your CDs, apostrophes, cutlery all in the right places? Can you eat a biscuit in the correct way? Then Jon Richardson (single for seven years and counting) could be your ideal man.Living alone in a one bedroom flat in Swindon, 27 year old Jon has had far too much time on his hands to think. In fact to obsess. About almost everything. Jon's obsessive compulsive personality disorder has seen him arrange the coins in his pockets in ascending size and colour code his bookshelves. It takes him less than 90 seconds to locate a receipt for a pair of shoes he bought in 1997. Over to the filing cabinet and R for receipts, S for shoes.But Jon doesn't want to be like this, in fact he would quite like to share his life with someone. But who could that someone be? Someone like himself, a quarrelsome perfectionist only with breasts and less body hair? Absolutely not. But who exactly is Jon looking for and where will he find her? Faced with a loveless future filled with his own peculiar quirks and perfectionism, Jon sets about his search for The One. The question is, will he mind her keeping the knives to the left of the forks in the cutlery drawer or organising the CDs by genre and not alphabetically?