Internet Slave Master


John Glatt - 2001
    An entrepreneur and Eagle Scout, he was even honored as 'Man of the Year" at a Kansas City charity. To some of the women he met on the Internet, he was known as Slavemaster--a sexual deviate with a taste for sadomasochistic rituals of extreme domination and torture.Masquerading as a philanthropist, he promised women money and adventure. For fifteen years, he trawled the Web, snaring unsuspecting women. They were never seen again. But in the summer of 2000, the decomposed remains of two women were discovered in barrels on Robinson's farm, and three other bodies were found in storage units. Yet the depths of Robinson's bloodlust didn't end there. For authorities, the unspeakable criminal trail of Slavemaster was just beginning... Internet Slave Master is a true story of sadistic murder in the Heartland, told by true crime master John Glatt.

Driven To Kill


Gary C. King - 1993
    Navy enlistee. But behind his mask of normalcy lurked a predatory sex fiend with a seventeen-year history of appalling acts of molestation and violence. Children were his victims and the parks of the Pacific Northwest his personal hunting grounds. On September 4, 1989, his unnatural desires had driven him to abduct, torture and kill two young boys in Vancouver, Washington. Undetected despite his record, Dodd killed a third innocent victim only weeks later near Portland, Oregon. But only when he was caught trying to kidnap a child from a local movie theater was he finally taken into custody by police. Confessing to these heinous murders, he was convicted on all three counts and sentenced to death. On January 5, 1993 at 12:05 a.m., Westley Allan Dodd became the first criminal in America in nearly three decades to be executed by hanging. Based on exclusive access to police files and riveting trial testimony, personal interviews with Dodd himself and excerpts from his chilling diary of death, DRIVEN TO KILL dramatically recounts a hideous spree of death and horror that brought every parent's worst nightmare frighteningly to life!

The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer


Philip Carlo - 2006
    . . if I kill Mommy, if something happens and she dies, I’ll have to kill you all . . .  I can’t leave any witnesses.”“Yes, Daddy.  I know, Daddy,” she said.As strange and horrible a thing as this was to tell a child, Richard was trying to let Merrick know in advance—out of consideration—what might happen.  He wanted her to understand that he was doing such a thing out of . . . love.  Only out of love.He loved Barbara too much. He loved the children too much.That was the problem.  The only way he could deal with their loss, if he inadvertently killed Barbara, was to kill them.  That was how Richard had dealt with all his problems since he was a child. “But you, Merrick . . . You’ll be the hardest to kill.  You understand that?”“Yes. Daddy,” she said, and she did understand this.  She knew she was his favorite, and she coveted that. ---from The Ice Man

A Love To Die For


Patricia Springer - 2000
    Suddenly, Christa turned on Colleen, accusing her of flirting with her boyfriend. Then, the words turned to shocking blows. An enraged Christa used a box knife to cut her rival's throat and a mini meat cleaver to inflict more havoc. Half-naked, Colleen crawled through her own blood begging for her life. In the middle of the hour-long assault, a satanic symbol was carved in the dying girl's chest. And when Christa was finally done, she took a piece of Colleen's skull as a macabre souvenir. What were the dark forces that drove angelic faced Christa to commit such a savage murder and become the youngest woman ever to be put on Death Row? In this shocking expose of a case that stunned the nation, Patricia Springer takes us through a horrifying crime scene and into the heart and mind of a murderess who killed for love-and would die for it, too.

The Stranger In My Bed


Michael Fleeman - 2003
    What she didn't know was that the FBI had been watching him for years. In the Fall of 2000, she found out why-it was a crime that had been haunting authorities for decades. They called it the mystery of the Lady in the Box.Fifteen Years Later, Police Found The Remains...A decaying body that had been left along an Indiana roadside ditch in 1980 had finally been identified as Janice Hartman. In 1974, the Ohio woman had been reported missing by her estranged husband...John David Smith. The gruesome discovery was only the beginning of Diane Smith's brutal awakening-for Hartman was only the first of Smith's wives to have vanished off the face of the earth. This is the chilling true story of one woman who escaped the deadly hold of the killer she loved and married; and of the grieving families of his victims who banded together after nearly thirty years to prove that justice never forgets. Or forgives.

I Would Find a Girl Walking


Kathy Kelly - 2011
    And here I am, single, haveing no fun at all. Then I would go out riding around and I would find a girl walking..."-Gerald StanoHis licence plate read: No riders except blondes, brunettes, and redheads. With his flared polyester pants, open nylon shirt, and disco music on his eight track, Gerald Stano believed he was quite the ladies' man. And should a girl dare fracture his ego, he killed her.By the time he was twenty-eight, Gerald confessed to murdering up to forty women over an eleven-year period. How they died was left to the moment: strangled, stabbed, drowned, or shot. Why? They crossed Gerald's path and were tossed out like trash. But there were other troubling questions: How did this obsessive loner lure so many women into his car? And how could so many appalling crimes go unconnected for so long?Based on exclusive access to the killer-and extensive correspondence with him-as well as interviews with the lead investigator and the victims' families, this is a revealing, shocking, and unflinching portrait of a man who fancied himself one of the greatest lady-killers of them all.

Green River, Running Red


Ann Rule - 2004
    This is the extraordinary true story of the most prolific serial killer the nation had ever seen -- a case involving more than forty-nine female victims, two decades of intense investigative work...and one unrelenting killer who not only attended Ann Rule's book signings but lived less than a mile away from her home.

Shallow Grave in Trinity County


Harry Farrell - 1997
    Explores the tragic story of a small California town rocked by the 1955 murder of fourteen-year-old Stephanie Bryan, whose killer turned out to be college student Burton Abbott, who lived nearby.

Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters


Peter Vronsky - 2004
    Exhaustively researched with transcripts of interviews with killers, and featuring up-to-date information on the apprehension and conviction of the Green River killer and the Beltway Snipers, Vronsky's one-of-a-kind book covers every conceivable aspect of an endlessly riveting true crime phenomenon.INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

Strangler


Corey Mitchell - 2007
    Then he wanted the whole world to know it. After brutally killing a 16-year-old girl, he called the local NBC and told an editor precisely where to find the body.

The Prom Night Murders: A Devoted American Family, their Troubled Son, and a Ghastly Crime


Carlton Smith - 2009
    Much-admired pastor Robert L. Pelley was found slain in his home. In his basement were the huddled, blood-soaked bodies of his wife and daughters, executed by shotgun at close range. The doors to the house were locked, and there were no signs of forced entry. Meanwhile, the pastor's son, Jeff, was nowhere to be found…Police had a hunch that Jeff was responsible for the massacre, but they didn't have enough evidence to convict. The case went cold…until, more than a decade later, when law officials resolved to finally try to unravel the truth about Jeff and to establish a motive—that he was angry toward his father for grounding him on prom night. Then it would be up to prosecutors to prove that Jeff was responsible for THE PROM NIGHT MURDERS

The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers


Harold Schechter - 2003
    Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon.Rigorously researched and packed with the most terrifying, up-to-date information, this innovative and highly compelling compendium covers every aspect of multiple murderers—from psychology to cinema, fetishism to fan clubs, “trophies” to trading cards. Discover:WHO THEY ARE: Those featured include Ed Gein, the homicidal mama’s boy who inspired fiction’s most famous Psycho, Norman Bates; Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, sex-crazed killer cousins better known as the Hillside Stranglers; and the Beanes, a fifteenth-century cave-dwelling clan with an insatiable appetite for human fleshHOW THEY KILL: They shoot, stab, and strangle. Butcher, bludgeon, and burn. Drown, dismember, and devour . . . and other methods of massacre too many and monstrous to mention here.WHY THEY DO IT: For pleasure and for profit. For celebrity and for “companionship.” For the devil and for dinner. For the thrill of it, for the hell of it, and because “such men are monsters, who live . . . beyond the frontiers of madness.” PLUS: in-depth case studies, classic killers’ nicknames, definitions of every kind of deviance and derangement, and much, much more.For more than one hundred profiles of lethal loners and killer couples, Bluebeards and black widows, cannibals and copycats— this is an indispensable, spine-tingling, eye-popping investigation into the dark hearts and mad minds of that twisted breed of human whose crimes are the most frightening . . . and fascinating.

Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer


John E. Douglas - 2007
    history. For 31 years a man who called himself BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) terrorized the city of Wichita, Kansas, sexually assaulting and strangling a series of women, taunting the police with frequent communications, and bragging about his crimes to local newspapers and TV stations. After disappearing for nine years, he suddenly reappeared, complaining that no one was paying enough attention to him and claiming that he had committed other crimes for which he had not been given credit. When he was ultimately captured, BTK was shockingly revealed to be Dennis Rader, a 61-year-old married man with two children.

My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers


Helen Morrison - 2004
    Helen Morrison has profiled more than eighty serial killers around the world. What she learned about them will shatter every assumption you've ever had about the most notorious criminals known to man.Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life in the suburbs of a major city. She has a physician husband, two children, and a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is much more than that. She is one of the country's leading experts on serial killers, and has spent as many as four hundred hours alone in a room with depraved murderers, digging deep into killers' psyches in ways no profiler before ever has.In My Life Among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled the Mad Biter, Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims' body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She did the last interview with Ed Gein, who was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards and gave her his paintings as presents. Then there was Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams; rapist turned murderer Bobby Joe Long; England's Fred and Rosemary West, who killed girls and women in their "House of Horrors"; and Brazil's deadliest killer of children, Marcelo Costa de Andrade.Dr. Morrison has received hundreds of letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, and studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims -- and the spouses and parents of the killers -- to gain a deeper understanding of the killer's environment and the public persona he adopts. She has also studied serial killers throughout history and shows how this is not a recent phenomenon with psychological autopsies of the fifteenth-century French war hero Gilles de Rais, the sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Bathory, H. H. Holmes of the late ninteenth century, and Albert Fish of the Roaring Twenties.Through it all, Dr. Morrison has been on a mission to discover the reasons why serial killers are compelled to murder, how they choose their victims, and what we can do to prevent their crimes in the future. Her provocative conclusions will stun you.

While She Slept: A Husband, a Wife, a Brutal Murder


Marion Collins - 2005
    Six months later, she was dead. Jeff and Jill Cahill seemed to have it all. Two kids, a dog, a nice house of the picket fence variety. But their relationship wasn't as happy as it seemed. Jeff and Jill had been having serious financial problems and were headed towards divorce, legally separated but living in the same house until Jill could afford to move out. But on April 21, 1996 Jeff and Jill had a torrid argument while their kids were upstairs sleeping. In the aftermath, Jeff claimed that his wife had started stabbing him with a kitchen knife - and that was the reason for his taking a Louisville slugger straight to her head. She lay in a coma for nearly six months, and just as she started to show signs of coming out of it.... she received a visitor.On October 27th of that same year, staffers at the University Hospital in Syracuse New York, noticed a strange-looking guy lurking in the hallway wearing a wig and outdoor boots. When Jill's nurse went to check on her patient, she found her gasping for air, with bruises around her mouth, and white powder (later to be determined as cyanide) flecked across her chest.