Book picks similar to
The World's Most Infamous Murders by Nigel Blundell
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true-crime
crime
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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
Kate Summerscale - 2008
In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.
The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars
Paul Collins - 2011
On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects.The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era's most baffling murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus. Reenactments of the murder were staged in Times Square, armed reporters lurked in the streets of Hell's Kitchen in pursuit of suspects, and an unlikely trio — a hard-luck cop, a cub reporter, and an eccentric professor — all raced to solve the crime.What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial: an unprecedented capital case hinging on circumstantial evidence around a victim whom the police couldn't identify with certainty, and who the defense claimed wasn't even dead. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale — a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that have dominated media to this day.
Love Me or Else: The True Story of a Devoted Pastor, a Fatal Jealousy, and the Murder that Rocked a Small Town
Colin McEvoy - 2012
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.
Body Of Proof
Darrell Brown - 2019
A man was convicted. Case closed?Body of Proof, a true crime podcast, examines the many unanswered questions surrounding the disappearance and death of Suzanne Pilley in Edinburgh in 2010 and the subsequent conviction of David Gilroy. Journalists and TV producers Darrell Brown and Sophie Ellis spent two years investigating the case and spoke exclusively to David Gilroy, who was convicted of murdering Suzanne Pilley and disposing of her body. Sentenced to life in a Scottish prison, Gilroy maintains his innocence. Although police believe they have the right man, key components of the prosecution’s case are missing: there is no body of the victim, no witnesses to the crime, and no physical evidence (no DNA, CCTV video, or murder weapon).In this gripping, step-by-step investigation, Darrell Brown and Sophie Ellis uncover startling information not heard in court that might have changed the minds of the jurors. And they shine a light on aspects of the Scottish criminal justice system that might be keeping an innocent man behind bars.A What’s the Story Films production for Audible.
Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales
William M. Bass - 2003
Bill Bass, one of the world's leading forensic anthropologists, gained international attention when he built a forensic lab like no other: The Body Farm. Now, this master scientist unlocks the gates of his lab to reveal his most intriguing cases-and to revisit the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, fifty years after the fact.
My Mother, a Serial Killer
Hazel Baron - 2018
Dulcie Bodsworth was the unlikeliest serial killer. She was loved everywhere she went, and the townsfolk of Wilcannia, which she called home in the late 1950s, thought of her as kind and caring. The officers at the local police station found Dulcie witty and charming, and looked forward to the scones and cakes she generously baked and delivered for their morning tea.That was one side of her. Only her daughter Hazel saw the real Dulcie. And what she saw terrified her.Dulcie was in fact a cold, calculating killer who, by 1958, had put three men in their graves - one of them the father of her four children, Ted Baron - in one of the most infamous periods of the state's history. She would have got away with it all had it not been for Hazel.Written by award-winning journalist Janet Fife-Yeomans together with Hazel Baron, My Mother, A Serial Killer is both an evocative insight into the harshness of life on the fringes of Australian society in the 1950s, and a chilling story of a murderous mother and the courageous daughter who testified against her and put her in jail.
Bundy: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Robert Keller - 2017
Yet, this was no wild-eyed madman, no hunched gargoyle, foaming at the mouth to warn us of his bad intentions. This was a handsome, talented and articulate young man, an honors graduate for whom a bright future was predicted. This was a rising star in the Republican Party who might well have achieved his ambition of high political office.What then turned Bundy into the monster he became, a demon in the guise of an ordinary man? In this chilling new work, bestselling true crime author Robert Keller tackles the enigma, delving deep into the killer’s motivations, psychology and deadly methodology, much of it taken from the words of Bundy himself.
Warning!: Bundy: Portrait of a Serial Killer will keep you awake at night. It is not recommended for the squeamish or faint of heart.
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Book Series by Robert Keller
Most of my works cover serial killers, while the “Murder Most Vile” series covers individual true crime stories. These are the main collections;
American Monsters
50 American Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Murder Most Vile
Human Monsters
British Monsters
Australian Monsters
Canadian Monsters
German Monsters
Cannibal Killers
Plus various other standalone books, including the The Deadly Dozen, which is available as a free download on Amazon, and Serial Killers Unsolved, which you can get for free when signing up to my mailing list.
Robert Keller’s True Crime eBook Categories:
Serial Killers
True Crime
Serial Killer Biographies
Murder and Mayhem
True Murder Cases
Serial Killer Case Files
True Crime Short Stories
Leadbelly: Inside Australia's Underworld Wars
John Silvester - 2004
And when you're shot you're shot ... In Melbourne, generations of gangsters have lived and died by the creed ''We catch and kill our own''. But in the last decade the violence bubbling under the surface spilled into open war on the streets. This is the story of the gangsters, the hitmen and the police who deal with them in the deadliest game of all. The book that inspired the smash hit television series "Underbelly".
We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence
Becky Cooper - 2020
government. You have to remember because Harvard doesn't let you forget.1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment. Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims. We Keep the Dead Close is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny, and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history.
The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
Brian Lane - 1992
Reprint.
Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?
Ethan Brown - 2016
The women came to be known as the Jeff Davis 8, and local law enforcement officials were quick to pursue a serial killer theory, opening a floodgate of media coverage and stirring a wave of panic across Jennings’ class-divided neighborhoods. The Jeff Davis 8 had been among society’s most vulnerable—impoverished, abused, and mired with mental illness. They engaged in sex work as a means of survival. And their underworld activity frequently occurred at a decrepit no-tell motel called the Boudreaux Inn. As the cases went unsolved, the community began to look inward. Rumors of police corruption and evidence tampering, of collusion between street and shield, cast the serial killer theory into doubt. But what was really going on in the humid rooms of the Boudreaux Inn? Why were crimes going unsolved and police officers being indicted? What had the eight women known? And could anything be done do stop the bloodshed? Mixing muckraking research and immersive journalism over the course of a five-year investigation, Ethan Brown reviewed thousands of pages of previously unseen homicide files to posit what happened during each victim’s final hours.
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.
CASE CLOSED: Serial Killers Captured
R.J. Parker - 2011
When a Serial Killer is active in a community it is extremely scary for everyone. This book focuses on Serial Killers who have been captured and some of the most notorious and ruthless killers in history. Serial killers stay close to home and their victims are random. Dennis Rader found all his victims in Kansas not far from the Wichita home he shared with his wife and two kids. Rader, the president of his local church, knocked on his victim's doors and they simply let him in. John Wayne Gacy, met many of his 33 victims, all young men and boys, at charity events where he appeared dressed a clown. After luring them to his house and murdering them he stuffed them under his Cook County, Illinois home. Gary Leon Ridgway, the Green River Killer, was convicted of strangling 49 random women he met in Washington. He confessed to killing 71 but authorities believe the number of victims could be over 90. Jeffrey Dahmer of Milwaukee admitted to killing and cannibalizing 17 young men and boys before he was arrested. Case Closed is a compilation of criminal file dossiers on several of those Serial Killers that were captured, including:Ted BundyJohn Wayne Gacy - The Killer ClownJeffrey DahmerDonald Henry GaskinsGary Ridgway - The Green River KillerDennis Rader - The BTK KillerDavid Berkowitz - The Son of SamOttis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas - The Homosexual Crime TeamAnd Many More.
Missing You: Australia's Most Mysterious Unsolved Missing Persons Cases
Justine Ford - 2012
Some of these people want to disappear; other times they meet with misadventure or murder.Missing You features some of Australia’s most disturbing missing persons cases and invites you to play armchair detective. With rare, privileged access to police around the country, and in moving interviews with the families of missing people, Missing You tells the intimate stories of Australia’s Missing, revealing clues that police hope will ultimately bring them home.In an insightful, mysterious, and often emotional journey, Missing You features more than 20 of this country’s most baffling cases, as well as stories of unidentified remains, abductions and suspected homicides.Here you’ll find the true, in-depth stories behind this country’s most worrying disappearances, with fresh insights into recent and historic cases. Missing You promises to be an investigative tool and a page-turning bestseller.
West Cork
Sam Bungey - 2018
The rest remains a mystery.Gripping, yet ever elusive, join the real-life hunt for answers in the year’s first not-to-be-missed, true-crime series. Investigative journalist, Sam Bungey, and documentarian, Jennifer Forde, guide listeners through the brutal, unsolved murder and the tangled web of its investigation, while introducing an intricate cast of characters, a provocative prime suspect, and a recovering community whose story begs to be heard.