A place where they feel protected and loved. Yet for many this is simply not the case. The true stories in this short book demonstrate that the family environment can be a very dangerous place indeed. Not just for children suffering from child abuse, but also for mothers, fathers, wives and husbands. In the United States, one of the most treacherous places for a woman is in her own home. Women may be afraid of strangers, but it's a husband, a lover, a boyfriend, or someone they know who is most likely to hurt them and they are at the highest risk of suffering violence or murder when they are divorcing or separating from a partner. Men too can suffer abuse from their wife or partner but the difference in physical size and strength puts a woman at greater risk than a man. For children, the greatest danger is not an unknown stranger, but their immediate families. Is your family safe?

    But this time, she didn’t show—and Christopher’s calls went unanswered. The police found what looked like a scene from a horror movie at their home. The backdoor kicked in. A bedroom splattered with blood. And a pregnant young woman violently stabbed to death.Could Christopher have murdered the woman he claimed to love? Or was the crime done by an intruder Angila had feared for weeks? Angila’s womanizing ex-husband, Richie Wilder, Jr., aimed detectives straight toward Christopher. The evidence, however, pointed squarely at Richie.Kindergarten teacher Cynthia Wilder thought her dreams had come true when she married Richie. But while her husband sat behind bars, Cynthia grew lonely. When she shared some disturbing details with a former lover, Cynthia finally revealed the truth behind the sinister plot to kill Angila Wilder. After four years of lies and deceit, the real story would shock a community to its very core …

    The true story of America's most notorious serial killer case ever.

    After serving customers and locking the doors for the night, the kids began their regular cleanup to ready the restaurant for the following day. But then something went horribly wrong. Just before midnight, someone muscled into the place, robbed the store of $581 and kidnapped the four employees. Over the next two days, investigators searched in vain for the missing crewmembers before their bodies were discovered more than twenty miles away. The killer or killers were never caught. Join Julie Young on an exploration of one of the most baffling cold cases in Indiana history.

    In Dark Dreams he reveals the twisted motives and perverse thinking that go into the most reprehensible crimes. He also catalogs the innovative and remarkably effective techniques--techniques that he helped pioneer at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit--that allow Law Enforcement agents to construct psychological profiles of the offenders who comit them.Hazelwood has helped track down some of the most violent and well known criminals in modern history; in Dark Dreams he takes readers into his world--a sinister world inhabited by scores of dangerous offenders for every Roy Hazelwood who would put them behind bars. These are sexual sadists, serial rapists, child molesters, and serial killers. The cases he describes are as shocking as they are perplexing; their resolutions are as fascinating as they are innovative:* A young woman disappears from the convenience store where she works. Her body is later found in a field, strapped to a makeshift St. Andrew's Cross and mutilated beyond description. Who committed this heinous crime? And why?* A teenager's corpse is found hanging in a storm sewer. His clothes are neatly folded by the entrance and a stopwatch lies in the grime beneath him. Is he the victim of a bizarre, ritualistic murder . . . or an elaborate masturbatory fantasy gone awry?* A married couple, driving with their toddler in the back seat, pick up a female hitchhiker. They kidnap her and for seven years keep her in a box under their bed as a sexual slave. The wife had agreed to this inhuman arrangement in exchange for a second child. Who was to blame?But as gruesome as the crimes are and as unsettling as the odds seem, Hazelwood, writing with veteran journalsit Stephen Michaud, proves that the right amounts of determination and logic can bring even the most cunning and devious criminals to justice. Dark Dreams is a 2002 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Fact Crime.

    Now, dramatic and chilling new evidence comes to light exposing the sinister thoughts running through the mind of John Joubert--the man behind the Nebraska killings. Former TV news anchorman, investigative reporter and three time Emmy winner Mark Pettit returns to the case to write the final chapter in his best-selling, and now newly updated book: A Need to Kill: The True-Crime Account of John Joubert, Nebraska’s Most Notorious Serial Child Killer. In the spirit of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” Pettit delves into the Joubert case to tell the dramatic story from all angles as a non-fiction novel. In a series of exclusive, face-to-face interviews with Pettit, Joubert admits to a string of violent crimes and another killing that sends investigators into a frenzy ending with Joubert being convicted for a third murder and ultimately executed in Nebraska’s electric chair. Now, 30 years after the murders in Nebraska, Pettit uncovers shocking new evidence from Joubert’s prison records that proves the killer was fantasizing about committing more violent crimes. Never-before-seen death row drawings made by Joubert while he waited to be executed once again send a chill through Nebraska and those touched by Joubert’s horrific crimes. In the updated version of his book, Pettit opens his investigative files to the public and for the first time, shares handwritten letters Joubert wrote to the journalist while in prison. Pettit also reveals aspects of Joubert’s personality gleaned during the exclusive interviews and details from the death row discussions that have never been shared publicly.

    A cunning serial killer is on the loose, tormenting a family while evading capture. Until investigators could find a way to stop him, he would continue his hunt for more victims. He was a predator, abducting girls and young women from their own front yards in broad daylight. He was a sadist, phoning one victim’s family, taunting them, and then dashing their hopes. And he would not stop until he was caught. This serial killer, whoever he was, could pass unnoticed in society. Yet he craved the attention his crimes provided. Somewhere in this contradiction lay the key to his exposure.

    . . most thought-provoking."--BooklistIn 1997 twenty-year-old Colleen Stan left home to hitchhike from Oregon to California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and extraordinary crime.This is Colleen's incredible true story, told by the determined young district attorney who prosecuted the man who had forced her to endure years of sexual perversion . . . and held her captive in a coffin-like box under his and his wife's bed. A story of riveting psychological intensity and gripping courtroom drama, Perfect Victim reveals the whole truth about Collen Stan's real-life nightmare . . . and the psychopath who enslaved her body and her mind."Horrifying!"--The Cincinnati Post"Hard to put down!"--Chicago Tribune"A gripping and disturbing story of the secret life of apparently normal people. At once, horrific and engrossing."--Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter

    but you can just call him MR. NEW ORLEANS. Mr. New Orleans tells the incredible story of Frenchy Brouillette, a redneck Cajun teenager who stole his big brother's motorcycle and embarked on a 60-year vacation to New Orleans, where he became a legendary gangster and the underworld political fixer for his cousin, Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. Written by Crescent City native Matthew Randazzo V, the wickedly funny Mr. New Orleans is the first book to ever break the code of secrecy of the New Orleans Mafia Family, the oldest and most mysterious criminal secret society in America. "Mr. New Orleans is a rollicking, disturbing ride through the underbelly of a bygone New Orleans, lined with moments of dark, side-splitting hilarity. If you're a fan of James Lee Burke, drop what you're reading and pick this one up. In an era when popular wisdom tells us T.V. has stolen all depth from the literary true-crime narrative, Matthew Randazzo has found a way to beat that trend mightily; he's gone straight to the source and captured the singular, confounding voice of the New Orleans' mafia's top political fixer with fast-paced, riveting prose and a fine journalist's eye for detail." Chris Rice, New York Times Bestselling Author "Mr. New Orleans is a total knockout: Take everything you ever imagined about the sleazy good times to be had in New Orleans -- the sleazy good times capital of America -- and quadruple it, and you have a hint of what's inside these sticky pages." Bill Tonelli, Author of The Italian American Reader and Editor for Esquire and Rolling Stone

    One of the couple's three adopted children, he was shy and emotionally undemonstrative. His background and the circumstances leading to murder are the thrust of this searching study by Baltimore Evening Sun reporter Walker, less a true-crime re-creation than the story of a tortured being. Larry was given up by his birth mother when he was two and shunted from family to family, none of them willing to cope with his increasing insecurity and alienation. At age six, he was adopted by Bob and Kay Swartz, a model church-going Catholic couple but severe and demanding of their children, the father's temper sometimes growing into physical abuse.

    Three years later, the case was still haunting him, so he returned to the subject to examine its impact on a more personal level. More than anything, Morrison wanted an answer as to why the murder happened. He had started out (naively) believing that this was a question the trial would answer, and was dismayed to find that it was the one issue the court never addressed. Do the boys themselves know why? "I don't think they'll ever know," Morrison writes. "The further they go from it and the more they talk to therapists, the more they will develop a story about what happened. But whether that's a true story is very debatable... There isn't going to be the single answer that we all crave." And so Morrison turned inward to look for answers, mulling over his own experiences of being a child and being a parent. As If (named from the expression he hears his children using to express skepticism) is an extended personal essay on the nature of childhood, including aggressive and sexual feelings that children have and those that other people have toward children. With its flurry of quotations and ruminations, this book won't be to everyone's taste, but it does illustrate an intriguingly personal approach to understanding a crime. --Fiona Webster

    The story of the Hamilton man's strange disappearance in May 2013 captured headlines across the country and took over social media, resonating with everyone who had ever taken a test drive or bought and sold goods online. When Dellen Millard and Mark Smich were eventually arrested and charged with Bosma's murder, the mystery only deepened. Millard was the wealthy heir to an aviation business. Smich was his ne'er-do-well best friend from a middle-class family. There was no obvious reason why the pair had made it their deadly mission to steal a truck, murder its owner, and incinerate the body. Tim Bosma was their randomly chosen "thrill kill" target. Veteran journalist and private investigator Ann Brocklehurst had a front-row seat at Millard's and Smich's 2016 trial, where many of the questions about their shocking crime were finally answered. Others still linger, waiting to be further explained at two more murder trials set for 2017. Both Millard and Smich have been charged with the first-degree murder of Laura Babcock, who disappeared in summer 2012. And Millard alone faces murder charges in the death of his father, which previously has been ruled a suicide. Compelling and suspenseful, Dark Ambition chronicles an unfathomable crime and its chilling perpetrators.

    The next morning she was found gagged, raped, and tortured—her throat slit with such rage that she was nearly decapitated. Her husband Arthur never gave up hope that the future would bring enough evidence to close the case. But it was the past that held the clue.In 1985, fifty-five-year old Margarette Eby, a music professor, met the same grisly death at her cottage in Flint, Michigan. The case went cold—until six years later when the victim's son Mark came upon the story of Nancy Ludwig's slaying. With nothing to go on but intuition, he called authorities, certain that the same fiend committed both crimes.A cunning sting operation yielded irrefutable DNA evidence, and authorities were led to the home of respected navy veteran Jeffrey Gorton living quietly with his wife and two children. But his cold-blooded secrets were only beginning to come to light leaving fears that there were more victims yet to be found in a killing spree that had finally come to an end.

    He changed his position as the men on death row became real people to him, and as he came to witness the profound injustices they endured: from coerced confessions to disconcertingly incompetent lawyers; from racist juries and backward judges to a highly arbitrary death penalty system.It is these concrete accounts of the people Dow has known and represented that prove the death penalty is consistently unjust, and it's precisely this fundamental-and lethal-injustice, Dow argues, that should compel us to abandon the system altogether.

    While she was cleared by a grand jury, which believed her story that she had mistaken Billy for a prowler who had been recently breaking into neighboring houses, New York society was convinced that she had deliberately murdered Billy and that her formidable mother-in-law, Elsie Woodward, had covered up the crime to prevent further scandal to the socially prominent family. The incident became fiction in Truman Capote's malicious 1975 Esquire story, leading to Ann's suicide, and later was the subject of Dominick Dunne's The Two Mrs. Grenvilles. Now, after years of research, Braudy reveals the truth behind the legend. Tracing Ann's life from her difficult Kansas childhood through her early years as a model and aspiring actress to her stormy marriage to Billy Woodward and the sad years of her social exile after his death, Braudy shows how Ann, a victim of cruel gossip and class snobbery, could not have deliberately killed Billy.