Tags:true crime
To Love and To Kill
A bizarre love triangle leads to a brutal murder in Florida in this true-crime story by the New York Times bestselling author of One Breath Away.The missing-persons case of Heather Strong, a young, beautiful suburban mother, baffled Florida detectives. When the file was handed to a veteran investigator, he knew Heather was dead. The challenge was to find her body—and whoever killed her. Soon, a sordid triangle of sex, jealousy, and rage came to light. The killers were cunning, manipulative, depraved—and they were as close to Heather as a man and a woman could possibly be. Vividly recreated by master investigative journalist M. William Phelps, this riveting account of seething small-town passions is a classic tale of crime and justice.Praise for M. William Phelps“One of America's finest true-crime writers.” —Vincent Bugliosi, New York Times bestselling author of Helter Skelter“Phelps is the Harlan Coben of real-life thrillers.” —Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author of Tell No LiesIncludes sixteen pages of dramatic photos
The Blackpool Rock
To the police he was Public Enemy Number One. To drunken gangs of yobs intent on trouble, he was a nightmare come true. Steve Sinclair was the toughest doorman in the wildest resort in Britain - and if you crossed him, payback was swift and certain. Blackpool, once a byword for cheeky family fun, was by the 1980s a violent town plagued by lager louts, drug dealers and villains intent on muscling in on the lucrative club trade. Sinclair worked the biggest clubs and the roughest doors. He and his associates fought hundreds of battles against football hooligans, gang members and rival hardmen. They were also branded gangsters and were blamed by the police for serious unsolved crimes. Described by On The Doors magazine as 'a compelling, gripping and fascinating tale', THE BLACKPOOL ROCK is a candid insight into the dangerous world of the modern doorman and of the extreme methods he sometimes employs to defend himself and his customers and uphold his hard-won reputation.
The Want-Ad Killer
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Stranger Beside Me comes a true crime story of a serial killer who was sentenced to die—yet lived to murder again....and again.... After committing his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death, using want ads to lure his young female victims. And time after time, justice was thwarted by a killer whose twisted legal genius was matched only by his sick savagery. Complete with the testimony of the officers who put him behind bars and the women who barely escaped with their lives, The Want-Ad Killer is one of the most shattering and thought-provoking true-crime stories of our time.
Ghettoside
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, USA TODAY, AND CHICAGO TRIBUNE • A masterly work of literary journalism about a senseless murder, a relentless detective, and the great plague of homicide in AmericaNATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • The Economist • The Globe and Mail • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift. Here is the kaleidoscopic story of the quintessential, but mostly ignored, American murder—a “ghettoside” killing, one young black man slaying another—and a brilliant and driven cadre of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs. Ghettoside is a fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives and a community bonded in tragedy, and a surprising new lens into the great subject of why murder happens in our cities—and how the epidemic of killings might yet be stopped. Praise for Ghettoside“A serious and kaleidoscopic achievement . . . [Jill Leovy is] a crisp writer with a crisp mind and the ability to boil entire skies of information into hard journalistic rain.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times“Masterful . . . gritty reporting that matches the police work behind it.”—Los Angeles Times“Moving and engrossing.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Penetrating and heartbreaking . . . Ghettoside points out how relatively little America has cared even as recently as the last decade about the value of young black men’s lives.”—USA Today“Functions both as a snappy police procedural and—more significantly—as a searing indictment of legal neglect . . . Leovy’s powerful testimony demands respectful attention.”—The Boston Globe
Knifer
Drug addiction. Criminal behaviour. Murder... and all before his sixteenth birthday. From foster home to children's home to living rough on the streets, Cain never had a normal childhood. By the age of 8 he was carrying a knife. Seven years later he was serving time for killing someone. Based on real events, ex-prison officer Ronnie Thompson tells Cain's shocking story and reveals what really happens to teenage offenders both on the streets and once they're behind bars. Prison riots, assaults on officers, roof-top protests and brutal acts of violence - this is an inside account of life in a young offender's institute and of an angry young man spiralling dangerously out of control.
Scally
Andy Nicholls is known to every football intelligence officer in Britain. For twenty-five years, he was one of the most active hooligans in the country, a leading figure among the violent followers of Everton FCClassified as a Category C thug, the worst kind, he amassed more than twenty arrests and has been deported from Belgium, Iceland and Sweden. His terrace fanzine was closed down by the authorities and he was banned from every ground in the UK.Revealing the truth behind the vicious knife attacks of the so-called County Road Cutters and the bitter Merseyside and Manchester rivalries that left scores injured, SCALLY caused a storm of controversy on first publication. It is widely acknowledged as the most revealing, most shocking book ever written about soccer gang culture.
Evil Season
"Benson is a master of true crime." --Robert ScottDeadly DreamsJoyce Wishart was living out her life's dream, running her own art gallery in sunny Sarasota, Florida. But that dream ended in nightmare when a deranged drifter named Elton Brutus Murphy walked through the door with a knife in his hand and a voice in his head commanding him to rape and kill. In the space of half an hour, Joyce was dead--brutally mutilated--and the tony arts enclave plunged into terror as a frenzied manhunt ensued. Told in the convicted murderer's own words, a chilling tale of one life spiraling into madness--and another gruesomely cut short. "Difficult to put down. . .. This is one that I highly recommend." --True Crime Book Reviews on Watch Mommy Die"Brisk pacing. . .shocking details." --Publishers Weekly on The Burn FarmIncludes the exclusive confession of Elton Brutus Murphy
The Burn Farm
First, She Seduced Them. . .Sheila LaBarre liked to troll the personal ads and homeless shelters, looking for men whom society had rejected for one reason or another--men she could easily dominate both verbally and sexually. One by one, she invited them to her remote New Hampshire farmhouse, where she engaged them in S&M. But over time, sex gave way to brutal acts of torture as she mercilessly flogged and beat her captives until they confessed to committing unspeakable acts. Once satisfied that they had paid for their sins, Sheila savagely slaughtered them and burned their remains on her farm. . . Then, Humiliated, Tortured, And Killed Them. . . From the disturbing audiotapes Sheila made of her victims' confessions to her own bizarre statements in which she claimed to have returned from the dead to be God's avenger, The Burn Farm takes you behind the scenes of the scandal that rocked a quiet New England town, and into the twisted, depraved mind of a manipulative, cold-blooded murderer. . . Includes 16 Pages of Shocking Photos
A Killer's Touch
A PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN . . .Denise Amber Lee was a 21-year-old happily married mother of two little boys. She had her whole life ahead of her. . .until an intruder broke into her Florida home. Within a few short hours she was savagely terrorized, murdered, and buried naked in a shallow grave near a desolate swamp.A DEPRAVED KILLER . . .Michael King, a 38-year-old out-of-work plumber, was a ticking time bomb. For years, neighbors called the police on King, complaining that, among other things, he'd thrown battery acid in their pool and slashed their tires. Denise's fate was far worse. In a horrifying act of cruelty, King bound her with duct tape, raped her repeatedly, then shot her dead.A TRAGIC FAILURE. . .Incredibly, Denise managed to call 911 twice during her abduction. Eyewitnesses and her distraught husband also called, but a slow, inefficient system tragically failed her. As a result, Florida passed the Denise Lee Law, setting voluntary standards for 911 systems. King was sentenced to death. But for Denise and her loving family, it was too late.Includes 16 Pages of Shocking Photos
A Knife in the Heart
Difficult to put down. . .. This is one that I highly recommend. --True Crime Book Reviews on Watch Mommy DieDie For LoveSarah Ludemann was new to love. The Pinellas, Florida, 17-year old was a late bloomer. When she fell for a boy she was blind to the world of sex, drugs and drama swirling around her. Soon, Sarah had a bitter enemy in 18-year-old waitress Rachel Wade; both girls were head-over-heels with a cocky two-timer named Joshua Camacho. On a warm spring night, their passions erupted into violence. A knife flashed under the streetlights. When the fight was over one girl was dead and the other charged with murder. In an emotion-packed courtroom the whole story took shape--a troubling tale of conflicting lives, tangled sexual affairs, and the high price of having the right feelings for the wrong guy. . ."Brisk pacing. . .shocking details." --Publishers Weekly on The Burn FarmIncludes dramatic photos.
Murder in Connecticut
An incisive, unflinching account of the shocking, summer 2007 Connecticut crime that is still making national headlines, Murder in Connecticut examines what happened to Dr. William Petit, his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their two daughters, Hayley and Michaela, in the early morning hours of July 23 in the quiet town of Cheshire--and how their community rallied bravely around the sole survivor of this vicious home invasion.Who was the Petit family? How were they marked for murder by their killers, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes? How could these men have dreamed up such a crime? And will these horrifying murders--with startling similarities to the case in Truman Capote's classic In Cold Blood--really be the impetus behind sweeping parole reform laws that will not only affect Connecticut, but all of America?
Mommy Deadliest
The true crime story of a New York mother who killed and a daughter who wouldn’t die, from the author of A Killer’s Touch and Watch Mommy Die.Anti-Freeze For A HusbandIt looked like a suicide. A man’s corpse on the bathroom floor—next to a half-empty glass of anti-freeze. But fingerprints on the glass belonged to the deceased’s wife, Stacey Castor. And a turkey baster in the garbage had police wondering if she force-fed the toxic fluid down her husband’s throat.Pills For A DaughterIn desperation, Stacey concocted a devious plan. She mixed a deadly cocktail of vodka and pills, then served it to her twenty-year-old daughter Ashley. The authorities would find Ashley with a suicide note, confessing to the anti-freeze murder. But Stacey’s plan backfired—because Ashley refused to die . . .A Killer For A MotherCharged with murdering her second husband—and attempting to kill her oldest daughter—Stacey Castor sparked a media frenzy. But when police dug up her first husband’s grave—and found anti-freeze in his body, too—this New York housewife earned a nickname that would follow her all the way to prison. They called her “The Black Widow.” And with good reason.The story that inspired the Lifetime film, Poisoned Love: The Stacey Castor Story, starring Nia Vardalos.Case Featured On 20/20Includes Sixteen Pages of Shocking Photos