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Books > Fiction > True stories > Crime
New England is renowned for its quaint towns, beautiful landscapes, and busy ports. But it is also infamous as the setting for unexplained deaths, ghost stories, bizarre murders, and peculiar wills and epitaphs. In New England Nightmares: True Tales of the Strange and Gothic, author Keven McQueen explores the darker and stranger side of New England and the Mid-Atlantic. With shocking and unforgettable tales from the tip of Maine all the way to the New Jersey shore, this eerie collection explores our fascination with death and the unknown, including tales of medical students digging up bodies to dissect, of a murderer's bones being wired together after death, and of Dr. Timothy Clark Smith, who requested that he be buried with a breathing tube and glass window so he could see the outside world. An intriguing and frightful look into the odder side of the Northeast, New England Nightmares promises to send chills down your spine.
Land. Race. Murder. Betrayal. The true story of a case that broke a South African town, originally released in August 2020 and now available in paperback b-format. At dusk, on a warm evening in 2016, a group of forty men gathered in the corner of a dusty field on a farm outside Parys in the Free State. Some were in fury. Others treated the whole thing as a joke - a game. The events of the next two hours would come to haunt them all. They would rip families apart, prompt suicide attempts, breakdowns, divorce, bankruptcy, threats of violent revenge and acts of unforgivable treachery. These Are Not Gentle People is the story of that night, and of what happened next. It's a murder story, a courtroom drama, a profound exploration of collective guilt and individual justice, and a fast-paced literary thriller. Award-winning foreign correspondent and author Andrew Harding traces the impact of one moment of collective barbarism on a fragile community - exploding lies, cover-ups, political meddling and betrayals, and revealing the inner lives of those involved with extraordinary clarity. The book is also a mesmerising examination of a small town trying to cope with a trauma that threatens to tear it in two - as such, it is as much a journey into the heart of modern South Africa as it is a gripping tale of crime, punishment and redemption. When a whole community is on trial, who pays the price? Winner of the Sunday Times 2021 Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
'Security guards told the police that they were surprised by assailants who had somehow evaded the sophisticated security system. They could not say how many robbers there were...it appears to be one of the biggest robberies in U.S. history.' New York Times, front page In 1993 $7.4 million was stolen from the Brink's Armored Car Depot in Rochester, New York, the fifth largest robbery in US history. Sam Millar was a member of the gang who carried out the robbery. He was caught, found guilty and incarcerated, before being set free by Bill Clinton's government as an essential part of the Northern Ireland Peace Process. This remarkable book is Sam's story, from his childhood in Belfast, membership of the IRA, time spent in Long Kesh internment camps and the Brinks heist and aftermath. Unputdownable.
On a hot and dusty Sunday in June 1872, 13-year-old Mary Secaur set off on her two-mile walk home from church. She never arrived. The horrific death of this young girl inspired an illegal interstate pursuit-and-arrest, courtroom dramatics, conflicting confessions, and the daylight lynching of a traveling tin peddler and an intellectually disabled teenager. Who killed Mary Secaur? Were the accused actually guilty? What drove the citizens of Mercer County to lynch the suspects? David Kimmel seeks answers to these provoking questions and deftly recounts what actually happened in the fateful summer of 1872, imagining the inner workings of the small rural community, reconstructing the personal relationships of those involved, and restoring humanity to this gripping story. Using a unique blend of historical research and contemporary accounts, Outrage in Ohio explores how a terrible crime ripped an Ohio farming community apart and asks us to question what really happened to Mary Secaur.
Decades before the coining of the term "serial killer," H.H. Holmes murdered dozens of people in his now-infamous Chicago "Murder Castle." In his own autobiography, Holmes struggled to define himself in the language of the late nineteenth century. As the "first"-or, as he labeled himself, "The Greatest Criminal of the Age"-he had no one to compare himself to, and no ready-made biographical structure to follow. Holmes was thus nearly able to invent himself from scratch. This book uses Holmes' writings and confessions to inspect how the Arch Fiend represented himself. Although the legitimacy of Holmes' personal accounts have been called into question, his biography mirrors the narrative structure of the true crime genre that emerged decades after his death.
In the summer of 1930, two federal prohibition agents were murdered. The first died in a hail of buckshot on a dark street in Aguilar, Colorado. Six weeks later, the second agent and his vehicle disappeared on a sunny afternoon along a New Mexico state highway south of Raton. These events occurred during the era when the government legislated a ban on alcohol manufacture, distribution, and sales within the United States. During their 50-year search, the authors sought answers to why no one was ever prosecuted for these crimes. This is the first book to correlate the two murders, identify how and why they occurred, name the parties involved and the roles they played. The authors interviewed many individuals associated with the events and discovered a trove of National Archives files containing incident reports, suspect interview notes, the dead agents' daily activity logs and their personnel files. Building upon this base, they located the remaining documents generated by state and local law enforcement officers and additionally data mined private and public contemporary newspaper collections. The shadows along the trail lift as the light of truth is shown upon this mystery. Two federal agents can now rest in peace.
Although many fans think Butler University basketball took off with its back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances in 2010 and 2011, the Butler Bulldogs have a long history of tenaciously outplaying larger and better-known teams. In Butler Basketball Legends, veteran sports writer Stan Sutton profiles the legacy of the Butler University basketball program and the coaches, players, and fans who give it heart. Sutton takes readers behind the scenes to meet Butler's legendary stars and hear their stories, including players like Darnell Archey, Gordon Hayward, Matt Howard, and Mike Green, and unforgettable coaches like Thad Matta and Brad Stevens, and of course, Tony Hinkle. For 41 years Mr. Hinkle was the cornerstone of the athletics department and built a winning basketball program around small guards, short but stout centers, and players other coaches thought inadequate, leading Butler to over 550 victories. From the fabled feats of past teams all the way up to the first season of new head coach LaVall Jordan, Butler Basketball Legends is a must-read for all who love the game.
Christopher Berry-Dee is back. In Talking With Serial Killers: World's Most Evil, the bestselling author delves deeper still into the gloomy underworld of killers and their crimes. He examines, with shocking detail and clarity, the lives and lies of people who have killed, and shines a light on the motives behind their horrific crimes. Through interviews with the killers, the police and key members of the prosecution, alongside careful analysis of the cases themselves, the reader is given unprecedented insight into the most diabolical minds that humanity has to offer. Extending its sweep from lonesome outsiders to upstanding members of the community, Talking With Serial Killers: World's Most Evil shows that the world's most monstrous killers may be far closer than you think. . .
In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas, was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorised by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.
Considered by many to be the first work of the true crime genre, this ground-breaking book reconstructs the murder of the Clutter family from information provided by newspaper articles and interviews. 'Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, "a natural killer" - absolutely sane, but conscienceless, and capable of dealing, with or without motive, the coldest-blooded deathblows' On 15 November 1959, the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, a wealthy farmer, his wife and their two young children were found brutally murdered. Blood all over the walls, the telephone lines cut, and only a few dollars stolen. Heading up the investigation is Agent Al Dewey, but all he has are two footprints, four bodies, and a whole lot of questions. Truman Capote's detailed reconstruction of the events and consequences of that fateful night, In Cold Blood is a chilling, gripping mix of journalistic skill and imaginative power. 'The American dream turning into the American nightmare. A remarkable book' Spectator 'One of the most stupendous books of the decade' Sunday Express
True-life reporting on vicious criminals and the haphazard system that punishes themIn 1969, the Supreme Court justices cast votes in secret that could have signaled the end of the death penalty. Later, the justices' resolve began to unravel. Why? What were the consequences for the rule of law and for the life at stake in the case? These are some of the fascinating questions answered in Murder at the Supreme Court. Veteran journalists Martin Clancy and Tim O'Brien not only pull back the curtain of secrecy that surrounds Supreme Court deliberations but also reveal the crucial links between landmark capital-punishment cases and the lethal crimes at their root. The authors take readers to crime scenes, holding cells, jury rooms, autopsy suites, and execution chambers to provide true-life reporting on vicious criminals and the haphazard judicial system that punishes them. The cases reported are truly "the cases that made the law." They have defined the parameters that judges must follow for a death sentence to stand up on appeal. Beyond the obvious questions regarding the dubious deterrent effect of capital punishment or whether retribution is sufficient justification for the death penalty (regardless of the heinous nature of the crimes committed), the cases and crimes examined in this book raise other confounding issues: Is lethal injection really more humane than other methods of execution? Should a mentally ill killer be forcibly medicated to make him "well enough" to be executed? How does the race of the perpetrator or the victim influence sentencing? Is heinous rape a capital crime? How young is too young to be executed?This in-depth yet highly accessible book provides compelling human stories that illuminate the thorny legal issues behind the most noteworthy capital cases.
A true story of a bank robber and a chilling car chase worthy of an Elmore Leonard novel or a Brian De Palma movie. Like many new arrivals to Canada, Hermann Beier came to this country with big dreams - visions of a wide-open country where hard work and entrepreneurial flair would make him rich. A charismatic handyman, martial arts teacher, and small business owner, he charmed women and earned the respect of men. He was loved in his community of Alliston, Ontario, and had a plan to make a million bucks. But when those dreams soured, Beier turned to crime to pay the bills. Faced with bankruptcy in 1991, Beier hatched a plan to rob a string of banks in a single day. But it was all too much, too fast. After leading authorities from Guelph to Caledon on what was then the longest police chase in Canadian history, Beier was gunned down alongside a farmer's fence, his body pierced by a hail of police bullets. But he survived, and the end of his crime spree marked a new beginning. After spending almost a decade in various Ontario prisons, searching for a way to get his life back on track, Beier was finally paroled. He now lives a quiet life, dividing his time between Canada and Austria.
From the bestselling author of What You Did comes a true-crime investigation that cast a dark shadow over the Ireland of her childhood. Ireland in the 1990s seemed a safe place for women. With the news dominated by the Troubles, it was easy to ignore non-political murders and sexual violence, to trust that you weren't going to be dragged into the shadows and killed. But beneath the surface, a far darker reality had taken hold. Through questioning the society and circumstances that allowed eight young women to vanish without a trace no conclusion or conviction, no resolution for their loved ones bestselling crime novelist Claire McGowan delivers a candid investigation into the culture of secrecy, victim-blaming and shame that left these women's bodies unfound, their fates unknown, their assailants unpunished. McGowan reveals an Ireland not of leprechauns and craic but of outdated social and sexual mores, where women and their bodies were of secondary importance to perceived propriety and misguided politics-a place of well-buttoned lips and stony silence, inadequate police and paramilitary threat. Was an unknown serial killer at large or was there something even more insidious at work? In this insightful, sensitively drawn account, McGowan exposes a system that failed these eight women-and continues to fail women to this day.
A harmless, unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen in northern Mexico on 4 November 2019. In a massacre that produced international headlines, nine people were killed and five others gravely injured. The victims were members of the La Mora and LeBaron communities-fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and settled in Mexico when polygamy was outlawed. In The Colony, the best-selling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where initial reporting on the killings left off, and in the process tells the violent history of the LeBaron clan and their homestead, from the first polygamist emigration to Mexico in the 1880s to the LeBarons' internal blood feud in the 1970s to the family's recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult. Drawing on sources within Colonia LeBaron itself, Denton creates a mesmerising work of investigative journalism in the tradition of Under the Banner of Heaven and Going Clear.
New York Times Bestseller! "Sam Giancana tells all . . . Controversial . . . ties seven United States presidents to the mob."-Larry King, CNN One of the most feared Chicago mobsters Sam Giancana clawed his way to the top of the Mafia hierarchy by starting as a hit man for Al Capone. He was known as one of the best vehicle escape artists, a tenacious business man, and a ruthless killer. He partied with major stars such as Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe and did business with agents ranging from the CIA to the Vatican to the shah of Iran. When politician Joe Kennedy gave Giancana the chance to use mob muscle to get his son John elected, Giancana jumped at the task. But the Kennedy brothers double-crossed him, waging full-out war on organized crime throughout the United States. And Giancana went after them. Written with suspense and conviction, we learn about how the CIA asked Giancana to assassinate Fidel Castro The book includes Giancana's testimony about the truth of his involvement in the deaths of Monroe and others, among others. Chuck Giancana, Sam's brother, contributes a unique perspective of the mob's relationship with the Bay of Pigs and many other pivotal events of the 60's and beyond. Double Cross is an eye-opening account of the interworking of the government and the mob and how this relationship has impacted American history. "Mobster chief Sam Giancana was at the heart of one of America's most notorious criminal conspiracies and this book gives us fresh information on that. His web of crimes and associations involve some of the most glamorous figures of his age, including the Kennedy family, Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe. Written with the crisp cadence of a thriller, it is a fascinating expose of dark deals and adds more layers to that most famous mystery-who really killed President John Kennedy?"-Tim Newark from his Foreword
It seemed the case of the notorious Yorkshire Ripper was finally closed when Peter Sutcliffe was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1981. But in the early 1980s, Gordon Burn spent three years living in Sutcliffe's home town of Bingley, researching his life. Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son offers one of the most penetrating and provocative insights into the mind of a murderer ever written. Includes a new introduction by Denise Mina.
New England is renowned for its quaint towns, beautiful landscapes, and busy ports. But it is also infamous as the setting for unexplained deaths, ghost stories, bizarre murders, and peculiar wills and epitaphs. In New England Nightmares: True Tales of the Strange and Gothic, author Keven McQueen explores the darker and stranger side of New England and the Mid-Atlantic. With shocking and unforgettable tales from the tip of Maine all the way to the New Jersey shore, this eerie collection explores our fascination with death and the unknown, including tales of medical students digging up bodies to dissect, of a murderer's bones being wired together after death, and of Dr. Timothy Clark Smith, who requested that he be buried with a breathing tube and glass window so he could see the outside world. An intriguing and frightful look into the odder side of the Northeast, New England Nightmares promises to send chills down your spine.
On a hot and dusty Sunday in June 1872, 13-year-old Mary Secaur set off on her two-mile walk home from church. She never arrived. The horrific death of this young girl inspired an illegal interstate pursuit-and-arrest, courtroom dramatics, conflicting confessions, and the daylight lynching of a traveling tin peddler and an intellectually disabled teenager. Who killed Mary Secaur? Were the accused actually guilty? What drove the citizens of Mercer County to lynch the suspects? David Kimmel seeks answers to these provoking questions and deftly recounts what actually happened in the fateful summer of 1872, imagining the inner workings of the small rural community, reconstructing the personal relationships of those involved, and restoring humanity to this gripping story. Using a unique blend of historical research and contemporary accounts, Outrage in Ohio explores how a terrible crime ripped an Ohio farming community apart and asks us to question what really happened to Mary Secaur.
A concise history of the controversial 1920 murder trial in suburban Boston, which saw two Italian immigrants executed for killings they may not have committed.
The verdict is guilty. On 20 May 2014, former New South Wales police officers Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara murdered student Jamie Gao in cold blood. Both have been found guilty of murder and possession of 2.78 kilograms of methamphetamine, and sentenced to life imprisonment. But this wasn't Rogerson's first trial or conviction. Once one of the most highly decorated police officers in New South Wales, he was dismissed from the police force in 1986, and jailed twice. That was just the tip of the iceberg. This is the eye-opening account of Rogerson's life of crime - policing it and committing it - and reveals the full story of one of the most corrupt and evil men in Australia, and the events that led inexorably to the chilling murder of Jamie Gao in storage unit 803.
________________________________________ The bestselling true story and inspiration behind the hit Netflix show of how one underfunded FBI team became the first to explore the dark world of serial murderers. John Douglas is a former FBI Special Agent and expert in criminal profiling and behavioural science. He made a career of looking evil in the eye - and understanding it. No wonder that he was the inspiration for Special Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, as well as the film's consultant on the reality of serial killers. Douglas invented and established the practice of criminal profiling, and submerged himself in the world of serial killers in a quest to understand why they killed, and to help prevent more innocent lives from being ended by future killers. As his serial crime unit developed from a derided two-bit operation in a dingy officer to one of the FBI's elite task forces, Douglas personally confronted the most terrible crimes of the age, including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and the Atlanta child murderer. With the fierce page-turning power of a bestselling novel, yet terrifyingly true, Mindhunter is a true crime classic. ________________________________________ 'John Douglas knows more about serial killers than anybody in the world' - Jonathan Demme, director of The Silence of the Lambs 'A cracker of a book' - Esquire
The Sahara Desert, February 1962: the wreckage of a plane emerges from the sands revealing, too, the body of the plane’s long-dead pilot. But who was he? And what had happened to him? Baker Street, London, June 1927: twenty-five-year-old Jessie Miller had fled a loveless marriage in Australia, longing for adventure in the London of the Bright Young Things. At a gin-soaked party, she met Bill Lancaster, fresh from the Royal Air force, his head full of a scheme that would make him as famous as Charles Lindbergh, who has just crossed the Atlantic. Lancaster wanted to fly three times as far – from London to Melbourne – and in Jessie Miller he knew he had found the perfect co-pilot. By the time they landed in Melbourne, the daring aviators were a global sensation – and, despite still being married to other people, deeply in love. Keeping their affair a secret, they toured the world until the Wall Street Crash changed everything; Bill and Jessie – like so many others – were broke. And it was then, holed up in a run-down mansion on the outskirts of Miami and desperate for cash, that Jessie agreed to write a memoir. When a dashing ghostwriter Haden Clark was despatched from New York, the toxic combination of the handsome interloper, bootleg booze and jealousy led to a shocking crime. The trial that followed put Jessie and Bill back on the front pages and drove him to a reckless act of abandon to win it all back. The Lost Pilots is their extraordinary story, brought to vivid life by Corey Mead. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, and full of adventure, forbidden passion, crime, scandal and tragedy, it is a masterwork of narrative nonfiction that firmly restores one of aviation’s leading female pioneers to her rightful place in history.
The True American tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two other victims, at other gas stations, aren t so lucky, dying at once. The True American traces the making of these two men, Stroman and Bhuiyan, and of their fateful encounter. It follows them as they rebuild shattered lives one striving on Death Row to become a better man, the other to heal and pull himself up from the lowest rung on the ladder of an unfamiliar country. Ten years after the shooting, an Islamic pilgrimage seeds in Bhuiyan a strange idea: if he is ever to be whole, he must reenter Stroman's life. He longs to confront Stroman and speak to him face to face about the attack that changed their lives. Bhuiyan publicly forgives Stroman, in the name of his religion and its notion of mercy. Then he wages a legal and public-relations campaign, against the State of Texas and Governor Rick Perry, to have his attacker spared from the death penalty. Ranging from Texas's juvenile justice system to the swirling crowd of pilgrims at the Hajj in Mecca; from a biker bar to an immigrant mosque in Dallas; from young military cadets in Bangladesh to elite paratroopers in Israel; from a wealthy household of chicken importers in Karachi, Pakistan, to the sober residences of Brownwood, Texas, The True American is a rich, colorful, profoundly moving exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions. Ultimately it tells a story about our love-hate relationship with immigrants, about the encounter of Islam and the West, about how or whether we choose what we become." |
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