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.

In December 1883, five outlaws attempted to rob the A.A. Castaneda Mercantile in the fledgling mining town of Bisbee in the Arizona Territory. The robbery was a disaster: four citizens shot dead, one a pregnant woman. The failed heist was national news, with the subsequent manhunt, trial and execution of the alleged perpetrators followed by newspapers from New York to San Francisco. The Bisbee Massacre was as momentous as the infamous blood feud between the Earp brothers and the cowboys two years earlier, and led to the only recorded lynching in Tombstone-John Heath, a sporting man, was thought to be the mastermind. But new research indicates he may have been innocent. This comprehensive history takes a fresh look at the event that marked the end of the Wild West period in the Arizona Territory.

NOW A MAJOR SKY ATLANTIC SERIES 'Unputdownable . . . fantastic and terrifying.' Nihal Arthanayake, RADIO 5 The astonishing true story of 'one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation' (New York Times) Baltimore, 2015. Riots were erupting across the city. Drug and violent crime were surging, with homicides reaching their highest level in over two decades. For years, Sgt Wayne Jenkins and his elite team of plain-clothed officers - the Gun Trace Task Force - had been the city's lauded heroes, working to get drugs and guns off the streets. But all the while they had been stealing drugs and money and gaming the system. Because who would believe the dealers, the smugglers or the people who had simply been going about their daily business over the word of the city's elite task force? 'A work of journalism that not only chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police unit, but can stand as the inevitable coda to the half-century of disaster that is the American drug war.' David Simon

Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut college boy who entered outlaw culture on a university trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He never looked back. Stratton became a member of the hippie mafia, travelling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favour of marijuana and hashish. With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler tells Stratton's adventure while centring on his last years in the business as he travels from New York to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza. As Stratton's fortunes rise and fall, he's pursued all the while by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices.

FOR 134 YEARS, THE MURDERS committed in London's East End by the infamous 'Jack the Ripper' have baffled the world. The Ripper murders commenced in August and continued freely until the beginning of November 1888 when inexplicably the murders stopped. Five women were brutally murdered and savagely mutilated in and around Whitechapel. The killer was never caught despite the very best intentions of the police and thousands of would-be detectives following his trail. Since 1888, much has changed and the crime scene locations known to the Ripper and his victims would be quite unrecognisable to them now. Equally, to the modern-day Londoner or visitor, the locations would remain largely unknown...until now. True crime and social historians Richard C Cobb and Mark Davis return to the Whitechapel of 1888 to see what remains from this dark time in London's history and to take the reader on a step-by-step tour of the modern world of Jack the Ripper. Using the original police reports, state of the art photographs, unseen images and diagrams, they present the truth about what actually happened in the autumn of 1888 and take a look at other victims that may have been killed by the same man. Cobb and Davis give the reader a real sense of how the past meets the present in arguably London's most vibrant and cultural quarter - where the shadow of the Ripper is never too far away.

Each year, hundreds of New Yorkers disappear under mysterious circumstances never to be heard from again, with their families and loved ones waiting painfully, as the years crawl by, for some word of what happened to them. This book explores this painful epidemic by highlighting individual stories of the missing and their families, among them a 22-month-old baby and a noted judge. Sections include unidentified missing human remains found in New York State, investigation procedures, and the pros and cons of hiring a private detective or a psychic. Perhaps one of these touching accounts will offer hope that someone, somewhere, might have the missing piece to one of these devastating puzzles and help bring any one of these missing persons home.

On 22nd November 1963, the 35th president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and his wife Jackie were taking part in a presidential motorcade through Dallas. Thousands lined the streets cheering; others hung out of windows to catch a glimpse of the much-loved First Lady and President. Suddenly, the unthinkable: three shots - bang...bang, bang - rang out. In front of the world, John F Kennedy was fatally wounded. Lee Harvey Oswald was caught. But did he fire the fatal bullet? Who REALLY killed JFK? Fifty years after the tragic events in Dallas, JFK: THE SMOKING GUN solves the ultimate cold case. With the forensic eye of a highly regarded ex-cop, Colin McLaren gathered the evidence, studied 10,000 pages of transcripts, discovered the witnesses the Warren Commission failed to call, and uncovered the exhibits and testimonies that were hidden until now. What he found is far more outrageous than any fanciful conspiracy theory could ever be. JFK: THE SMOKING GUN proves, once and for all, who did kill the President. 'A compelling case' THE AUSTRALIAN 'Comprehensive and compelling' NEWCASTLE HERALD

Was Arizona Donnie Clark, AKA Kate "Ma" Barker the mastermind behind the Barker gang terrorizing the Midwest during the early years of the great Depression? Or was she a terrible mother who urged her sons to criminal behavior for her own financial gain? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between. This lively retelling of the legend of Ma Barker and her boys is full of action, intrigue, and the answers to mysteries that have lingered for more than 70 years.

Who can stop a maniacal Russian and his private army? Surely not a handful of Cape Town gangsters and an Investment Banker/ex-scuba diving instructor. Submerged is an international thriller traversing the pirate-controlled waters off the Horn of Africa, the lethal world of Russian organized crime, the buzzing financial capital London, the Rhino slaughter fields of South Africa, the decadence concealed below the brittle veneer of the beautiful City of Cape Town with its adjacent Cape Flats ganglands and the icy, shark-infested waters of the Atlantic.

During a high-risk scuba dive at one of the deep dive-sites of the Red Sea, Sophia Popova, a beautiful but troubled Russian heiress, fails in her suicide attempt. A love affair develops between her and her rescuer, dive instructor Leon Jacobs, and she arranges that Leon, also a bright economics graduate, joins a major Investment Bank in London. The Bank is owned by Russian billionaire and Sophia’s father, Bogdan Popov, who made it big from political favouritism, corruption and innovative methods of getting rid of competitors. The love-sick and gullible Leon soon starts drowning in the international syndicated crime world of Popov whose motto is: ‘Deal or Death’.

Meanwhile, Franklin Benjamin, a notorious Cape Town gangster, but now retired, tries to live a sober life as a commercial fisherman in a small village off the West Coast of South Africa. But when Franklin’s and Leon’s paths cross and, after a series of shocking events disrupt the peace and quiet of Franklin’s world, he has to make the impossible decision whether to rise up from his hibernation and mobilise his gang.

Will Leon escape with his life from the global-reaching claws of Popov? And where will Sophia find the courage and strength to slay the inner demons ruling her existence?

On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley held a public reception at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. In the receiving line, holding a gun concealed by a handkerchief, was Leon Czolgosz, a young man with anarchist leanings. When he reached McKinley, Czolgosz fired two shots, one of which would prove fatal. The backdrop of the assassination was among the largest of many world's fairs held in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Exposition celebrated American progress, highlighting the new technology of electricity. Over 100,000 light bulbs outlined the Exposition's building-on display inside were the latest inventions utilizing the new power source. This new treatment of the McKinley assassination is the first to focus on the compelling story of the Exposition: its labor and construction challenges; the garish Midway; the fight for inclusion of an accurate African-American display to offset racist elements of the Midway; and the impressive displays in the exhibit halls.

The inside story-from the organizer himself--of the largest unrecovered cash haul in history. This full account brings readers behind the heist memorialized in Goodfellas, a crime that has baffled law enforcement for decades. From Henry Hill himself, The Lufthansa Heist is the last book he worked on before his 2012 death. On December 11, 1978, a daring armed robbery rocked Kennedy Airport, resulting in the largest unrecovered cash haul in world history, totaling six million dollars. The perpetrators were never apprehended and thirteen people connected to the crime were murdered in homicides that, like the crime itself, remain unsolved to this day. The burglary has fascinated the public for years, dominating headlines around the globe due to the story's unending ravel of mysteries that baffled the authorities.One of the organizers of the sensational burglary, Henry Hill, who passed away in 2012, in collaboration with Daniel Simone, has penned an unprecedented "tell-all" about the robbery with never-before-unveiled details, particulars only known to an insider. In 2013, this infamous criminal act again flared up in the national news when five reputed gangsters were charged in connection to the robbery. This latest twist lends the project an extraordinary sense of timing, and the legal proceedings of the newly arrested suspects will unfold over the next year, continuing to keep the Lufthansa topic in the news.

On November 12, 1971, Bernard Patterson, a much decorated Vietnam War hero turned real-life version of Don Quixote, Butch Cassidy, and Robin Hood all rolled into one, robbed the Northern National Bank in Mars Hill, Maine. He escaped with $110,000; at the time, the largest bank robbery in the history of the state. A tunnel rat and paratrooper in Vietnam who rose to the rank of sergeant, he was awarded four bronze stars and recommended for a silver star for valor. He returned home to northern Maine broke and disillusioned. Wearing dark glasses, dressed in a Marx Brother's ankle length coat and wearing a blue wig, he robbed the bank, even though he was recognized by the elderly teller. He initially escaped by paddling a rubber raft down the Prestile Stream. This was the beginning of a comic, outrageous, implausible journey that took him across the United States, then to Europe and North Africa before finally surrendering to authorities in Scotland Yard after he had spent most of the money. Along the way, he lived a raucous life of wine and women while hobnobbing in aristocratic hangouts and giving money to those he perceived to be in need; all the time staying just a heartbeat ahead of law enforcement officials. He motor biked across Europe, hoodwinked border officials, bought a camel and got lost in the North African desert. Returned to the United States for prosecution, he was convicted and imprisoned. Released several years later, he moved back to northern Maine, where he continued to lead a reckless life that included running a "pot farm," until he died at age 56 in 2003. When asked by a friend why he had robbed the bank, he responded, "The VA wouldn't give me a loan, so I decided to take one out on my own."

An Austro-Hungarian with a dark streak, Victor Lustig was a man of athletic good looks, with a taste for larceny and foreign intrigue. He spoke six languages and went under nearly as many aliases in the course of a continent-hopping life that also saw him act as a double (or possibly triple) agent. Along the way, he found time to dupe an impressive variety of banks and hotels on both sides of the Atlantic; to escape from no fewer than three supposedly impregnable prisons; and to swindle Al Capone out of thousands of dollars, while living to tell the tale. Undoubtedly the greatest of his hoaxes was the sale, to a wealthy but gullible Parisian scrap-metal dealer, of the Eiffel Tower in 1925. In a narrative that thrills like a crime caper, best-selling biographer Christopher Sandford tells the whole story of the greatest conman of the twentieth century.

Handsome Brute explores the facts of a once-renowned, now little-remembered British murder case, the killings of the charming, but deadly ex-RAF playboy Neville Heath. Since the 1940s, Heath has generally been dismissed as a sadistic sex-killer - the preserve of sensational Murder Anthologies - and little else. But the story behind the tabloid headlines reveals itself to be complex and ambiguous, provoking unsettling questions that echo across the decades to the present day. For the first time, with access to previously restricted files from the Home Office and Metropolitan Police, this book explores the complex motivations behind the murders through the prism of the immediate post-war period. Against the backdrop of a society in flux, a culture at a moment of change, how much is Heath's case symptomatic, or indeed, emblematic of the age he lived in? Handsome Brute is both an examination of the age of austerity, and a real-life thriller as shocking and provocative as American Psycho or The KillerInside Me, exploring the perspectives of the women in Heath's life - his wife, his mother, his lovers - and his victims. This collage of experiences from the women who knew him intimately probes the schism at the heart of his fascinating, chilling personality.

Al Brady was an armed robber and murderer in the 1930s and became the FBI's Public Enemy #1. The crime spree of Brady and his gang brought them from the south and midwest to Maine. A hardware store owner in Bangor became suspicious when Brady requested a large supply of ammunition and paid with an equally large amount of cash, and notified police. The FBI was waiting in ambush for them when they arrived to pick up the ammo. The rest is history, as on October 12, 1937, Brady and an accomplice were killed in a hail of bullets in broad daylight in downtown Bangor. This spectacular public gun-battle has become an integral part of Maine lore. Now, historian Trudy Irene Scee tells the story, including Brady's growing up in Indiana, his criminal exploits, and what brought he and his cohorts to Maine.

In the summer of 1998, Walter Kirn then an aspiring novelist struggling with impending fatherhood and a dissolving marriage set out on a peculiar, fateful errand: to personally deliver a crippled hunting dog from his home in Montana to the New York apartment of one Clark Rockefeller, a secretive young banker and art collector who had adopted the dog over the Internet. Thus began a fifteen-year relationship that drew Kirn deep into the fun-house world of an outlandish, eccentric son of privilege who ultimately would be unmasked as a brazen serial impostor, child kidnapper, and brutal murderer.

Kirn's one-of-a-kind story of being duped by a real-life Mr. Ripley takes us on a bizarre and haunting journey from the posh private clubrooms of Manhattan to the hard-boiled courtrooms and prisons of Los Angeles. As Kirn uncovers the truth about his friend, a psychopath masquerading as a gentleman, he also confronts hard truths about himself. Why, as a writer of fiction, was he susceptible to the deception of a sinister fantasist whose crimes, Kirn learns, were based on books and movies? What are the hidden psychological links between the artist and the con man? To answer these and other questions, Kirn attends his old friend s murder trial and uses it as an occasion to reflect on both their tangled personal relationship and the surprising literary sources of Rockefeller's evil. This investigation of the past climaxes in a tense jailhouse reunion with a man whom Kirn realizes he barely knew a predatory, sophisticated genius whose life, in some respects, parallels his own and who may have intended to take another victim during his years as a fugitive from justice: Kirn himself.

Combining confessional memoir, true crime reporting, and cultural speculation, Blood Will Out is a Dreiser-esque tale of self-invention, upward mobility, and intellectual arrogance. It exposes the layers of longing and corruption, ambition and self-delusion beneath the Great American con."