California's picturesque shores have always been a magnet for outcasts and criminals. Read about 64 of the most horrifying crimes ever committed in The Golden State, from the early 1950s into the 1980s. These accounts tell of mans inhumanity toward his fellow man and provide an inside look at infamous serial killers, assassins, sadistic rapists, bank robbers, kidnappers, Satan worshippers, and a plethora of other notorious criminals. Revisit The Sex Club Slaying, The Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping, and the Real House on Haunted Hill. Be glad you're not on the helpful list of "The Lonely Hearts Killer" or "Souls for Satan." Written in an accessible, chronological sequence and enhanced by over 60 photographs, each entry provides an overview of the crime, the parties involved, evidence gathered, and leading theories about solutions. This reference is indispensable for the study of the history of modern crime in California.

In 2011, the lives of 48 Edmontonians came to a sudden, violent end, leading to the city of Edmonton gaining the dubious moniker of the year: "Murder Capital of Canada." It wasn't the first time the city of champions had snagged the title nobody wants to claim. In Deadmonton , former Edmonton Sun reporter Pamela Roth takes a look at some of Edmonton's most notorious murders, both solved and unsolved. Told first-hand by the victims' families, these stories serve as a disturbing reminder of the horror that humans are capable of inflicting upon each other, and highlight the immense sadness and pain left in the wake of these crimes. But Deadmonton also gives a glimpse into the lives of detectives working tirelessly to bring closure to the families and justice to the victims' names.

'Simon Farquhar succeeds brilliantly (and with real empathy for all concerned) in setting the story in its historical, social and emotional context, with the victim and her family always at the heart of his writing ... A Desperate Business is an absolute must-read.' - Carol Ann Lee, the bestselling author of The Murders at White House Farm Winter 1969. Rupert Murdoch, newly arrived in Britain, has bought The Sun and the News of the World, immediately provoking outrage by serialising the sensational memoirs of Christine Keeler. Watching him being interviewed on television, two men hatch a plot to kidnap Murdoch's wife for a million-pound ransom. But the plan goes wrong. Following Murdoch's Rolls-Royce to a house in Wimbledon, they are unaware that he has gone to Australia for Christmas and loaned the car to his friend and colleague, Alick McKay. On Monday, 29 December 1969, Alick arrives home to find his wife, Muriel, has vanished. She was never seen again. Acclaimed author and journalist Simon Farquhar has spent three years investigating one of the most frightening and perplexing mysteries in British criminal history, which began with a case of mistaken identity and led to one of the first convictions for murder without a body being found. Presenting a wealth of new information and, for the first time, a possible solution, A Desperate Business is a meticulous and sensitive account of a tragedy. It is a story of greed, unimaginable cruelty, and newspaper rivalry, but most of all, the story of an adored woman who never came home.

'It is a formidable, indeed a damning indictment and Wilkes presents the result of his detective work with journalistic panache' P. D. JAMES, Times Literary Supplement 'Roger Wilkes's seminal book lays out the facts . . . one of the great unsolved murders of the century' CRAIG TAYLOR, Guardian 'I call it the impossible murder because Wallace couldn't have done it. And neither could anyone else. The Wallace case is unbeatable, it will always be unbeatable' RAYMOND CHANDLER Who really killed Julia Wallace? The final verdict. Ever since that terrible night in January 1931, when the body of Julia Wallace was found in her Liverpool home, her head crushed by violent blows, the identity of her killer has remained a mystery. Her husband, William, was accused, tried, convicted and sentenced to hang for murder, but he was then acquitted in a sensational appeal court judgement. Yet the police refused to reopen their investigation. So who did kill Julia? When Roger Wilkes started researching a dramatised radio documentary for Liverpool's Radio City, he uncovered new evidence which suggested a disturbing story - a crucial witness ignored by the police, even a suggestion of a deliberate cover-up. Finally, he provides compelling evidence as to the identify of the real killer.

Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human.

The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Edgar Award Nominee
One of the Best Books of the Year: "O, The Oprah Magazine," "Time," "The Washington Post," "The Christian Science Monitor," " St. Louis Post-Dispatch," "San Francisco Chronicle
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With a New Afterword

On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel. The nation was shocked, enraged, and saddened. As chaos erupted across the country and mourners gathered at King's funeral, investigators launched a sixty-five day search for King's assassin that would lead them across two continents. With a blistering, cross-cutting narrative that draws on a wealth of dramatic unpublished documents, Hampton Sides, bestselling author of "Ghost Soldiers, " delivers a non-fiction thriller in the tradition of William Manchester's "The Death of a President" and Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood. "With "Hellhound On His Trail, "Sides shines a light on the largest manhunt in American history and brings it to life for all to see.

From the co-author of KGB: The Inside Story and an acknowledged authority on the subject comes "the most important book ever written about American intelligence."--David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers and Hitler's Spies

Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Earle maintained that the biggest case of his career was the one involving Frank Hughey Smith, the ex-convict millionaire, alleged criminal mastermind, and Dixie Mafia figure. With the help of corrupt local authorities, Smith spent the 1970s building a criminal empire in auto salvage and bail bonds. But there was one problem: a rival in the salvage business threatened his dominance. Smith hired arsonists to destroy the rival; when they botched the job, he sent three gunmen, but the robbery they planned was a bloody fiasco. Investigators were convinced that Smith was guilty, but many were skeptical that the newly elected and inexperienced Earle could get a conviction. Amid the courtroom drama and underworld plots the book describes, Willie Nelson makes a cameo. So do the private eyes, hired guns, and madams who kept Austin not only weird but also riddled with vice. An extraordinary true story, Last Gangster in Austin paints an unusual picture of the Texas capital as a place that was wild, wonderful, and as crooked as the dirt road to paradise.

THE SHOCKING FOLLOW-UP TO MINDHUNTER, NOW A SMASH-HIT NETFLIX DRAMA

John Douglas is the world's top pioneer and expert on criminal profiling. His lifelong work to understand and combat serial killers is legendary among law enforcement circles. Now, following up on his first book, Mindhunter, Journey Into Darkness delves further into the criminal mind in a range of chilling new cases.

Profiling suspects from OJ Simpson to the Unabomber, and investigating the assassination of John Lennon and the Waco tragedy, Journey Into Darkness explores the crimes of the century – as well as cases you've never heard of – with the peerless eye of one of the FBI's finest.

Douglas, famously the inspiration for Special Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, reveals the fascinating circumstance of each crime in detail as he explores the larger issues, from crime prevention and rehabilitation to the reasons behind escalating violence in society. A must read for all true crime fans.

Every year in the UK, hundreds of workers are killed just doing their jobs, thousands more die of illnesses caused by their work and tens of thousands suffer major injuries such as amputations, loss of sight, serious burns, and so on. Worldwide, two million people are killed by work each year. Yet with the exception of high profile cases such as the gas leak at Bhopal, India, which killed tens of thousands, this crime wave fails to attract the interest of the politicians, the media or - least forgiveably of all - the knowledge industry of criminology. This book is concerned with crimes against worker and public safety, providing an account and analysis of this increasingly important field, and setting this within the broader context of corporate and white-collar crime. It uses case studies and original analyses of official data to illustrate key points and themes, drawing upon both well known and high profile instances of safety crimes as well the mass of ubiquitous 'mundane' or 'routine' deaths and injuries. Thus the book examines how much safety crime is there, how are such offences rendered invisible, and how can their extent be unearthed accurately? Throughout the book the authors analyse the social, legal and political processes that ensure that safety crimes remain subject to under-enforcement and under-criminalisation. This analysis identifies key moments in the historical development of criminal law and regulation, and assesses the prospects for criminalising safety crimes in the context of contemporary neo-liberal regulatory policies. The theoretical and political justifications for dominant approaches to the regulation and sanctioning of safety criminals are subject to critique in order to develop alternative, more effective, means of criminalisation and punishment. The book concludes with an original analysis of safety crimes that allows us to understand the complexities of the conditions of their production, and develop a more realistic appraisal of the prospects for their amelioration.

*A must-read for all True Crime fans* Why are Scotland Yard murder detectives considered among the finest in the world? And why is so little known about how they truly work? ? Take a look at what lies behind that success with someone who knows. DI Steven Keogh spent over half of his 30-year police career as a Scotland Yard detective, helping to hunt down terrorists and some of the worst murderers in London. Step inside the mind of an investigator in a never-before-seen look into what it takes to catch killers and bring them to justice. In a journey from crime scene to trial, you will witness the emotional highs and lows of cracking real-life murder cases and discover why people kill, while debunking the myths that surround this detective work. Are you ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about the world of murder investigations?

Taking up where 'Red Army General' left off, O'Neill begins with Operation Mars, the massive undercover operation to trap United's 'top boys', and reveals the truth behind their headline-making Crown Court trial and their eventual acquittal.

In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking murder that fits the pattern of the infamous Boston Strangler, still at large. Hoping for a break in the case, the police arrest Roy Smith, a black ex-con whom the victim hired to clean her house. Smith is hastily convicted of the murder, but the Strangler's terror continues. And through it all, one man escapes the scrutiny of the police: a carpenter working at the time at the Belmont home of young Sebastian Junger and his parents--a man named Albert

From the acclaimed author of "A Perfect Storm" comes a powerful chronicle of three lives that collide in the vortex of one of America's most controversial serial murder cases.

THE MULTI-AWARD WINNING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 Why would you kill your neighbour? Based on the best part of a decade embedded with the homicide units of the LAPD, this groundbreaking work of reportage takes us onto the streets, inside the homes and into the lives of a community wracked by a homicide epidemic. Through the gripping story of one particular murder - of an eighteen-year-old boy named Bryant Tennelle, gunned down one evening in spring for no apparent reason - and of its investigation by a brilliant, ferociously driven detective - a blond, surfer-turned-cop named John Skaggs - it reveals the true origins of such violence, explodes the myths surrounding policing and race and shows that the only way to reverse the cycle of violence is with justice.

The biggest crime story in American history began on the night of March 1, 1932, when the twenty-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was snatched from his crib in Hopewell, New Jersey. The news shocked a nation enthralled with the aviator, the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. American law enforcement marshalled all its resources to return "Little Lindy" to the arms of his parents-and perhaps even more energized were the legions of journalists catering to a public whose appetite for Lindbergh news was insatiable. In Little Lindy Is Kidnapped, Thomas Doherty offers a lively and comprehensive cultural history of the media coverage of the abduction and its aftermath. Beginning with Lindbergh's ascent to fame and proceeding through the trial and execution of the accused kidnapper, Doherty traces how newspapers, radio, and newsreels reported on what was dubbed the "crime of the century." He casts the affair as a transformative moment for American journalism, analyzing how the case presented new challenges and opportunities for each branch of the media in the days before the rise of television. Coverage of the Lindbergh story, Doherty reveals, set the template for the way the media would treat breaking news ever after. An engrossing account of an endlessly fascinating case, Little Lindy Is Kidnapped sheds new light on an enduring quality of journalism ever since: the media's eye on a crucial part of the story-itself.

The true story of one of Glasgow's most controversial detectives and his battle with the criminals and violent street gangs of the city Two children lay dead on the floor. Beside them was a hammer and the ceiling was splattered with blood from the fatal blows. Even to a hardened detective, it was the kind of sight that would stay with you to the grave. This was Glasgow and the initial crime that led to the killings was as petty as the crime scene was horrific - the theft of a TV set. This was just one case among hundreds investigated by Les Brown, one of the most experienced and controversial detectives in a force charged with policing the city known as the Chicago of north-west Europe. Glasgow Crimefighter tells the inside story of cases and criminals who have written themselves into the history of a city where brawling is said to be in the blood. Down the years, the stories of many of the Glasgow godfathers and gangsters have appeared in lurid headlines and in books and articles. This is a different view - a rare and intensely human insight into what it was like on the other side of the law and it is told by someone who was just as hard as the men and women he hunted down.This is what it was like to be on the frontline in the war against crimes such as murder, fraud, rape, moneylending and prostitution, and having to deal with violent street gangs on a daily basis. Throughout his amazing career, Les Brown was in the thick of the action and here he gives the insider's view on many of the aspects of his work - the success stories and the failures of the controversial Special Unit, the drama of famous trials and his tangling with notorious gangland figures like Arthur Thompson.

Everyone loves a romantic rogue whose exciting exploits feature a cheeky disregard for the law, narrow escapes and lots of love interest. Even at the height of highway robbery activity, it was thought that the death penalty was too harsh for these wayward scoundrels. There was the ever-courteous Claude du Vall, the epitome of gentlemanliness; the infamous Katherine Ferrars, who was the inspiration for the film The Wicked Lady; Dick Turpin, the most famous highwayman of them all; and lesser-known characters like William Gordon, whose corpse was subjected to an experiment in reanimation. All these and more form an entertaining volume that will keep the reader glued to the page following the mounted thief in his, or her, endless match against the law and a death by public hanging.

Posing as jewel thief "Donnie Brasco," FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone carried out the most audacious sting operation ever, working undercover for six years to infiltrate the flamboyant community of mafia soldiers, "connected guys," captains, and godfathers.

Now his unforgettable eyewitness account brings to pulsating life the entire world of wiseguys--their code of honor and their treachery, their wives, girlfriends and whores, their lavish spending and dirty dealings.

With the drama and suspense of a high-tension thriller, Joseph Pistone reveals every incredible aspect of the jealously guarded world he penetrated...and draws a chilling picture of what the mafia is, does, and means in America today.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER **OUT NOW: WHAT LIES BURIED. THE SENSATIONAL NEW BOOK BY KERRY DAYNES** 'Enthralling and terrifying. The Dark Side of the Mind is a chilling glimpse into a world of miscreants, monsters and the misunderstood.' Professor Dame Sue Black, author of the Sunday Times bestseller All That Remains 'A stunning, insightful, provocative piece of work. Wonderfully written and full of honesty. A powerful excavation of the world of a forensic psychologist.' Barbara Machin, creator and writer of Waking The Dead 'Kerry Daynes delves into the minds of psychopaths in a fascinating memoir.' Katya Edwards, Daily Mail 'Daynes offers fascinating insights into what makes criminals tick and how they might be more effectively treated. Her book is funny, wise and thoroughly gripping.' Jake Kerridge, writer and critic 'Grimly fascinating - a timely and gripping exploration of mental health issues in the criminal justice system from an author intimately acquainted with its dark heart.' Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange 'Kerry Daynes writes with knowledgeable insight on a side of people - and the criminal system that purports to treat them - that many would prefer to leave alone. The humour and psychological skills that have enabled her survival shine through.' Jessica Fellowes, author of The Mitford Murders Welcome to the world of the forensic psychologist, where the people you meet are wildly unpredictable and often frightening. The job: to delve into the psyche of convicted men and women to try to understand what lies behind their often brutal actions. Follow in the footsteps of Kerry Daynes, one of the most sought-after forensic psychologists in the business and consultant on major police investigations. Kerry's job has taken her to the cells of maximum-security prisons, police interview rooms, the wards of secure hospitals and the witness box of the court room. Her work has helped solve a cold case, convict the guilty and prevent a vicious attack. Spending every moment of your life staring into the darker side of life comes with a price. Kerry's frank memoir gives an unforgettable insight into the personal and professional dangers in store for a female psychologist working with some of the most disturbing men and women. If you enjoyed Unnatural Causes, When the Dogs Don't Bark and Prison Doctor you'll love Kerry's gripping account of her experience as a forensic psychologist.

The terror lasted for thirty-six hours. When it was over, thirty-three inmates were dead, all at the hands of their fellow convicts. It was an outbreak of inmate violence unequalled in the annals of prison uprisings. It happened at the Penitentiary of New Mexico - Time magazine called it the nation's most notorious prison. W.G. Stone was there. He witnessed the beatings, the stabbings, the rape, the torture. Tying the rope under his arms and around his chest, they strung him up on the basketball hoop for all to see. There he would hang for the rest of the riot. During those hours of madness that were to follow, inmates would come in and hack at his dangling corpse with knives, beat it with pipes, mutilating it so totally that it was beyond recognition, a raw, bloody mass of flesh, by the time the uprising was over. - The Hate Factory.