THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER A Divorced Woman. A Dangerous Man. A Devastating Affair. 'You're right. It is totally extraordinary. My life is like a film; you couldn't make it up ... But there's something I have to tell you,' he confided, as he leaned across the table towards me. 'I'm not normal.' Carolyn Woods was living happily in a quiet Cotswolds village when an attractive stranger abruptly arrived in her life. Introducing himself as Mark Conway, he exuded confidence and to her surprise Carolyn quickly became captivated by this mysterious man. A rich Swiss banker (who later confessed to being a spy), he offered Carolyn companionship and introduced her to an exciting, glamorous world. In fact, some things were so astonishing she began to question her new lover. Was all as it seemed? The truth was even harder to believe. For a start, his real name was Mark Acklom, he was wanted by Interpol, and he was rich but for one reason only... A true-crime story that reads like a thriller, Sleeping with a Psychopath is a blow-by-blow account of the power of manipulation and a testament to the human will to survive.

The machine-gun murders of seven men on the morning of February 14, 1929, by killers dressed as cops became the gangland crime of the century."" Or so the story went. Since then it has been featured in countless histories, biographies, movies, and television specials. 'The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, ' however, is the first book-length treatment of the subject, and it challenges the commonly held assumption that Al Capone ordered the slayings to gain supremacy in the Chicago underworld.""

Chicago, Illinois, is a historic city filled with mystery. In these pages, you will learn about some of the most famous Chicago mysteries that, to this day, still have no answer. Who caused the Great Chicago Fire of 1871? Read about Al Capone and the Valentine's Day Massacre, the Smiley Face Murders, and the many people who have gone missing. From the very beginnings of the city to today, mysteries abound within the Windy City. People disappear, UFOs are spotted over O'Hare International Airport, pranksters interrupt television broadcasts, and the bodies of a notorious serial killer's victims are still being sought. All of these tales, and more, are here to tantalize your mind, haunt your dreams, and keep you guessing.

In Chicago in mid-twentieth century amid the haze and smoke of urban renewal and the sounds of the wrecking balls and bulldozers, there lived two men, both street-savvy, one Black, one Irish, one young, one old and both leaders of their clans. Each ruled with an iron fist. Each embodied the fighting spirit of the turbulent 1960s. One was David Barksdale, the Black Disciples leader, a Black youth club that would give birth to America's largest street gang; the other was Richard J. Daley, the legendary Mayor of the City of Chicago. He was one of the longest-serving, most prominent mayors in American history and the last of the big-city "bosses." Although the two never met, at least not face-to-face, their fates were linked by a time of change, an era of protest, which was a decisive moment of transformational power that was on the verge of a violent uprising in America's second-largest city. This is a book that is as lively as its subject. A braided narrative of two larger than life people, it has the boldness to combine two oddly related 1960s stories into a single narrative that is both intimate and epic. One captures the unlikely story of a Negro boy whose share-cropping family migrated from rural Mississippi to Chicago, where he started a street gang that became the largest in America. The book's other path follows America's last big city "boss," whose persona is legendary and bigger than life. While historians, political pundits, and those who knew him speak of "Hizzonor" as being a proud, Irish-Catholic who was the long-time godfather of the Chicago Democratic Party and Mayor who saved Chicago from becoming another Detroit or Cleveland, they also acknowledge that he was a fierce segregationist. He had a contentious relationship with civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Richard Daley also played a significant role in the history of the United States Democratic Party. Williams an internationally recognized gang expert and interventionist, eloquently tells the story of these men, their clans, and their on-going struggle for power, status, and legacy. However unheard of and unimaginable, some of the incidents may seem, this is not a work of fiction. Everything written comes from archival documents, official reports, focus groups, in-depth interviews, or first-hand accounts. The action takes place mostly in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. Still, there are some occasions where the action takes place in Bronzeville, the Woodlawn community, on the West Side of the City and downtown.

Between Good and Evil is Roger Depue's retrospective look at a life spent apprehending criminals - mostly serial killers - as a small-town police chief, Swat team member, Behavioural Sciences Unit chief and developer of revolutionary law enforcement programmes that were the precursor to VICAP. The book also charts a spiritual odyssey that culminated in Depue becoming a Brother of the Missionaries of the Holy Apostles. While a seminarian, he counseled maximum security inmates. Following his time in the clergy, he re- entered law enforcement and today heads up the world's most elite forensics think tank, The Academy, which was the basis for the Chris Carter-created Fox TV show Millennium.

'An Extraordinary story of innocence and persecution, determination and grit ... it had me rattling through the pages' SOPHIE DRAPER A gripping true crime investigation into the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. In September 1973, Stephen Downing was convicted and indefinitely sentenced for the murder of Wendy Sewell, a young legal secretary in the town of Bakewell in the Peak District. Wendy was attacked in broad daylight in Bakewell Cemetery. Stephen Downing, the 17-year-old groundskeeper with learning difficulties and a reading age of 11, was the primary suspect. He was immediately arrested, questioned for nine hours, without a solicitor present, and pressured into signing a confession full of words he did not understand. 21 years later, local newspaper editor Don Hale was thrust into the case. Determined to take it to appeal, as he investigated the details, he found himself inextricably linked to the narrative. He faced obstacles at every turn, and suffered several attempts on his life. All of this merely strengthened his resolve: why should anyone threaten him if Downing had committed the crime? In 2002, Stephen Downing was finally acquitted, having served 27 years in prison. Immerse yourself in this masterful account of Hale's long, dedicated and often dangerous campaign to rescue a long-forgotten victim of the British legal system; the longest miscarriage of justice in British history.

11 Oak Street is the true story of how the Queen's bankers, Coutts & Co, sent two cashier's cheques to the law firm of Urie Walsh in San Francisco with the wrong address on the envelope (11 Oak Street instead of 1111 Oak Street), setting off a chain of events that led to the abduction of a three-year-old child from Bristol, England, to San Francisco, California. It is a horrifying story of greed, ineptness, corruption, stupidity and wasted years as the father tries to seek justice and access to his son in the midst of a thirteen-year nightmare that even Kafka could not have thought up. If you want to read about the seven California lawyers involved in this story who either went to jail, were disbarred, or resigned with charges pending, and inept judges who broke all the rules or were disciplined, this is the book for you. This is a story that would never have happened if those concerned had fulfilled their duties correctly and not broken the law. If Graham Cook, the author, had known then what he knows now, there would have been no story and he would not have gone bankrupt, become homeless or, through the corruptness of his own brother, ended up in a California jail. This is the book the California Judges Association refused to let me promote to its members lest it offend some of them, which of course it will do as the book exposes improper and on occasions corrupt conduct by some of its past and present members. The best way to describe this book is that everything that could go wrong went and if the internet was around at the start of the nightmare most of what went on in this book would not have happened.This is a book where certain people have gone to extraordinary lengths to stop people buying and have dismally failed in their objective.

The unremitting horror of the consequences of violent crime has never been depicted with such relentless honesty and anger as in "The Victim's Song". Eric Kaminsky, a twenty-two-year-old music student was robbed, stabbed in the back, and then thrown on the tracks of a New York City subway, where he died. In this book, Professor Alice R. Kaminsky, Eric's mother, gives a powerful account of this senseless tragedy. She describes the continuing pain she suffers from the loss of her only child and exposes the inadequacies of our flawed criminal justice system in her discussion of the trial of his murderers. This is a shocking book because the author expresses her anger honestly and without offering any of the palliatives of the bereavement books. No one who reads "The Victim's Song" will ever forget the torment experienced by the victims of crime in our increasingly violent society. Nor will anyone who reads "The Victim's Song" ever forget Eric Kaminsky.

The world's most renowned art forger reveals the secrets behind his decades of painting like the Masters-exposing an art world that is far more corrupt than we ever knew while providing an art history lesson wrapped in sex, drugs, and Caravaggio.The art world is a much dirtier, nastier business than you might expect. Tony Tetro, one of the most renowned art forgers in history, will make you question every masterpiece you've ever seen in a museum, gallery, or private collection. Tetro's "Rembrandts," "Caravaggios," "Miros," and hundreds of other works now hang on walls around the globe. In 2019, it was revealed that Prince Charles received into his collection a Picasso, Dali, Monet, and Chagall, insuring them for over 200 million pounds, only to later discover that they're actually "Tetros." And the kicker? In Tony's words: "Even if some tycoon finds out his Rembrandt is a fake, what's he going to do, turn it in? Now his Rembrandt just became motel art. Better to keep quiet and pass it on to the next guy. It's the way things work for guys like me." That scandal is the subject of a forthcoming feature documentary with Academy Award nominee Kief Davidson and co-author Giampiero Ambrosi, in cooperation with Tetro Throughout Tetro's career of over forty-five years, his inimitable talent has been coupled with a reckless penchant for drugs, fast cars, and sleeping with other con artists. He was busted in 1989 and spent four years in court and a one in prison. His voice-rough, wry, deeply authentic-is nothing like the high society he swanned around in, driving his Lamborghini or Ferrari, hobnobbing with aristocrats by day, and diving into orgies when the lights went out. He's a former furniture store clerk who can walk around in Caravaggio's shoes, become Picasso or Monet, with an encyclopedic understanding of their paint, their canvases, their vision: and hide it all in a grubby California townhouse with a secret art room built into the bathroom. (Press #* on his phone and the mirror pops open.) Pairing up with one of the investigative journalists who uncovered the 2019 scandal, Tetro and coauthor Ambrosi unveil the fascinating truth of the art world in an epic, alluring, utterly believable, and all-true narrative.

The compelling story of a woman who survived marriage to one of the UK's most notorious serial killers. In 2006, Cathy Wilson turned on the television and screamed with horror when a familiar face appeared on the news. Peter Tobin, her ex-husband and her son's father, was a serial killer. After a criminal case that gripped the nation, he was found guilty of the murders of three women and is now serving a life sentence. In Escape from Evil, Cathy reveals the shocking truth about her life with Tobin. They met when she was just sixteen and he seemed caring, until she started to catch glimpses of a very different man hiding behind his normal facade. He became controlling, then violent, until Cathy found herself trapped in a terrifyingly abusive marriage. Eventually, for the sake of her young son, she found the strength to escape and build a better life. In her chilling memoir, Cathy describes how she helped the police build a case, and finally stood in court as a witness against the man who could so easily have murdered her too.

This book tracks the political history and specific political actions associated with the diffusion of state-level marijuana decriminalization. It provides an integrated chronology of policy diffusion to show how social and cultural changes have impacted the shift from anti- to pro-marijuana political platforms. The main contributions are an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing policy learning and evolution, an overview of the political history of marijuana criminalization, a clear synthesis of the medical literature on cannabis effects, and a supply and demand analysis of legal and illegal marijuana markets in America. For scholars of criminal justice, law, political science, policy studies, sociology and addiction, it provides an amalgam of the diverse and divergent extant research on marijuana.

This thrilling story memorializes one of the most dangerous-and successful-series of undercover operations conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Written by the special agent who took these operations from disrupting small time fencing schemes to infiltrating major criminal organizations, this book is the first story of these secretive operations. During the operation's run from 2006 to 2014, Lou Valoze's fictitious businesses allowed his team of undercover agents to take thousands of weapons out of circulation and millions of dollars of drugs off the street. Through these covert "storefront" operations, the author developed a unique investigative blueprint for removing guns from the hands of violent felons and drug dealers. This book also explores the dark reality of living a double life and how it becomes difficult to tell the difference between the good guys and bad guys.

'A case study in human frailty, jealousy and desire ... fascinating.' The Times, Best Books of 2019 'Meticulously researched...superbly evocative and gripping...a narrative that builds with the intensity of an approaching thunderstorm.' The Spectator 'Sean O'Connor can't resist striking a theatrical note in this "biography of murder".' Sunday Times Adultery, alcoholism, drugs and murder on the suburban streets of Bournemouth. The Rattenbury case of 1935 was one of the great tabloid sensations of the interwar period. The glamorous femme fatale at the heart of the story dominated the front pages for months, somewhere between the rise of Hitler and the launch of the Queen Mary. With painstaking research and access to brand new evidence, Sean O'Connor vividly brings this epic story to life, from its beginnings in the south London slums of the 1880s and the open vistas of the British Columbian coast to its bloody climax in a respectable English seaside resort. The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury is a gripping murder tale and a heartbreaking romance, as well as the biography of a vital, modern woman trapped between the freedoms of two world wars and suffocated by the conformity of peacetime. A startlingly prescient parable for our times, it is the story of a protagonist who dared to challenge the status quo only to be crucified by public opinion, pilloried by the press and punished by the relentless machinery of the British legal system. With a wealth of fascinating period detail, from its breathtaking opening to its shocking conclusion, The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury is a true story as enthralling, provocative and moving as any work of fiction.

As a young detective constable, Constantine Buller was appalled by the corruption and the callous games some of his colleagues liked to play on unsuspecting members of the public, so he left the Force. But the bent coppers he had snubbed had long memories. A few years later his new life as a successful businessman collapsed in ruins when they set him up by fabricating evidence for a non-existent crime. The result was five years of prison hell, during which, as an ex-copper in jail, he was intimidated, beaten, humiliated and degraded. Yet thanks to his physical and moral strength, his extraordinary courage and a new-found faith in God, Constantine survived to begin a new life with a new partner and to found a branch of the Orthodox Christian Church.

As one of the UK's leading commentators, David Wilson shows how some serial killers stay in the headlines whilst others rapidly become invisible - or "unseen". Yet Mary Ann Cotton is not just the first but perhaps the UK's most prolific female serial killer, with more victims than Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Beverly Allit or male predators such as Jack the Ripper and Dennis Nilsen. But her own north east of England (and criminologists) apart, she remained largely forgotten until the release of the ITV series 'Dark Angel', which was inspired by this book. This despite poisoning to death up to 21 victims in Britain's 'arsenic century'. Exploding myths that every serial killer is a 'monster', the author draws attention to Cotton's charms, allure, capability, skill and ambition - drawing parallels or contrasting the methods and lifestyles of other serial killers from Victorian to modern times. He also shows how events cannot be separated from their social context - here the industrial revolution, growing mobility, women's emancipation and greater assertiveness. And concerning the reticence of 'human nature', like Dr Harold Shipman, Cotton was allowed to go on killing despite reasons to suspect her. The book contains other resonances to aid understanding of how serial murderers can go undiscovered despite such things as coincidence, gossip, whispers or motives that become more obvious with the benefit of hindsight. It is also a detective story in which the persistence of a single individual saw Cotton tried and executed, events analysed first-hand from the archives and location visits as the author fills the gaps in a remarkable story.By a leading expert on serial killers. Meticulously researched and highly readable. Fresh interpretations mean this book is destined to be the definitive title on Mary Ann Cotton.Review: 'An enthralling read.David Wilson does not write generic "true crime", but history of the highest order': Judith Flanders, best-selling author, journalist and historian.

Winner of the Washington State Book Award for Memoir "Extraordinarily suspenseful and truly gut-wrenching. . . . A must-read."--Gillian Flynn, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Gone Girl In this superb work of literary true crime--a spellbinding combination of memoir and psychological suspense--a female journalist chronicles her unusual connection with a convicted serial killer and her search to understand the darkness inside us. "Well, well, Claudia. Can I call you Claudia? I'll have to give it to you, when confronted at least you're honest, as honest as any reporter. . . . You want to go into the depths of my mind and into my past. I want a peek into yours. It is only fair, isn't it?"--Kendall Francois In September 1998, young reporter Claudia Rowe was working as a stringer for the New York Times in Poughkeepsie, New York, when local police discovered the bodies of eight women stashed in the attic and basement of the small colonial home that Kendall Francois, a painfully polite twenty-seven-year-old community college student, shared with his parents and sister. Growing up amid the safe, bourgeois affluence of New York City, Rowe had always been secretly fascinated by the darkness, and soon became obsessed with the story and with Francois. She was consumed with the desire to understand just how a man could abduct and strangle eight women--and how a family could live for two years, seemingly unaware, in a house with the victims' rotting corpses. She also hoped to uncover what humanity, if any, a murderer could maintain in the wake of such monstrous evil. Reaching out after Francois was arrested, Rowe and the serial killer began a dizzying four-year conversation about cruelty, compassion, and control; an unusual and provocative relationship that would eventually lead her to the abyss, forcing her to clearly see herself and her own past--and why she was drawn to danger.

From her chilling personal account of knowing Ted Bundy to sixteen collections in her #1 bestselling Crime Files series-Ann Rule is a legendary true crime writer. Here, in Practice to Deceive, Rule unravels a shattering case of Christmastime murder off the coast of Washington State-presented with the clarity, authority, and emotional depth that Rule's readers expect. Nestled in Puget Sound, Whidbey Island is a gem of the Pacific Northwest. Life there is low-key, and the island's year-round residents tend to know one another's business. But when the blood-drenched body of Russel Douglas was discovered the day after Christmas in his SUV the whole island was shocked. At first, police suspected suicide, tragically common at the height of the holiday season. But when they found no gun in or near the SUV, Russel's manner of death became homicide.

This is a new paperback version for 2011. It includes absorbing real life accounts of nearly every reported murder that took place in Tyneside during the twentieth century. It features well-known cases and those which are lesser known but equally fascinating tales of jealousy, revenge and tragedy. The city of Newcastle and its immediate environs of Jarrow, North and South Shields and the outlying towns, have seen some most intriguing murder cases. Perhaps the most famous of all is that of the murder of John Innes Nisbet by John Alexander Dickman, for which the latter was hanged in August 1910. Yet there are others in the pages of this book whose stories are equally fascinating. You will read of the two Millers, hanged 90 minutes apart on the same day for what was a senseless crime. Or consider Thomas Craig, a man determined to avenge himself on the woman who had spurned him; of William Ambrose Collins who brutally murdered a WAAF during the war years. Capital punishment is a very emotive subject and this book is not intended to argue the case either for, or against. The facts are told and it is up to the reader to decide for themselves whether the hanging of these killers served any purpose beyond judicial revenge.

This is a new paperback version for 2011. It includes absorbing real life accounts of every murder that took place in Manchester during the twentieth century. It features well-known cases and those which are lesser known but equally fascinating tales of jealousy, revenge and tragedy. This book tells the story of every murder which took place in Manchester during the twentieth century and which ended in the execution of the person found guilty of the crime and who went on to pay the ultimate penalty of death by hanging at the end of a rope. Some cases are well-known, such as those of George Rice, William Burtoft and Walter Graham Rowland - who was reprieved for a murder he did commit but was later hanged for one which he may not have committed - but any of the lesser known murders have equally absorbing stories of love, jealousy and lust. Readers will discover child killers such as John Horner, wife killers such as Frederick Ballington, and those who killed out of rage or for revenge, such as James Ryder. And then there was James Henry Corbitt, where the hangman was someone he had known as a friend. All manner of motives are shown, all sorts of weapons are used, but in the final analysis each story represents a human tragedy in which at least two people lost their lives. Read these stories and then decide for yourselves whether or not every one was guilty as charged.

The small hamlet of Litton nestles in the rolling countryside of the Peak District amid green fields and blue skies. Close to Tideswell, it is the idyllic retreat for those wanting to get away from the pressures of life. Yet do those that visit realise the hardship and death that abounded there almost 200 years ago? Was it this struggle to survive that led Anthony Lingard the younger to commit murder or his younger brother William to commit highway robbery? William Lingard committed Highway robbery within sight of his brother's decaying body and was transported to Australia where he endured punishment after punishment. The story of the Lingard family and those around is one of murder, highway robbery and brutality. When Anthony Lingard the elder married Elizabeth Neal a train of events began that would help change the laws of England