It has been called the most dangerous gang in American history. In Los Angeles alone it is responsible for over 100 homicides per year. Although it has fewer than 300 members, it controls a 40,000-strong street army that is eager to advance its agenda. It waves the flag of the Black Hand and its business is murder. Although known on the streets for over fifty years, the Mexican Mafia has flown under the radar of public awareness and has flourished beneath a deep cover of secrecy. Members are forbidden even to acknowledge its existence. For the first time in its history, the Mexican Mafia is now getting the attention it has been striving to avoid. In this briskly written and thoroughly researched book, Tony Rafael looks at the birth and the blood-soaked growth of this criminal enterprise through the eyes of the victims, the dropouts, the cops and DAs on the front lines of the war against the Mexican Mafia. The first book ever published on the subject, Southern Soldiers is a pioneering work that unveils the operations of this California prison gang and describes how it grew from a small clique of inmates into a transnational criminal organization. As the first prison gang ever to project its power beyond prison walls, the Mexican Mafia controls virtually every Hispanic neighborhood in Southern California and is rapidly expanding its influence into the entire Southwest, across the East Coast, and even into Canada. Riding a wave of unchecked immigration and seemingly beyond the reach of law enforcement, the Mexican Mafia is poised to become the Cosa Nostra of twenty-first-century America.

A perfect life. A perfect lie. When Nancy Cooper moved from Canada to Cary, North Carolina with her new husband Brad, their future was bright: living in one of the most picturesque towns in the US, the couple mingled with neighbors, attended parties, and raised two daughters. Then, on July 14th, 2008, the facade came crashing down when Nancy's strangled body was found in a storm pond. Nancy's husband claimed that she had gone for a jog and never come back. But as the police investigation deepened, and as Brad was brought to trial for murdering his wife, a complex web of affairs and lies was uncovered involving multiple residents of Cary's idyllic neighborhoods. At the heart of it stood the Coopers' soured marriage, Nancy's threat to leave with the children, and her own cold-blooded murder. It would take a mountain of damning evidence before justice was served.

Press coverage of the 1888 mutilation murders attributed to Jack the Ripper was of necessity filled with gaps and silences, for the killer remained unknown and Victorian journalists had little experience reporting serial murders and sex crimes. This engrossing book examines how fifteen London newspapers - dailies and weeklies, highbrow and lowbrow - presented the Ripper news, in the process revealing much about the social, political, and sexual anxieties of late Victorian Britain and the role of journalists in reinforcing social norms. L. Perry Curtis surveys the mass newspaper culture of the era, delving into the nature of sensationalism and the conventions of domestic murder news. Analyzing the fifteen newspapers - several of which emanated from the East End, where the murders took place - he shows how journalists played on the fears of readers about law and order by dwelling on lethal violence rather than sex, offering gruesome details about knife injuries but often withholding some of the more intimate details of the pelvic mutilations. He also considers how the Ripper news affected public perceptions of social conditions in Whitechapel. 'It is a major contribution to cultural history', Christopher Frayling, Rector of the Royal College of Art, London 'An excellent book that offers a new angle on an always fascinating subject', John Davis, Queen's College, Oxford L. Perry Curtis, Jr., is professor of history and modern culture and media at Brown University, Rhode Island.

The Linden Triangle: Linden Avenue and Linden Place, Hempstead, Long Island. At this blighted intersection, seemingly forgotten by the middle and upper class communities that surround it, the dream of suburban comfort and safety has devolved into a nightmare of flying bullets and bloodshed. Here, a war between the Bloods and Crips has torn a once-peaceful neighborhood apart.The book tells the true story of one year in the life of a suburban village-turned-war-zone. Written by Kevin Deutsch, award-winning criminal justice reporter for Newsday, it follows two warring gangs and the anti-violence activists and police desperate to stop them. As the body count climbs and conflict spreads to New York City, young men wielding military grade weaponry wage a prolonged battle over pride, respect, revenge and their legacies.Based on immersive reporting and more than 250 interviews with gang members, their families, drug addicts, police and others, The Triangle is the first insider account of a New York Bloods/Crips gang war from the only journalist ever given access to the crews' secretive realm. Triangle is a chilling investigation of a world in which teenagers shoot their childhood friends over drug debts; where gang rape is used as a form of retaliation; and once-promising students are molded into cold-blooded assassins. With gang and drug-related violence responsible for as many as half of all non-domestic homicides in the United States, The Triangle will make a significant contribution to the national conversation about gangs, chronicling the effects of armed gang conflicts not just on Long Island and New York City but throughout America.

Dr Crippen's murder of his wife Cora has stuck in the public imagination for many reasons: the harmless demeanour of this cold-blooded poisoner; the flamboyant victim; and, the dismembered body in the cellar at the infamous 39 Hilldrop Crescent - and not forgetting a dramatic police chase which caught Crippen and his mistress Ethel le Neve halfway across the Atlantic. The story has all the best ingredients: sex and love, secrets and lies, but it is the detail from the documents that fascinates, such as Crippen's account of marital bickering that preceded his wife's disappearance, and the daily media accounts of the police net closing on the fleeing couple. This 'bloody history' combines a gripping narrative with facts from witness statements, police reports, and the chilling words of a killer claiming 'So far as I know she is still alive'.

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.

A number-one bestseller from coast to coast, Den of Thieves tells, in masterfully reported detail, the full story of the insider-trading scandal that nearly destroyed Wall Street, the men who pulled it off, and the chase that finally brought them to justice. Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street -- Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine -- created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions, until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.

Based on secret grand jury transcripts, interviews, and actual trading records, and containing explosive new revelations about Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky written especially for this paperback edition, Den of Thieves weaves all the facts into an unforgettable narrative -- a portrait of human nature, big business, and crime of unparalleled proportions.

On Nov. 28, 1969, Betsy Aardsma, a 22-year-old graduate student in English at Penn State, was stabbed to death in the stacks of Pattee Library at the university's main campus in State College. For more than forty years, her murder went unsolved, though detectives with the Pennsylvania State Police and local citizens worked tirelessly to find her killer. The mystery was eventually solved-after the death of the murderer. This book will reveal the story behind what has been a scary mystery for generations of Penn State students and explain why the Pennsylvania State Police failed to bring her killer to justice.More than a simple true crime story, the book weaves together the events, culture, and attitudes of the late 1960s, memorializing Betsy Aardsma and her time and place in history.

Within lie twelve vintage tales of true crime by master essayist William Roughead. Henry James himself once urged Roughead: "Keep on with them all please, and continue to beckon me along the gallery that I can't tread alone and where, by your leave, I link my arm fraternally in yours: the gallery of sinister perspective just stretches in this manner straight away." Here you will find such Roughead classics as My First Murder: Featuring Jessie King, the crime that fortuitously set Mr. Roughead's steps toward matters criminous, Locusta in Scotland, a familiar survey of poisoning as practiced in the realm. The Fatal Countess, a Jacobean royal flush of didoes in high places; Physic and Forgery: A Study in Confidence, and many more capital crimes old and new, but all revealed with that dry wit and mellow artistry that is the mark of fine wine or writing. Above all you must not miss Mr.Roughead's ensemble by the entire company entitled, An Academic Discussion wherein his best known murders sit in judgment on the qualities of their crimes and discuss the artistry of their chosen metier.

As featured on 60 Minutes, Dateline, Inside Edition, and 48 Hours, the shocking true story of banker Edmond Safra's death and the man wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the crime. When billionaire banker Edmond Safra died in the ashes of Monaco's La Belle Epoque building on December 3, 1999, the event made international headlines-for many reasons. One, of course, was the sheer wealth of the Lebanese mogul and his formidable presence in the international banking world. But the more seductive reason for the worldwide attention was the strange and intriguing way Safra died-ensconced within the armored walls of his vigilantly secured residence in the "safest city in the world." At 4:45 in the morning, a firestorm gutted Safra's opulent Monte Carlo penthouse, trapping-and killing-Safra and one of his nurses, Vivian Torrente. When the fire was ruled arson, a fast finger was pointed at the only other nurse present: former Green Beret Ted Maher. The true, bizarre circumstances that led to Safra's death and to the subsequent imprisonment of Ted Maher are contained within the pages of Framed in Monte Carlo: How I Was Wrongfully Convicted for a Billionaire's Fiery Death. The story features a play-by-play of that deadly night, as well as Ted's sham of a trial that put him behind bars for seven years and eight months. Brutal betrayals, harrowing kidnappings, prison breaks straight out of The Great Escape, and more pepper the pages of Framed in Monte Carlo. Ted was freed when the judge from his trial came forward with a stunning revelation. But his life was never the same. And since his return to American soil, he's continued to unearth more and more disturbing details about his ordeal. Armed with fresh facts, a greater understanding of the players, and a wider lens of perspective, Ted now reveals all, including his never-before-released findings that seek to answer the lingering big question: Who did kill Edmond Safra? The powerful famous names legitimately put forth by the author will shock you.

Several decades ago the boxer "Kid" McCoy was sent to San Quentin for the murder of his girlfriend. A taciturn prisoner, McCoy once blurted to his warden: "You know who I am, don't you-I'm McCoy, not one of those Hollywood types or the kind you find in made-up stories in the pulps. I'm the real McCoy." How much do you know about the real McCoys-and Suttons, Capones, Mansons, and Oswalds? The True Crime Quiz Book is filled with hundreds of questions to help you find out, in varying degrees of difficulty for anyone from the casual armchair detective to the most perceptive crime historian. Who done it...and why? Who beat it...and when? Who cracked it...and how? Here is the definitive testing ground for aficionados of real life crime. The True Crime Quiz Book lets you test yourself in all facets of criminal misdoing, and the Master Sleuth scoring shows how you stand against the best lawmen. The True Crime Quiz Book has hundreds of criminal teasers to satisfy even the most insatiable crime buffs.

To anyone who has followed his career, Ray Schindler was the greatest detective of the mid-twentieth century. He was a pioneer in scientific detection before modern forensic science, and he handled more than 10,000 cases covering almost every crime recorded on the police blotter. Rupert Hughes acts as a faithful Dr. Watson to Schindler s Holmes, and guides us from case to case, watching a man who can t be excited, can t be stampeded, and can t be frightened; a man who matches ingenuity of crime with an even greater mental resourcefulness; a man who has a dogged determination and a big fighting heart. Ray Schindler s biography is the story of a great investigator, of a life that is packed with exciting adventures, and of criminals who are outwitted, out-fought, and defeated. Mere fictional detective stories pale in comparison to the real life drama inherent in every one of Ray Schindler s cases."

"To what extent was Rosario "Russell" Bufalino involved in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa in 1975? In the CIA's recruitment of gangsters to assassinate Fidel Castro? In organizing the historic meeting of crime chieftains in 1957? Even in the production of "The Godfather "movie?"
Secretive--even reclusive--Russell Bufalino quietly built his organized crime empire in the decades between Prohibition and the Carter presidency. His reach extended far beyond the coal country of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and quaint Amish farms near Lancaster. Bufalino had a hand in global, national, and local politics of the largest American cities, many of its major industries, and controlled the powerful Teamsters Union. His influence also reached the highest levels of Pennsylvania government and halls of Congress, and his legacy left a culture of corruption that continues to this day.
A uniquely American saga that spans six decades, "The Quiet Don "follows Russell Bufalino's remarkably quiet ascent from Sicilian immigrant to mob soldier to a man described by a United States Senate subcommittee in 1964 as "one of the most ruthless and powerful leaders of the Mafia in the United States."
INCLUDES PHOTOS

Ever since Oedipus unwittingly killed his father and married his mother in Sophocles' play, parricide - the killing of a parent or another close relative - has been a dominant motif in works of literature, film, psychoanalytic theory, and criminology. Yet, parricide, for much of the twentieth and twenty-first century, has been framed as an adolescent phenomenon, with child abuse proffered as the overriding cause related to the killing of parents. Respect, Defense, and Self-Identity provides a new way of understanding parricides by analyzing the behavior of offenders and victims at the scene of the crime in relation to the sources of conflict. This book examines the conflict between parents and their offspring across the life course and argues that parricides are shaped by factors such as respect, defense, and self-identity. Respect, Defense, and Self-Identity is recommended for classroom use in courses such as criminology, homicide, family violence, and social work.

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.

Francisco Goldman's widely-acclaimed retelling of the Bishop Gerardi murder case, now reissued with a new epilogue marking the release of George Clooney's production of the HBO documentary film based on Goldman's account. Known in Guatemala as The Crime of the Century, the Bishop Gerardi murder case, with its unexpectedly outlandish scenarios and sensational developments, confounded observers and generated extraordinary controversy. When it was first published, The Art of Political Murder exposed a cover-up of the crime and helped change Guatemala's destiny as it emerged from decades of civil war. In the years since, major players in the case have been imprisoned, including the president of Guatemala, and one of the key suspects was murdered while in prison, along with thirteen others. Now reissued with a new epilogue to account for these recent events and their far-reaching repercussions, this is an unmissable new edition of this extremely important book. (Salman Rushdie).

In the first 200 years of New Orleans history, the Crescent City has earned a reputation for sin, temptation, intrigue, lawlessness, ritual-magic, and ghosts. Step back in time to the city's first few crime-stained centuriesfrom 17181918to explore classic tales of mischief, mayhem, and skullduggery. Arranged by topic you will be compelled to find out whether the heart of Dixie truly beats with wicked rhythms. Meet a cast of rascals and ruffians as you relive the era of American piracy and smuggling. Discover legendary sorcery and unspeakable rumors surrounding Voodoo and ghosts. Examine violence, the largest mass-lynching ever on US soil, and a unique red-light district. Remember, though, to have a jazz band or recording handy...or the famed and frightening Axman may get you! Here, the sallow specter of crime tends to stand with one foot in the annals of historical fact, the other in folklore.

A riveting true-life tale of newspaper noir and Japanese organized crime from an American investigative journalist.
Jake Adelstein is the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club, where for twelve years he covered the dark side of Japan: extortion, murder, human trafficking, fiscal corruption, and of course, the yakuza. But when his final scoop exposed a scandal that reverberated all the way from the neon soaked streets of Tokyo to the polished Halls of the FBI and resulted in a death threat for him and his family, Adelstein decided to step down. Then, he fought back. In "Tokyo Vice" he delivers an unprecedented look at Japanese culture and searing memoir about his rise from cub reporter to seasoned journalist with a price on his head.

Squirt Saves the Day tells a tale of friendship, heroism, and self discovery as Squirt, a lovable stinkbug, is confronted by bullies at his new school. In overcoming rejection he learns that the best way to deal with problems is head on. By doing what must be done, he gains the respect and admiration of the whole school. The book is full of colorful illustrations that will win children's hearts and teach them that, if a little stinkbug can conquer his fears, so can they.

James Tillman was stretched out on his basement couch, relaxing after a long day of work at the car wash, the smell of sweet onions and simmering steak filling the air of his modest apartment in the projects of Hartford, Conn. His mother, a bible perched nearby, was softly singing a hymn when she was shaken by the thundering sound of pounding on the front door. It wasn't a knock; it was an act of sheer force. In an instant, the police burst in, lifted James out of his home and shoved him into prison, arresting him for the brutal rape of a young corporate executive. For over 18 years, James professed his innocence, through the investigation, trial, appeals, and to anyone who would listen. Finally, after a series of extraordinary events, the Connecticut Innocence Project took up James' case, eventually winning his freedom-the first person to be exonerated in the state through the use of DNA. This is an inspirational story about the power of conviction: the wrongful conviction that sent James Tillman to prison for over 18 years, and the power of his own conviction that helped him persevere, offer a transformational forgiveness and earn a redemption that is so valued he remarkably calls his experience in prison, "a gift." "The Power of Conviction" is for people who are facing tough times. You will understand that you're not alone, that things can be brutally bad and we can react poorly at times, but where there is love, there is always hope. How did James Tillman endure 18 years of hell in prison? What specific lessons can you learn about the transformational power of forgiveness, love and conviction? When faced with your own challenges in life, what will you choose?

James Tillman was stretched out on his basement couch, relaxing after a long day of work at the car wash, the smell of sweet onions and simmering steak filling the air of his modest apartment in the projects of Hartford, Conn. His mother, a bible perched nearby, was softly singing a hymn when she was shaken by the thundering sound of pounding on the front door. It wasn't a knock; it was an act of sheer force. In an instant, the police burst in, lifted James out of his home and shoved him into prison, arresting him for the brutal rape of a young corporate executive. For over 18 years, James professed his innocence, through the investigation, trial, appeals, and to anyone who would listen. Finally, after a series of extraordinary events, the Connecticut Innocence Project took up James' case, eventually winning his freedom---the first person to be exonerated in the state through the use of DNA. This is an inspirational story about the power of conviction: the wrongful conviction that sent James Tillman to prison for over 18 years, and the power of his own conviction that helped him persevere, offer a transformational forgiveness and earn a redemption that is so valued he remarkably calls his experience in prison, "a gift." "The Power of Conviction" is for people who are facing tough times. You will understand that you're not alone, that things can be brutally bad and we can react poorly at times, but where there is love, there is always hope. How did James Tillman endure 18 years of hell in prison? What specific lessons can you learn about the transformational power of forgiveness, love and conviction? When faced with your own challenges in life, what will you choose?

"But Bill isn't there some other way? I didn't give up all I had and come here just to let some 'punk' gang leader kill me?" "Well Jim, there's the door; you can either go out, turn left, walk down to the corner, face Eddie, and see if he really intends on killing you: or you can turn right and run for your life; hoping he doesn't catch you. Either way, your life and ministry here are probably over. You must decide whether to stay and fight for those you love or run away to live another day. No one can make that decision for you, not even me." Jim was called of God to leave the college ministry where he was working at the University of Maryland and move to New York City to join with Young Life in their work with violent youth and gang bangers. Never did Jim imagine that when we say we are willing to die for Jesus, that one day he would have to face that ultimate challenge. "A Bullet for Jesus" is based on a real story. A faced paced thriller filled with danger, romance, joy and tragedy. A young man with high spiritual values jeopardizes his very life while trying to help those caught up in a world of drugs and violence. What he encounters though will not only change his life, but put his very faith at risk.