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Available for the first time in audiobook, and featuring exclusive extracts of murderers talking from death row, Christopher Berry-Dee's study of the world's worst serial killers is a chilling true crime experience. Christopher Berry-Dee is the man who talks to serial killers. A world-renowned investigative criminologist, he has gained the trust of murderers across the world, entered their high security prisons, and discussed in detail their shocking crimes. The killers' pursuit of horror and violence is described through the unique audiotape and videotape interviews which Berry-Dee conducted, deep inside the bowels of some of the world's toughest prisons. Christopher Berry-Dee has collated these interviews into this astounding, disturbing book, which, since its first publication, has gone on to become a true crime classic. Not only does he describe his meetings with some of the world's most evil men and women, he also reproduces, verbatim, their very words as they describe their crimes, allowing the reader a glimpse into the inner workings of the people who have committed the worst crime possible - to mercilessly take the life of another human being.
Show moreYou probably know Roxie and Velma, the good-time gals of the 1926 satirical play Chicago and its wildly successful musical and movie adaptations. You might not know that Roxie, Velma, and the rest of the colorful characters of the play were inspired by real prisoners held in 'Murderess Row' in 1920s Chicago-or that the reporter who covered their trials for the Chicago Tribune went on to write the play Chicago. Now, more than ninety years later, the Chicago Tribune has uncovered photographs and newspaper clippings telling the story of the four women who inspired the timeless characters of Chicago. But these photos tell a different story-and it's not all about glamour, fashion, and celebrity. They show a young mother in jail hugging her two-year-old daughter. They show an immigrant woman who doesn't speak the language of her judge, jury, and attorney. And they show women who used their images to sway public opinion-and their juries. He Had It Coming collects stories from Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins and new analysis written by Tribune film critic Michael Phillips, theater critic Chris Jones, and columnists Heidi Stevens and Rick Kogan to build a fascinating history of women in crime in Jazz Age Chicago, a history that takes on new meaning in today's #MeToo moment.
Show moreTulsa, Oklahoma, 1953: An impoverished Cherokee named Buster Youngwolfe confesses to brutally raping and murdering his eleven-year-old female relative. When Youngwolfe recants his confession, saying he was forced to confess by the authorities, his city condemns him, except for one man-public defender and Creek Indian Elliott Howe. Recognizing in Youngwolfe the life that could have been his if not for a few lucky breaks, Howe risks his career to defend Youngwolfe against the powerful county attorney's office. Forgotten today, the sensational story of the murder, investigation, and trial made headlines nationwide. Oklahoma's Atticus is a tale of two cities: oil-rich downtown Tulsa and the dirt-poor slums of north Tulsa, of two newspapers-each taking different sides in the trial-and of two men who were both born poor Native Americans but whose lives took drastically different paths. Oklahoma's Atticus is full of colorful characters, from the seventy-two-year-old mystic who predicted where the body was buried to the Kansas City sergeant who founded one of the most advanced forensics labs and pioneered the use of lie detector evidence and the ambitious assistant attorney who would rise to become the future governor of Oklahoma. At the same time, it's a story that explores issues that still divide our nation: police brutality and corruption; the effects of poverty, inequality, and racism in criminal justice; the power of the media; and the primacy of the presumption of innocence.
Show more'My God . . . I think they've killed Marilyn!' At 5:40 a.m. on July 4, 1954, the mayor of Bay Village, a small suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, received a frantic phone call from his neighbor Dr. Sam Sheppard. The news was too terrible to comprehend: Marilyn, Sam's lovely wife, was dead, her face and torso beaten beyond recognition by an unknown assailant who had knocked Sam unconscious and escaped just before dawn. In the adjacent bedroom, Chip, the Sheppards' seven-year-old son, had slept through the entire ordeal. Almost immediately, the police began to suspect Sam Sheppard. The local press rushed to cast judgment on the handsome, prosperous doctor. After a misguided investigation, Sheppard was arrested and charged with murder. Sentenced to life in prison, he served for nearly a decade before he was acquitted in a retrial. Until his death, he maintained his innocence. Culled from DNA evidence, testimony that was never heard in court, prison diaries, and interviews with the Sheppard family and other key players, The Wrong Man makes a convincing case for Sheppard's innocence and reveals the identity of the real killer.
Show moreTired of being bullied, a scrawny, impoverished Dawood Ibrahim is looking for a saviour, Khalid Khan Bachcha, who would teach him the ropes of handling a bunch of hooligans. Instead, what he gets is a mentor who eventually transforms him into a cunning mafia boss. In Dawood's Mentor, Dawood meets Khalid and they eventually forge an unlikely friendship. Together they defeat, crush and neutralize every mafia gang in Mumbai. Khalid lays the foundation for the D-Gang as Dawood goes on to establish a crime syndicate like no other and becomes India's most wanted criminal.
Show more"Big Bob" Bashara put on a respectable face. To his friends in Detroit's affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe, he was a married father of two, Rotary Club President, church usher, and soccer dad who organized charity events with his wife, Jane. To his "slaves," he was "Master Bob," a cocaine-snorting slumlord who operated a sex dungeon and had a submissive girlfriend to do his bidding-and he wanted more slaves to serve him. But Bashara knew he couldn't rule a household of concubines on his income alone. He eyed his wife's sizable retirement account and formulated a murderous plan. This meticulous account tells the complete story of the crime, the nationally watched investigation and trials, and the lives affected.
Show moreA high school science teacher reaches his breaking point. Based on a true story.
Show moreSome call him a psychopath, and others call him a hero. But everybody agrees that Johnny Quick gets the job done.
Show moreOne glorious autumn day in 1894, a drifter attacked thirteen-year-old Jessie Keith so violently that people thought Jack the Ripper must be loose in rural Ontario. To solve the crime, the government called in Detective John Wilson Murray, the true-life model for Detective William Murdoch of the popular TV series Murdoch Mysteries. His prime clue was a black valise. The Man with the Black Valise traces the killer's trajectory through three counties-a route that today connects travelers to poignant reminders of nineteenth-century life. Chief among them stands the statue of the Roman goddess Flora, gesturing as though to cast roses onto Jessie's grave.
Show moreOn the evening of April 19, 2013, Samantha and Gianna Rucki disappeared. Two of five children born to David Rucki and Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, the teenage sisters vanished in the midst of their parents' divorce. The girls' father, David Rucki, worked tirelessly with law enforcement to search day and night for his two missing daughters, following every lead while raising three remaining children at home. Their mother, Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, used her newfound freedom to vacation around the world, abandoning her children. And as the investigation intensified, catching the attention of the media, Sandra also disappeared. The Girls Are Gone is the true story of two sisters who went missing, the father who kept searching, and the adults who conspired to keep the truth hidden.
Show moreJUDGE. JURY. EXECUTIONER. On a cold January morning, the killer executed Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse in broad daylight. Eight shots fired a block from the Kaufman County Courthouse. Two months later, a massacre. The day before Easter, the couple slept. Bunnies, eggs, a flower centerpiece gracing the table. Death rang their doorbell and filled the air with the rat-a-tat-tat of an assault weapon discharging round after round into their bodies. Eric Williams and his wife, Kim, celebrated the murders with grilled steaks. Their crimes covered front pages around the world, many saying the killer placed a target square on the back of law enforcement. Williams planned to exact revenge on all those who had wronged him, one at a time. Throughout the spring of 2013, Williams sowed terror through a small Texas town, and a quest for vengeance turned to deadly obsession. His intention? To keep killing, until someone found a way to stop him.
Show moreOn Mother's Day, 1985, the bodies of Kathryn Eastburn and her two young daughters were found in their Fayetteville, North Carolina, home. Katie, an air force captain's wife, had been raped and stabbed to death. Kara and Erin's throats had been slit. Their toddler sister, Jana, was the only survivor of a bloody killing spree that terrified a community still reeling from the conviction, six years prior, of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald for the savage slayings of his pregnant wife and two daughters. The Cumberland County Sheriff's Department soon focused its investigation on US Army soldier Tim Hennis. Detectives and local prosecutors built their case on circumstantial evidence and a jury convicted Hennis and sentenced him to death. But his defense team refused to give up. Piece by piece, they discredited the state's case, exposing false testimony, concealed evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct. At a second trial, Hennis was found not guilty and released from death row. But an even more stunning turn of events was yet to come. Twenty-five years after the murders, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation tested a crucial piece of DNA evidence from the crime scene. The shocking results led to an unprecedented third trial to determine Tim Hennis's guilt or innocence.
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