True Crime Audiobooks | Mystery, Thriller & Horror

The Devil's Work: Australia's Jack the Ripper and the serial murders that shocked the world.

He was a murderer, swindler, bigamist and suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. Frederick Deeming was also the most hated man in the world. Claiming to be haunted by the ghost of his dead mother, Deeming had spent years roaming the planet under various aliases, preying on the innocent, the gullible and the desperate. But the discovery by Australian police in 1892 of the body of one of his wives in a shallow concrete grave triggered one of the greatest manhunts in history and exposed a further series of grisly murders - those of his first wife and four children - that stunned the Victorian era. The Devil's Work is a gothic journey into the twisted mind of a serial killer, set in the dying years of the 19th century when science and religion had collided and some of the world's most powerful and influential people believed in spirits and an afterlife. It reveals Deeming's crime spree across three continents, raising fresh questions about his role in the Jack the Ripper killings and culminating in his sensational trial where he was defended by a future Australian Prime Minister who believed he could also speak to the dead. Born bad or simply mad? It's time to meet Frederick Deeming, the man known and reviled throughout the United States, England and Australia as the Criminal of the Century.

Garry Linnell (Author), Peter Phelps (Narrator)

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The Donnellys: Powder Keg: 1840-1880

A violent family living in violent times. In the 1840s, the Donnelly family immigrates from Ireland to the British province of Canada. Almost immediately problems develop as the patriarch of the family is sent to the Kingston Penitentiary for manslaughter, leaving his wife to raise their eight children on her own. The children are raised in an incredibly violent community and cultivate a devoted loyalty to their mother and siblings, which often leads to problems with the law and those outside of the family. The tensions between the family and their community escalate as the family's enemies begin to multiply. The brothers go into business running a stagecoach line and repay all acts of violence perpetrated against them, which only worsens the situation. Refusing to take a backwards step, the Donnellys stand alone against a growing power base that includes wealthy business interests in the town of Lucan, the local diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, law authorities and a number of their neighbors. Contains mature themes.

John Little (Author), Gareth Richards (Narrator)

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Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who's gotten ink for spilling blood, there's a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. In this book you'll meet Robert Irwin, "The Mad Sculptor": He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead. Peter Robinson, "The Tell-Tale Heart Killer": It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan. Anton Probst, "The Monster in the Shape of a Man": The ax-murdering immigrant's systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later. Edward H. Rulloff, "The Man of Two Lives": A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality.

Harold Schechter (Author), Danny Campbell (Narrator)

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The Good Rat: A True Story

Jimmy Breslin can sniff out a story like he can sniff out a rat. Here, he tells a lifetime of anecdotes in his inimitable New York voice, giving us a view through the keyhole of the people and places that define the Mafia—characters like Sammy the Bull, the original snitch and Gaspipe Casso, named for his weapon of choice; and hangouts like Pep McGuire’s, the legendary watering hole where reporters and gangsters (all hailing from the same working class neighborhoods) rubbed elbows and traded stories. But best of all, Breslin captures the moments in which the Mafia was made and broken—Breslin was there the night John Gotti celebrated his acquittal, having bribed his way to innocence. In The Good Rat, Breslin brings together the most recent, most memorable, and the long forgotten stories to create a sharp eyed portrait of the mob as it lived and breathed; as it sounded and survived. “Bad cops, good crook, great story.”--USA Today

Jimmy Breslin (Author), Richard Davidson (Narrator)

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Gangland New York: The Places and Faces of Mob History

From the Bowery Boys and the Five Points Gang through the rise of the Jewish "Kosher Nostra" and the ascendance of the Italian Mafia, mobsters have played a major role in the city's history, lurking just around the corner or inside that nondescript building. Bill "the Butcher" Poole, Paul Kelly, Monk Eastman, "Lucky" Luciano, Carlo Gambino, Meyer Lansky, Mickey Spillane, John Gotti-each held sway over New York neighborhoods that nurtured them and gave them power. As families and factions fought for control, the city became a backdrop for crime scenes, the rackets spreading after World War II to docks, airports, food markets, and garment districts. The streets of Brooklyn, swamps of Staten Island, and vacant lots near LaGuardia Airport hosted assassinations and hasty burials for the unlucky. The bloodlettings, arrests, and trials became front-page fodder for tabloids that thrived on covering Mulberry Street. Chinese, Russian, and Greek mobsters rose to prominence and wrought bloody havoc as well. Each of Gangland New York's five sections-one for each borough-traces criminal activities and area exploits from the nineteenth century to now. Everyone knows about Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy, but now you can find Scarpato's restaurant in Coney Island, where Joe Masseria was killed by henchmen of Salvatore Maranzano, who in turn died in a Park Avenue office building at the hands of "Lucky" Luciano a few months later. From the Bronx to Brighton Beach, from New Springville to Ozone Park, here is a comprehensive, on-the-ground guide to mob life in the Rotten Apple.

Anthony M. DeStefano (Author), Gary Galone (Narrator)

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Dock Boss: Eddie McGrath and the West Side Waterfront

Dock Boss: Eddie McGrath and the West Side Waterfront is the fascinating account of one gangster's ascension from altar boy to the leader of New York City's violent Irish Mob. Eddie McGrath's life and crimes are traced through the tail-end of Prohibition, the gang warfare of the 1930s that propelled him into the position of an organized crime boss, the sordid years of underworld control over the bustling waterfront, McGrath's involvement in dozens of gangland murders, and finally the decline of the dock mobsters following a period of longshoremen rebellion in the 1950s. Like walking into the backroom of a smoky West Side tavern, the book also features all the other unsavory characters who operated on the waterfront, including McGrath's brother-in-law, John "Cockeye" Dunn; the gang's hitman of choice, Andrew "Squint" Sheridan; racketeers such as Mickey Bowers, Timothy O'Mara, Charlie Yanowsky, Joe Butler and Albert Ackalitis; as well as a plethora of corrupt union officials, robbers, enforcers, shakedown artists, loan sharks, boss loaders, and bookies. This is the real-life story of the preeminent racketeer on Manhattan's lucrative waterfront and the bloodshed that long haunted the ports of New York City.

Neil G. Clark (Author), Chris Andrew Ciulla (Narrator)

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Creepy Crawling

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds. Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, and even the concept of family without referencing Manson and his "girls." Not just another history of Charles Manson, Creepy Crawling explores how the Family weren't so much outsiders but emblematic of the Los Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect himself to the mainstream of the time. Ever since they spent two nights killing seven residents of Los Angeles--what we now know as the "Tate-LaBianca murders--the Manson family has rarely slipped from the American radar for long. From Emma Cline's The Girls to the recent TV show Aquarius, the family continues to find an audience. What is it about Charles Manson and his family that captivates us still? Author Jeffrey Melnick sets out to answer this question in this fascinating and compulsively readable cultural history of the Family and their influence from 1969 to the present.

Jeffrey Melnick (Author), Tom Parks (Narrator)

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The Crate: A Story of War, a Murder, and Justice

After surviving the horrors of the Holocaust-in ghettos, on death marches, and in concentration camps-a young couple seeks refuge in Canada. They settle into a new life, certain that the terrors of their past are behind them. They build themselves a cozy little cottage on a lake in Muskoka, a cottage that becomes emblematic of their victory over the Nazis. The charming retreat is a safe haven, a refuge from haunted memories. That is, until a single act of unspeakable violence defiles their sanctuary. Poking around the dark crawl space beneath their cottage, they discover a wooden crate, nailed tightly shut and almost hidden from view. Nothing could have prepared them for the horror of the crate's contents-or how the peace and tranquility of their lives would be shattered. Now, their daughter, Debbie Levison, an award-winning journalist, tells the extraordinary account of her parents' ordeals, both in one of the darkest times in world history and their present-day lives. Written in searing, lyrical prose, The Crate: A Story of War, a Murder, and Justice examines man's seemingly limitless capacity for evil . . . but also, his capacity for good. Contains mature themes.

Deborah Vadas Levison (Author), Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

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Al Capone and the 1933 World's Fair: The End of the Gangster Era in Chicago

Al Capone and the 1933 World's Fair is a historical look at Chicago during the darkest days of the Great Depression-the story of Chicago fighting the hold that organized crime had on the city to be able to put on the 1933 World's Fair. William Elliott Hazelgrove provides the exciting and sprawling history behind the 1933 World's Fair, the last of the golden age. He reveals the story of the six millionaire businessmen, dubbed The Secret Six, who beat Al Capone at his own game, ending the gangster era as prohibition was repealed. The story of an intriguing woman, Sally Rand, who embodied the World's Fair with her own rags to riches story and brought sex into the open. The story of Rufus and Charles Dawes, who gave the fair a theme and then found financing in the worst economic times the country had ever experienced. The story of the most corrupt mayor of Chicago, William Thompson, who owed his election to Al Capone; and the mayor who followed him, Anton Cermak, who was murdered months before the fair was opened by an assassin many said was hired by Al Capone. But most of all, it's a story about a city fighting for survival in the darkest of times; and a shining light of hope called A Century of Progress.

William Elliott Hazelgrove (Author), Chris Andrew Ciulla (Narrator)

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The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia

As seen in The New Yorker An unprecedented look inside a deadly and obscenely wealthy branch of the Italian mafia and the electrifying story of the women who risked everything to bring them down. The Calabrian Mafia-known as the 'Ndrangheta-is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls seventy percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals-supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists-and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the European Union. The 'Ndrangheta's power derives from a macho mix of violence and silence-omertà. Yet it endures because of family ties: you are born into the syndicate, or you marry in. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave and kill your own father, brother, sister, or mother in cold blood before you betray The Family. Accompanying the 'Ndrangheta's reverence for tradition and history is a violent misogyny among its men. Women are viewed as chattel, bargaining chips for building and maintaining clan alliances and beatings-and worse-are routine. In 2009, after one abused 'Ndrangheta wife was murdered for turning state's evidence, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti considered a tantalizing possibility: that the 'Ndrangheta's sexism might be its greatest flaw-and her most effective weapon. Approaching two more mafia wives, Alessandra persuaded them to testify in return for a new future for themselves and their children. A feminist saga of true crime and justice, The Good Mothers is the riveting story of a high-stakes battle pitting a brilliant, driven woman fighting to save a nation against ruthless mafiosi fighting for their existence. Caught in the middle are three women fighting for their children and their lives. Not all will survive.

Alex Perry (Author), Matthew Waterson (Narrator)

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Jack the Ripper: The Pocket Essential Guide

So who was Jack the Ripper? No-one in the annals of crime is capable of arousing such passionate debate as the perpetrator of the Whitechapel Murders in 1888. Was he a demented Royal, a Masonic assassin, a sexually-frustrated artist, a member of the Czarist secret police, a crazed reformist or even an escaped gorilla? More than a century has passed since this unknown killer murdered East End prostitutes under the very noses of the police and yet we seem no closer to uncovering the Ripper's identity. Countless volumes have been written by warring researchers, seemingly unable to agree even on the number of his victims. Is it possible that we will ever know the truth or is the Ripper destined to remain an enigma, his place in history secured as both an English-heritage crime icon and a universal bogeyman? This revised and updated edition contains a summary of Jack's crimes, victims and the ill-fated police investigation. It considers many of the Ripper's proposed identities, bringing you up to date with the latest suspects and includes a guide to the Ripper's many fictional outings, from The Lodger to From Hell.

Mark Whitehead, Miriam Rivett (Author), Lynsey Frost (Narrator)

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The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World's Fair

In 1901, Buffalo, New York, the eighth biggest city in America, wanted to launch the new century with the Pan American Exposition. It would showcase the Western hemisphere and bring millions of people to western New York. With Niagara Falls as a drawing card and with stunning colors and electric lights, promoters believed it would be bigger, better, and?literally?more brilliant than Chicago's White City of 1893. Weaving together narratives of both notorious and forgotten figures, Margaret Creighton unveils the fair's big tragedy and its lesser-known scandals. From a deranged laborer who stalked and shot President William McKinley to a sixty-year-old woman who rode a barrel over Niagara Falls, to two astonishing acts?a little person and an elephant?who turned the tables on their duplicitous manager, Creighton reveals the myriad power struggles that would personify modern America. The Buffalo fair announced the new century, but in ways nobody expected.

Margaret Creighton (Author), Callie Beaulieu (Narrator)

Audiobook

True Crime Audiobooks in Mystery, Thriller & Horror