On the outside, Mary Jane Fonder seemed like a kindly sixty-six-year-old congregant of the Lutheran church in Springfield Township, PA. But inside, she longed for the church's handsome Pastor Gregory Shreaves, a former golf pro who sparked her most sinful thoughts.
When Mary Jane let her feelings be known, the Pastor gently pushed her away. But her obsession only grew stronger when she became convinced that he was romantically involved with a younger church member, a woman named Rhonda Smith.
Rhonda was doing volunteer work in the church office one day when she was shot to death in cold blood. The trail of evidence led police to Mary Jane, and soon other suspicions were raised: Was she also involved in the mysterious death of her own father fifteen years earlier? This is the shocking true story of love, worship, and murder in one American small town.
Australia's Number 1 True Crime Writer on Australia's Greatest Gold Robbery. On 15 June 1862, a gang of bushrangers held up a gold escort at Eugowra, just east of Forbes, NSW. They escaped with a pile of cash and 77 kilograms of gold, worth about $10 million today. It remains the largest gold robbery in Australian history.
In this riveting re-creation of the events, James Phelps finally tells the full story of how Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall, John O'Meally, Johnny Gilbert, Henry Manns, Alexander Fordyce, John Bow and Dan Charters planned and executed the robbery - and what happened to all that gold. Australian Heist is a thrilling, fast-paced and thoroughly modern take on one of the most extraordinary episodes in the nation's history, by Australia's number-one true-crime writer.
In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, James Bamford exposes the inner workings of America's largest, most secretive, and arguably most intrusive intelligence agency. The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law. So sensitive was the information uncovered that the agency twice attempted to suppress the book, threatened the author with prosecution, and even raided one of the libraries he used. This is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage.
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.
The press nicknamed him "The Prime Minister of the Underworld." The U.S. Treasury's Bureau of Narcotics described him as "one of the most powerful and influential Mafia leaders in the U.S." But to friends and associates, he was simply "Uncle Frank." Who was Frank Costello really? That's the question Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony M. DeStefano sets out to answer-in this definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures in the annals of American crime . . .
Using newly released FBI files, eyewitness accounts, and family mementos, Top Hoodlum takes you inside the Mafia that Frank Costello helped build from the ground up, from small-time bootlegging and gambling to a nationwide racketeering empire.
Sometimes shocking, sometimes amusing, and always riveting, these are the stories that have inspired American crime classics like The Godfather, Casino, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos. This is the man who made the Mafia such a powerful force in our nation's history. This is Top Hoodlum.
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.
The true story of forty years inside one of Australia's first outlaw motorcycle clubs as told by its one-time president. With previously unrevealed insights into the outlaw world of extreme violence, drugs, corruption, sex, treachery and retribution. All names have been changed, and identities and events obscured. This is the only way the story could be told.This story is a true account of the birth of outlaw motorcycle clubs in Australia. There was no template for us, it just evolved. It shows our simple creed: loyalty to the club and respect for your brothers.David Spiteri was a founding member and long-time President of one of Australia's first outlaw motorcycle clubs from its inception in the early 1960s through to the early 2000s. He has been uniquely placed to witness the clubs develop from loose affiliations of riders to the well structured and well connected groups we see today, with links to police, politicians and lawyers. In this never-before-told inside story, Spiteri puts himself at risk to reveal everything from the drug trafficking which funds the clubs' operations to the extreme violence that continues to make them infamous. For the first time, the true extent of the clubs' corruption will be exposed, and the treachery and subsequent retribution enforced by their own brand of law known as "the code" is brought to light. A truly shocking and compelling look at a fascinating subculture.
London crime is alive. Three gangs, two arch enemies, and a hitman come to blows in a brutal gangland war that rocks London's east end. When Harvey Stone is sent undercover to investigate a turf war between the Albanian mafia and two of London's notorious gangs, nobody expected him to be welcomed like a hero. Has Harvey finally slipped into his old ways, or will he bring the carnage and bloodshed to a stop? Stone Rage is the fourth book in the gripping Stone Cold Thriller series. If you like savage criminal underworlds, fast-paced action, and intensecharacters, then you'll love J.D. Weston's shocking quest for revenge. Buy Stone Rage to lose yourself in East London's gritty underground today.
Neil 'Sam' Samworth spent eleven years working as a prison officer in HMP Manchester, aka Strangeways. A tough Yorkshireman with a soft heart, Sam had to deal with it all - gangsters and gangbangers, terrorists and psychopaths, addicts and the mentally ill. Men who should not be locked up and men who should never be let out. Strangeways is a shocking and at times darkly funny account of life in a high security prison. Sam tackles cell fires and self-harmers, and goes head to head with some of the most dangerous men in the country. He averts a Christmas Day riot after turkey is taken off the menu and replaced by fish curry, and stands up to officers who abuse their position. He describes being attacked by prisoners, and reveals the problems caused by radicalization and the drugs flooding our prisons. As staffing cuts saw Britain's prison system descend into crisis, the stress of the job - the suicides, the inhumanity of the system, and one assault too many - left Sam suffering from PTSD. This raw, searingly honest memoir is a testament to the men and women of the prison service and the incredibly difficult job we ask them to do.
Chronicling the rise and fall of Sex Money Murder, one of the most violent and notorious gangs of its era, and of the dedicated detectives and prosecutors struggling to stem the tide of violence, reporter Jonathan Green creates a visceral and devastating portrait of a New York City borough. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Bronx had one of the highest per capita murder rates in the country. The reason was simple: as the use of crack cocaine surged, replacing heroin as the high of choice, dealers and gangs staked claims to territory and consumers through intimidation and murder, and families found themselves fractured by crime and incarceration. Based on years of research and extraordinary access to former gang members, Green creates an epic character-driven narrative, drawing on first-person interviews, police reports, and court transcripts to offer a unique and engrossing work of gritty urban reportage. Magisterial in its scope, Sex Money Murder offers an extraordinary perspective on modern-day America.
In this groundbreaking book, renowned psychiatrist Michael H. Stone explores the concept and reality of evil from a new perspective. In an indepth discussion of the personality traits and behaviors that constitute evil across a wide spectrum, Dr. Stone takes a clarifying scientific approach to a topic that for centuries has been inadequately explained by religious doctrines.
Stone has created a twentytwolevel hierarchy of evil behavior, which loosely reflects the structure of Dante's Inferno. Basing his analysis on the detailed biographies of more than 600 violent criminals, he traces two salient personality traits that run the gamut from those who commit crimes of passion to perpetrators of sadistic torture and murder.
One trait is narcissism, as exhibited in people who are so selfcentered that they have little or no ability to care about their victims. The other is aggression, the use of power over another person to inflict humiliation, suffering, and death.
What do psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience tell us about the minds of those whose actions could be described as evil? And what will that mean for the rest of us? Stone discusses how an increased understanding of the causes of evil will affect the justice system. He predicts a day when certain persons can safely be declared salvageable and restored to society and when early signs of violence in children may be corrected before potentially dangerous patterns become entrenched.
"Makes you feel as if you are watching a live camera riveted on a courtroom more than 150 years ago." -Diane Sawyer
The true story of Abraham Lincoln's last murder trial, a case in which he had a deep personal involvement-and which played out in the nation's newspapers as he began his presidential campaign
At the end of the summer of 1859, twenty-two-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, who had been involved in more than three thousand cases-including more than twenty-five murder trials-during his two-decades-long career, was hired to defend him. This was to be his last great case as a lawyer.
What normally would have been a local case took on momentous meaning. Lincoln's debates with Senator Stephen Douglas the previous fall had gained him a national following, transforming the little-known, self-taught lawyer into a respected politician. He was being urged to make a dark-horse run for the presidency in 1860. Taking this case involved great risk. His reputation was untarnished, but should he lose this trial, should Harrison be convicted of murder, the spotlight now focused so brightly on him might be dimmed. He had won his most recent murder trial with a daring and dramatic maneuver that had become a local legend, but another had ended with his client dangling from the end of a rope.
The case posed painful personal challenges for Lincoln. The murder victim had trained for the law in his office, and Lincoln had been his friend and his mentor. His accused killer, the young man Lincoln would defend, was the son of a close friend and loyal supporter. And to win this trial he would have to form an unholy allegiance with a longtime enemy, a revivalist preacher he had twice run against for political office-and who had bitterly slandered Lincoln as an "infidel... too lacking in faith" to be elected.
Lincoln's Last Trial captures the presidential hopeful's dramatic courtroom confrontations in vivid detail as he fights for his client-but also for his own blossoming political future. It is a moment in history that shines a light on our legal system, as in this case Lincoln fought a legal battle that remains incredibly relevant today.
