True Crime Audiobooks | Non-Fiction

On the 8th August 1963 a gang of 15 men stopped a mail train in Buckinghamshire and proceeded to steal sacks of money worth £2.6 million. It was the biggest heist ever carried out in the UK and frontpage news around the world. The mastermind behind this most audacious crime of the twentieth century was Bruce Reynolds. Perhaps the last of the 'gentlemen villains'; Reynolds epitomised that particular breed of sharply dressed, post-war criminals who mixed with royalty and movie stars, and never carried a gun. They thrived on adventure and glamour, and the Great Train Robbery was their last ride. From his childhood and early forays into crime, to planning the robbery and his life on the run, and finally his capture, prison years and growing old with the gang - this is a true crime classic. Widely regarded as a one of the finest memoirs of a life of crime, Autobiography of a Thief is essential listening for anyone interested in true crime. Narrated by his son, Nick Reynolds, who grew up on the run with his father.

Bruce Reynolds (Author), Nick Reynolds (Narrator)

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The Ghosts That Haunt Me

After years working in homicide, retired Toronto detective Steve Ryan reflects on six cases he will never forget. Retired detective Steve Ryan worked in Toronto’s homicide squad for over a decade. For Ryan, the stories of Toronto’s most infamous crimes were more than just a headline read over morning coffee — they were his everyday life. After investigating over one hundred homicides, Ryan can never forget the tragedies and the victims, even after his retirement from the police force. In The Ghosts That Haunt Me, he reflects on six of the many cases that greatly impacted him — seven people whose lives were senselessly taken — and that he still thinks about nearly every day. While the stories are hard to tell for Ryan, they were harder to live through. Yet somewhere between the crimes and the heartache is a glimmer of hope that good eventually does prevail and that healing can come after grief.

Steve Ryan (Author), Miles Meili (Narrator)

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Life Sentence: The Brief and Tragic Career of Baltimore’s Deadliest Gang Leader

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city gang life, Mark Bowden takes readers inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depth portrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigation that landed eight of its members in prison Sandtown is one of the deadliest neighborhoods in the world; it earned Baltimore its nickname Bodymore, Murderland, and was made notorious by David Simon’s classic HBO series The Wire. Drug deals dominate street corners, and ruthless, casual violence abounds. Montana Barronette grew up in the center of it all. He was the leader of the gang “Trained to Go,” or TTG, and when he was finally arrested and sentenced to life in prison, he had been labeled “Baltimore’s Number One Trigger Puller.” Under Tana’s reign, TTG dominated Sandtown. After a string of murders are linked to TTG, each with dozens of witnesses too intimidated to testify, three detectives set out to put Tana in prison for life. For them, this was never about drugs: it was about serial murder. An acclaimed journalist who spent his youth in the white suburbs of Baltimore, Mark Bowden returns to the city with exclusive access to the FBI files and unprecedented insight into one of the city’s deadliest gangs and its notorious leader. As he traces the rise and fall of TTG, Bowden uses wiretapped drug buys, police interviews, undercover videos, text messages, social media posts, trial transcripts, and his own ongoing conversations with Tana’s family and community to create the most in-depth account of an inner-city gang ever written. With his signature precision and propulsive narrative, Mark Bowden positions Tana—as a boy, a gang leader, a killer, and now a prisoner—in the context of Baltimore and America, illuminating his path for what it really was: a life sentence.

Mark Bowden (Author), L.J. Ganser (Narrator)

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We All Go into the Dark

A captivating, eloquent and deeply original book, We All Go into the Dark is an absolute must-read for true-crime fans across the board. Three women were brutally murdered between early 1968 and late 1969, each after a night dancing at Glasgow’s infamous Barrowland Ballroom. Their murders were linked and ascribed to the spectre of the well-dressed, scripture-quoting killer who had apparently stalked the city’s dancehalls. The figure was never caught or identified. But the intervening years spawned a legend that never quite lost its grip on the popular imagination of Glasgow. The killings provoked the country’s largest ever manhunt, as well as countless suspects, books, documentaries, earnest speculation, pub theorising and bouts of urban mythmaking. In We All Go into the Dark, Francisco Garcia delves into how Bible John has morphed across generations, interrogates our collective obsession with ‘solving’ historic crimes and questions why some killings are forgotten with indecent haste and why others are never permitted to be forgotten at all.

Francisco Garcia (Author), Angus King (Narrator)

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The Buyer: The making and breaking of an undercover detective

Brought to you by Penguin. The real Line of Duty. 'The first rule of covert surveillance is never disturb the environment. To be an undercover officer, you must watch and wait. Before that, though, is the question of identity. Embarking on a covert operation you first must decide who you are. Who will you be today?' Liam Thomas was an officer in the Met for over a decade, many of those years spent deep at the heart of Britain's most dangerous criminal enterprises in the murky world of undercover surveillance. Before him, his father had also been a police officer, a pillar of their small community. Fighting corruption was Liam's life. But the murky world of undercover work teaches him that justice is far from black and white - and a family secret reveals that corruption is closer to home than he had ever expected. The revelations push him to the edge of his sanity - and then he discovers that his bosses are investigating him... A thrilling memoir of a life lived amongst a world of corruption, justice and questionable loyalties, this book tells the real story of the police's line of duty. ©2023 Liam Thomas (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Liam Thomas (Author), Liam Thomas (Narrator)

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Deep Water: Murder, Scandal, and Intrigue in a New England Town

In the waning days of World War I, William K. Dean was brutally murdered, his body hog-tied and dumped in a rainwater cistern on his farm in the quiet town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Suspicion quickly fell on Dean's wife, an invalid in the early stages of dementia. Her friends, outraged at the accusations, pointed instead to a former tenant of Dean's, whom many suspected of being a German spy. Others believed that Dean's best friend, a politically powerful banker and judge, was involved. Deep Water is based on extensive research into the Dean murder, including thousands of pages of FBI documents, Grand Jury testimonies, newspaper accounts, private correspondence, and the archives of the Jaffrey Historical Society.

Kenneth M. Sheldon (Author), Michael James Bell (Narrator)

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[Spanish] - La enfermera - uno de los casos más sensacionales de la historia criminal danesa

Una madrugada de marzo de 2015, la policía danesa recibió la llamada de una enfermera del hospital en Nykøbing Falster. La enfermera sospechaba que una compañera de trabajo había matado a algunos de sus pacientes y temía que hubiese ocurrido otra vez. Pronto se destapó un caso que dejaría una profunda huella en la historia jurídica danesa. La revelación empezaría un efecto mariposa, con otras personas del entorno informando a la policía de sus sospechas acerca de que la enfermera envenenaba a los pacientes. Algunos llegaron a afirmar que llevaban años dándole vueltas al asunto. Pero, ¿por qué nadie había reaccionado antes? ¿Y dónde estaban las pruebas? En este premiado reportaje documental, el periodista Kristian Corfixen reconstruye el turno de noche que posteriormente llevó a la enfermera a ser condenada a 12 años de prisión. Por primera vez, la investigación policial queda al descubierto y el libro revela varios detalles sobre el caso que no se habían hecho públicos antes. Todos los actores clave de la investigación participan en el libro, incluida la condenada Christina Aistrup Hansen, así como el principal testigo, que hacen públicas por primera vez sus versiones del caso. - Kristian Corfixen (1988) es un periodista y escritor danés. Ha recibido varios premios por su lavor periodística de investigación y su escritura. Recibió una gran atención mediática a raíz de la publicación del libro 'La enfermera - uno de los casos más sensacionales de la historia criminal danesa' en 2019.

Kristian Corfixen (Author), Raúl Llorens (Narrator)

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The Cigar: Carmine Galante, Mafia Terror

The son of Sicilian immigrants, Camillo Carmine Galante was raised in Manhattan's Little Italy and by all accounts born bad. By fifteen he was terrorizing the streets of New York's Lower East Side, scoring high marks for the 'errands' he was running for his La Cosa Nostra elders. When he turned twenty, Galante was already one of the mob's top enforcers-a sadistic thrill killer and clinically diagnosed psychopath with big dreams: whack his way into controlling organized crime the world over, vowing to kill Mafia chieftans Tommy Lucchese and Carlo Gambino and take control of their mob families. Carmine 'Lilo' Galante's rise to Mafia star was infamous: hit man for the Luciano and Genovese crime families; named consigliere by Joseph Bonnano; he wiped out eight members of the Gambinos; on behalf of Mussolini he assassinated the publisher of an anti-Fascist newspaper. Galante helped orchestrate one of the largest heroin trafficking operations on record-a power move too dangerous for his rivals in the narcotics trade. The heads of the five New York families decided that the psychotic Galante had to be stopped. On July 12, 1979, finishing his lunch in a Brooklyn restaurant, Galante got what he'd dished out his whole life: a shotgun blast to the face, his trademark cigar still clenched in his teeth . . .

Frank Dimatteo, Michael Benson (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

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The Good Wife: The Shocking Betrayal and Brutal Murder of a Godly Woman in Texas

Roger and Penny Scaggs seemed a poster couple for family values. Evangelical Christians living in booming Austin, Texas, in the mid-1990s, they were respected leaders in their church and community. As Roger diligently worked his way up the high-tech corporate ladder, Penny kept a pristine home and coached similarly devout young women on how to be perfect wives. But on a windy March evening, this godly woman met the devil head-on. And when the police discovered her lifeless body-repeatedly bludgeoned with a lead pipe, then mutilated with a knife from her own spotless kitchen-they were shocked by the rage and savagery behind her slaying. The Good Wife is a startling true story of greed, hatred, betrayal, and an unimaginable murder-a tale of the dark decay that can be hidden behind a façade of saintliness when a marriage seemingly made in heaven descends into hell.

Clint Richmond (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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All That is Wicked: The 'Victorian Hannibal Lecter' and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind

The thrilling story of Edward Rulloff - a serial murderer who was called 'too intelligent to be killed' - and the array of 19th-century investigators who were convinced his brain held the key to finally understanding the criminal mind. Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer - some have called him a 'Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter' - whose crimes spanned decades, but by 1871 he was captured, chained in a cell - a psychopath holding court while curious 19th-century 'mindhunters' got to work. From alienists (early psychiatrists who tried to analyse the source of his madness) to neurologists (who wanted to dissect his brain) to phrenologists (who analysed the bumps on his head to determine his character), each one thought he held the key to understanding the essential question: is evil born or made? Expanding on her hit podcast, Tenfold More Wicked, acclaimed crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson draws on hundreds of source materials and never-before-shared historical documents to present one of the first glimpses into the mind of a serial killer - a century before the term was coined - through the scientists whose work would come to influence criminal justice for decades to come.

Kate Winkler Dawson (Author), Kate Winkler Dawson (Narrator)

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Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn't Quit

The true story of the brutal 1993 murder of a mother and daughter in Washington, D.C., told by federal homicide prosecutor Kevin Flynn. RELENTLESS PURSUIT follows the personal mission of a Washington, D.C., federal homicide prosecutor who dedicated himself to bringing justice and closure to the family of a brutally murdered mother and daughter, a case during which the author's own father passed away. On a late May morning in 1993, a mother and daughter were found murdered in their home in northeast Washington, D.C. Within a matter of days, an arrest was made. For the victims' family and friends, and for a prosecutor obsessed with justice-the harrowing impact of the crime was just beginning...

Kevin Flynn (Author), Eric Fox (Narrator)

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Arnold Rothstein and the 1919 Black Sox: The History and Legacy of the Most Notorious Scandal in Ame

In the early 20th century, one of the most integral members of the criminal underworld was Arnold Rothstein, the archetype of the old school mobster. He was intelligent, charming, well-spoken, grotesquely wealthy, and a sharp dresser, often pictured with a patterned bowtie and a flat-top fedora snugly fit over his receding hairline. And yet, he was nothing like the stereotypical mobster; Arnold was not a drinker or smoker, and he was not one to be tempted by illicit substances. He was a notorious high roller, with pockets holding wads of $100 bills, but to the casual eye, he was just another dapper, well-mannered gentleman who frequented the tracks and casinos after a long day at the office. Today, Rothstein is remembered for his murky association with the most notorious event in the history of American sports: the fixing of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox were favored 5:1 to beat the Cincinnati Reds, and for the first time since 1903, the Series would be a best-of-nine format. However, at a time when players were treated as second class, some sought a payday beyond what they made in the leagues, and the White Sox players were some of the most poorly paid in the league. The owner of the team, Charles A. Comiskey, was one of the cheapest owners in the game. Around two weeks before the World Series, Chicago first baseman Chick Gandil met with a gambler in his Boston hotel room. During that meeting, Gandil told Joseph Sullivan that for $100,000, he and other members of the White Sox were willing to take a dive and make sure that the Reds won the World Series. Gandil was able to convince the team’s top two pitchers to go along with the plan, as well as five other players. With that, the plan to throw the World Series was put in motion, and rumors began to spread around the country prior to the start of the series as gamblers wagered large sums of money on the Reds.

Charles River Editors (Author), Sam Evanston (Narrator)

Audiobook

True Crime Audiobooks in Non-Fiction