American True Crime

Nina, a new graduate from fashion design in college, gladly accepts the offer to have her palm read as a graduation gift. Smiling, the palm reader tells Nina that she has a long lifeline, as she traces it on her hand. As soon as the words are uttered, the palm reader’s facial expression turns to one of fear. In broken English, she whispers, “Break – very bad break in middle of life. Maybe you die.”

On July 23, 2007, Dr. William Petit suffered an unimaginable horror: Armed strangers broke into his suburban Connecticut home in the middle of the night, bludgeoned him nearly to death, tortured and killed his wife and two daughters, and set their house on fire. He miraculously survived, and yet living through those horrific hours was only the beginning of his ordeal. Broken and defeated, Bill was forced to confront a question of ultimate consequence: How does a person find the strength to start over and live again after confronting the darkest of nightmares?

Eliot Ness presents the first complete picture of the real Eliot Ness. Both fearless and shockingly shy, he inspired courage and loyalty in men twice his age, forged law-enforcement innovations that are still with us today, and earned acclaim and scandal from both his professional and personal lives. Through it all, he believed unwaveringly in the integrity of law and the basic goodness of his fellow Americans.

The story of Amy Biehl is well known in South Africa. The 26-year-old white American Fulbright scholar was brutally murdered on August 25, 1993, during the final, fiery days of apartheid by a mob of young black men in a township outside Cape Town. Her parents' forgiveness of two of her killers became a symbol of the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa. Justine van der Leun decided to introduce the story to an American audience. But as she delved into the case, the prevailing narrative started to unravel.

Most Americans are aware that their 16th president was mortally wounded by a man named Booth at a Washington theater in April 1865. These are facts that nobody can dispute. However, a closer look at this history-changing catastrophe raises questions that have still not been fully answered. The passing of the 150th anniversary of the United States' first presidential assassination is an ideal time for students and scholars to consider these questions.

In 1901, as America tallied its gains from a period of unprecedented imperial expansion, an assassin's bullet shattered the nation's confidence. The shocking murder of President William McKinley threw into stark relief the emerging new world order of what would come to be known as the American Century.

America has a long and complicated fascination with serial killers. When we think about the most infamous of these killers, we generally think of men like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or John Wayne Gacy. Those names make headlines while there’s the often-repeated myth that suggests there are no female serial killers. After all, most of us couldn’t name a woman on the same scale of infamy at BTK or the elusive Zodiac Killer, can we? As it so often is, the truth is far more complicated. Women kill.

Florence Maybrick was the first American woman to be sentenced to death in England - for murdering her husband, a crime she almost certainly didn't commit. Her 1889 trial was presided over by an openly misogynist judge who was later declared incompetent and died in an asylum. Hours before she was to be hanged, Queen Victoria reluctantly commuted her sentence to life in prison. In her opinion, a woman who would commit adultery, as Maybrick had admitted, would also kill her husband. Her children were taken from her; she never saw them again. Her mother worked for years to clear her name.

It’s no secret that hundreds of companies have been slashing pensions and health coverage earned by millions of retirees. Employers blame an aging workforce, stock market losses, and spiraling costs - a perfect storm of external forces that has forced them to take drastic measures. But this so-called retirement crisis is no accident. Award-winning investigative reporter Ellen E. Schultz reveals how large companies and the retirement industry - benefits consultants, insurance companies, and banks - have all played a huge, hidden role in the death spiral of American pensions and benefits.

Summertime in Florida. Tourists flock to the subtropical paradise for its beautiful beaches, abundant sunshine, and the magical allure of Disney World. For one Midwestern mother and her two teenaged daughters, a trip to the Sunshine State seemed like a dream vacation.

Discover the most wicked serial killers of the 1980s, one of the worst decades of true crime and heinous serial murderers America has ever known. Here in this audiobook, we take you down the dark paths chosen by some of the worst serial killers of the 1980s. From the Green River Killer to the brutally murderous duo of Leonard Lake and Charles Eng. After listening to this audiobook, you will never look back at the 1980s in quite the same way again!

American Animals is a coming-of-age crime memoir centered around three childhood friends: Warren, Spencer, and Eric. Disillusioned with freshman year of college, and determined to escape from their mundane Middle-American existences, the three hatch a plan to steal millions of dollars' worth of artwork and rare manuscripts from a university museum. The story that unfolds is a gripping adventure of teenage rebellion, from meetings with black-market art dealers in Amsterdam, to the opulent galleries of Christie's auction house in Rockefeller Center.

The '90s were a time when big changes were happening across the world. Unfortunately, with big changes also comes instability and crime, resulting in many heinous individuals that got a chance to commit them and cases that many are terrified to just hear about. In this audiobook, find 12 such cases from all over the world.

Born with Olympic dreams in her heart, Jemeker Hairston's path took a brutal detour. A series of devastating events ignited a fierce determination to escape poverty, leading her into the perilous world of American drug cartels. "American Queen Pin" is the unfiltered and powerful story of her rise and fall, a gritty chronicle of power, peril, and the raw power of redemption.

He is a street star from the Southside of Jamaica Queens and a towering icon from the underworld of New York. At the dawn of the crack era he was the Don Dada of Baisley Projects and set the tone and styles for the would-be rappers and future CEO's of the music industry. They catered to and emulated him and his crew. He was the original hip-hop hustler and an American Gangster of epic proportions. Listen to his story today.

There was no shortage of well-known public enemies like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson, but none fascinated the American public as much as Bonnie and Clyde. While the duo and their Barrow Gang were no more murderous than other outlaws of the era, the duo's romantic relationship, and the discovery of photographs at one of their hideouts, added a more human dimension to Bonnie and Clyde, even as they were gunning down civilians and cops alike.

This is the true story a woman swindled out of a fortune by her famous ex-Confederate-general husband, Philip Dale Roddey. You will find this story nowhere else in material about Roddey but it was splashed across the nation in newspapers in 1874 and followed closely by the New York Times.

During 51 days in early 1993 one of the most tragic events in American crime history unfolded on the plains outside Waco, Texas. An obscure and heavily armed religious sect called the Branch Davidians was barricaded inside their commune and outside were hundreds of law enforcement angry because the former had killed four ATF agents in a botched raid. Go on an engaging and captivating ride to examine one of the most important true crime stories in recent decades.

Il resoconto autobiografico (da parte di uno che di mestiere faceva il ladro e non lo scrittore) di una sensazionale rapina all'American Express nei primi anni del Novecento, nonché della vita all'Île du Diable, dove Guerin fu deportato dai francesi quando lo pizzicarono e lo condannarono all'ergastolo, e della successiva, ancor più clamorosa fuga dal carcere.

Billy the Kid once said that he killed 22 men - one for each year that he lived. While it’s more likely that he only killed eight or nine, this young outlaw was clearly deadly. But his brief and brutal life reveals how his tragic existence led him into a life of crime. After growing up in poverty as an Irish immigrant in New York City and losing his father at a young age, Billy the Kid had to endure losing his mother when he was only 15.