Crime Memoir

The Parable of the Knocker is a nonfiction book about the investigation, prosecution, and trial of a notorious serial killer, Charles Severance. Severance committed his crimes in the City of Alexandria, Virginia, an affluent, historic community just miles south of Washington, DC. Over the course of a decade, Severance ambushed three outstanding Alexandria residents in their middle-class neighborhood by knocking on their front doors in broad daylight and shooting them unexpectedly when they answered the knock.

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only 29 years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with an incompetent defense attorney and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in despairing silence.

In this harrowing New York Times best seller, Ann Rule is at her masterful best as she winnows horrific truths from the ashes of what seemed like paradise in Prairie Village, Kansas. Rule probes the case of Debora Green, a doctor and a loving mother who seemed to epitomize the dreams of the American heartland. A small-town girl with a genius IQ, she achieved an enviable life. But when a raging fire destroyed that home and took two lives, the trail of clues led investigators to a stunning conclusion.

In weeks after the September 11 attacks, 18-year-old Mansoor Adayfi was kidnapped by Afghan militia and sold to US forces for bounty money. After months of interrogations, he was sent to the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as one of its first prisoners. Like the nearly 800 other men imprisoned at Guantanamo, Adayfi didn’t know why he was imprisoned or for how long. He had never seen a skyscraper and couldn’t imagine what the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center looked like, much less how they were destroyed.

To a unique degree, Christopher Steele has been an eyewitness observer of modern Russian history. He was a British diplomat and intelligence professional in Moscow when the Soviet Union was collapsing. Steele was there when the putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev took place and when Boris Yeltsin took over the newly independent Russia. After Vladimir Putin came to power, Steele rose to become one of British government’s leading Russia experts and played a central role in the investigation into the Kremlin-ordered murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

Former Chicago police officer and Outfit associate Fred Pascente is the man who links Tony Spilotro, one of Chicago's most notorious mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives in the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago's Near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by Hanhardt.

In July of 1991, the country was shocked by the unfathomable crimes of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. But no one was more shocked than his parents. In A Father's Story, the listener becomes witness to the incremental unraveling of a parent's image of their child, and the thousand different reactions that follow. In his attempt to understand the nature of his son's psychosis, Lionel Dahmer methodically scrutinizes every possible contributing factor to his son's madness. His desperation is palpable as he searches for clues in the emotional, psychological, and genetic landscape of his son's life.

The most common triggers for homicide are fear, rage, revenge, money, lust, and, more rarely, sheer madness. This isn’t an exact science, of course. Any given murder can have multiple triggers. Sex and revenge seem to be common partners in crime. This book offers my memories of homicide cases that I investigated or oversaw. In each case, I examine the trigger that led to death. I chose this theme for the book because even though the why of a murder case may not be critical in an investigation, it can sometimes lead us to the killer.

From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.

James Dommek, Jr., an Alaska Native writer and musician, sheds new light on a real-life mystery that pits Native American folklore against the US justice system. In the vast Alaskan Arctic, legend has it there once lived a mythic tribe—Iñukuns—that only existed in rumors and whispers. This changed forever when an actor-turned-fugitive, Teddy Kyle Smith, had an encounter that brought Iñukuns from myth to reality. Smith was an aspiring actor with a promising career until it all came quickly crashing down with a gunshot, a manhunt, bloodshed, and other frightful events.

In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic, its uncertain future contested by the two major political parties of the day: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached - with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge - their animosity reached a fever pitch.

If you are eager to read John and Patsy Ramsey's new release about the mysterious death of their daughter JonBenet, you won't want to miss Perfect Murder, Perfect Town. Schiller creates a portrait of an inscrutable family thrust under the spotlight of public suspicion and an affluent, tranquil city torn apart by a crime it was unprepared to deal with.

In 2011, three successful and highly educated women fell head over heels for the brilliant and charming Ethan Schuman. Unbeknownst to the others, each exchanged countless messages with Ethan, staying up late into the evenings to deepen their connections with this fascinating man. His detailed excuses about broken webcams and complicated international calling plans seemed believable, as did last minute trip cancellations. After all, why would he lie? Ethan wasn't after money—he never convinced his marks to shell out thousands of dollars for some imagined crisis.

A young woman leaves a party with a wealthy US senator. The next morning her body is discovered in his car at the bottom of a pond. This is the damning true story of the death of campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and of the senator - a 37-year-old Senator Ted Kennedy - who left her trapped underwater while he returned to his hotel, slept, and made phone calls to associates. Leo Damore's 1988 national best seller, originally entitled Senatorial Privilege, almost didn't make it into print after its original publisher, Random House, judged it too explosive....

In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death - in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence....

Two victims of the infamous Cleveland kidnapper share the story of their abductions, their decade in captivity, and their final, dramatic rescue. On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry made headlines around the world when she fled a Cleveland area home and called 911, saying: “Help me, I’m Amanda Berry...I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for 10 years". A horrifying story rapidly unfolded. Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight to his home, where he kept them chained in the basement.

Raised in the suburb of Riverside, California, 20-year-old college student Jason Bautista endured for years his emotionally disturbed mother's verbal and psychological abuse. She even locked him out of the house, tied him up with electrical cord, and on one occasion, gave him a beating that sent him to the emergency room. On the night of January 14, 2003, Jason strangled his mother. To keep authorities from identifying her body, he chopped off her head and hands, an idea he claimed he got from watching an episode of the hit TV series The Sopranos.

At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy's change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence.

Assassinat sur Instagram, télé-réalité insolite, recrutement de victimes sur Twitter par un meurtrier, manoir d’épouvante, radicalisation en ligne.... Emile et Seb, le tandem du balado Distorsion, replongent dans les arcanes d’Internet afin d’en extraire des récits tout aussi passionnants qu’inquiétants

Tauchen Sie ein in die fesselnde Welt wahrer Verbrechen. True Crime-Erfolgsautor Adrian Langenscheid entfacht mit 14 schockierenden Kriminalfällen aus Japan ein herzklopfendes Lesevergnügen. Es ist ein atemberaubendes, zutiefst erschütterndes Portrait menschlicher Abgründe, das gerade wegen seiner kühlen, sachlich-neutralen Schilderung gewaltige Emotionen weckt. Japan – ein Land der Gegensätze und Widersprüche, das für seine verschlossene und geheimnisvolle Gesellschaft bekannt ist – enthüllt in diesen Fällen seine düsteren Geheimnisse.