English True Crime

Now a number-one international best seller, Billion Dollar Whale is "an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale" (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude—one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system.

Actors, musicians, TV personalities, and other public figures in the spotlight aren’t always who they appear to be. You might be surprised by just how many have led nefarious, double lives, and have become infamous criminals! Power, status, and a rich lifestyle aren’t barriers to criminal behavior. Yes, people from all walks of life commit crimes. But the people featured here are not your typical neighbors or subway passengers—they are household names and Hollywood stars.

A master of deception, he was a rapist, arsonist, bank robber, and a new breed of serial killer, one who studied other killers to perfect his craft. In multiple states, he methodically buried kill-kits containing his tools of murder years before returning and putting them to use. Viewing the entire country as his hunting grounds, he often flew to distant locations where he rented cars and randomly selected his victims. Such were the methods and madness of serial killer Israel Keyes. Such were the demands of the “Devil in the Darkness.”

In 2007, a short blogpost by Gawker Media outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker and its bankruptcy. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental - it had been masterminded by Thiel.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion.

In 2007, Russell Edwards, fuelled by fascination and determination, discovered a shawl – an unexpected key in the historical mystery of Jack the Ripper. With an intriguing blend of forensic investigation and historical research, the book explores the gripping evidence, a blood-stained shawl, connected to the universally infamous criminal, Jack the Ripper. Persistent and fearless, Edwards embarks on a captivating seven-year quest to authenticate the shawl and unearth its concealed truths. His search takes him deeper into the heart of one of history's most chilling real crime stories.

The Suez Crisis of 1956 was the nadir of Britain's twentieth century, the moment when the once-superpower was bullied into retreat. "Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role," said Dean Acherson, a former US secretary of state. Acheson's line has entered into the canon of great quotations: but it was wrong. Britain had already found a role. The leaders of the world just hadn't noticed it yet. Butler to the World reveals how Britain came to assume its role as the center of the offshore economy.

Who was Kim Philby? Those closest to him—like his fellow MI6 officer and best friend since childhood, Nicholas Elliot, and the CIA’s head of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton—knew him as a loyal confidant and an unshakeable patriot. Philby was a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain’s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union. Together with Elliott and Angleton he stood on the front lines of the Cold War, holding Communism at bay. But he was secretly betraying them both: He was working for the Russians the entire time.

During the civil rights movement, the state of Mississippi created an elaborate spy network. Its mission was to preserve segregation by any means necessary—including voter interference, sponsorship of white supremacy groups, and even murder.

The gruesome murder of hopeful starlet Elizabeth Short, in the noir-tinged Los Angeles of 1947, has a permanent place in American lore as one of the most inscrutable of true-crime mysteries. Now, Piu Eatwell - relentless legal sleuth and atmospheric stylist - cracks the case after 70 years. With recently unredacted FBI files, newly released sections of the LAPD files, and explosive new interviews, Eatwell has unprecedented access to primary evidence and a persuasive culprit.

A Fever in the Heart dissects an explosive triangle that led to obsession and murder in a small town in the northwest of America. Ann Rule reveals the story of an alluring wife and the two men desperate for her love; a story with a bizarre and deadly twist that no one could have suspected. In this and several other riveting true-crime cases from her personal files, Ann Rule masterfully probes the delusions of the criminal mind, the fateful circumstances and the unrelenting investigative forces at work in the aftermath of murder.

Charles Manson is instantly recognizable as the deranged cult leader who was responsible for the deaths of nine people in the late 1960s. Manson was a career criminal who got his education in the US prison system and learned at an early age that only those who have power over others will survive. In less than three years, Manson transformed his followers from a group of freedom-loving, LSD-dropping hippies into a pack of blood-thirsty murderers who carried out acts of astounding brutality at his request.

Award-winning investigative journalist Ross Coulthart has been intrigued by UFOs since mysterious glowing lights were reported near New Zealand's Kaikoura mountains when he was a teenager. The 1978 sighting is just one of thousands since the 1940s, and yet research into UFOs is still seen as the realm of crackpots and conspiracy theorists.

College student Lauren Spierer was pursuing her dreams, joining her boyfriend at a party school eight hundred miles from home. Social and gregarious, studying fashion and rooming with friends, Lauren embraced her new adventure with the zeal of a young woman who suddenly had everything she desired. But there was a dark side that she and her inner circle kept secret. And one warm June evening, after heading out with friends, she seemingly vanished.

Chicago Heights was long the seat of one of the major street crews of the Chicago Outfit, but its importance has often been overlooked and misunderstood. The crew's origins predate Prohibition, when Chicago Heights was a developing manufacturing center with a large Italian immigrant population. Its earliest bosses struggled for control until a violent gang war left the crew solidified under the auspices of Al Capone. For the first time, the history of the Chicago Heights street crew is traced from its inception through its last known boss.

Boasting a gritty and authentic look into the tragic life of Aileen Wuornos, this profound true crime audiobook offers a complete biographical sketch of a terrifying female serial killer who claimed over half a dozen lives. Drawing on real police investigations, firsthand accounts, and psychological theories, you’ll be taken on a journey to examine the mind of a serial killer–and the deadly delusions that drove her to commit her crimes.

Despite what Scarface might lead one to believe, violence was not the dominant characteristic of the cocaine business. It was corruption: the dirty cops, agents, lawyers, judges, and politicians who made the drug world go round. And no one managed that carousel of dangerous players better than Willy Falcon.

Young girl's panties started to go missing; sexual assaults began to occur, and then female bodies were found! Soon this quiet town of Tweed, Ontario, was in panic. What's even more shocking was when an upstanding resident stood accused of the assaults. This was not just any man, but a pillar of the community; a decorated military pilot who had flown Canadian Forces VIP aircraft for dignitaries such as the Queen of England, Prince Philip, the governor general, and prime minister of Canada.

On May 5, 1981, three rebellious members of New York's Bonanno crime family were gunned down in a Brooklyn social club. One of the gunmen was Vito Rizzuto, a man who would rise to the top of the underworld in Canada and then expand his reign across continents to become a global superboss. The Sixth Family, now revised and updated, reveals the hidden history of the rise of the Rizzuto clan, the alliances it forged around the world, and the bloody events that led to charges against Vito Rizzuto in the United States and Italy for racketeering and corruption.

In some murder cases, the truth behind the most tragic of crimes crystallizes with relative ease. Not so with these fascinating accounts drawn from the personal files of Ann Rule. What happens when the case itself becomes an intractable puzzle, when clues are shrouded in smoke and mirrors, and when criminals skillfully evade law enforcement in a maddening cat-and-mouse chase? Even the most devoted true-crime listener won't predict the outcome of these truly baffling cases until the conclusions revealed in Ann Rule's marvelously insightful narrative.