First True Crime

Tara Costigan was the woman next door. A hard worker. Quick to laugh and easy to like. She was happy, confident, strong. A woman who always looked after herself and her kids. Close with her family and her friends, she was much loved. Then, in 2013, she met Marcus Rappel. A local tradie, he was charming and sincere, they dated and fell in love. That should have been the end of a happy-ever-after story. But for Tara, it was much uglier. And for her family it would be devastating.

Hear a firsthand account of the life under cover within the violence-prone Montana Freemen organization. This disturbing memoir is also a subtly scathing commentary on the FBI and gives a revealing view of the extreme risks involved and courage demanded by undercover work of this type.

Charged with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber. Maintaining his innocence, he read everything on criminal law available in the prison library and persuaded a new lawyer to petition for the then-innovative DNA testing. After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in America, Kirk Bloodsworth became the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.

The First Counterspy is the story of spy, counterspy, and an American family unwittingly caught in its web. Until this case, the FBI had never recruited civilian counterspies to catch a Soviet agent. The first two were Larry Haas, a leading aviation engineer at Bell Aviation, and Leona Franey, head librarian at Bell's technical library. The FBI pitted them against Andrei Ivanovich Schevchenko, operating legally as one of the highest Soviet officials in the United States during WWII, and illegally as head of a wide-ranging spy network hidden within the American aviation industry.

Terror in the Flesh is a Nia Riddle quick-listen book that dives into the grim world of serial killers, examining the different types of killers, the most famous serial killers, and even how to protect yourself from these skinwalker-like monsters that blend into society effortlessly in some cases.

When a “neutral” United States becomes a trading partner for the Allies early in World War I, the Germans implement a secret plan to strike back. A team of saboteurs - including an expert on germ warfare, a Harvard professor, and a brilliant, debonair spymaster - devise a series of “mysterious accidents” using explosives and biological weapons, to bring down vital targets such as ships, factories, livestock, and even captains of industry like J. P. Morgan. New York Police Inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department’s Bomb Squad, is assigned the difficult mission of stopping them.

Pursued by one demon into the clutches of another, the ordinary life of Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols is made extraordinary by horrible, inhuman circumstance. Jack the Ripper's first victim comes to life in this sensitive and intimate fictionalized portrait, from humble beginnings, to building a family with an abusive husband, her escape into poverty and the workhouse, alcoholism, and finally abandoned on the streets of London where the Whitechapel Murderer found her.

The year is 1893, and the vibrant city of Chicago is a buzz of streetcars, horse carriages, magicians, dancers, and excited visitors from all over the world. The Columbian Exposition, or World's Fair, is in town and marking the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the United States of America. While fair-goers are enjoying the sights, sounds, and aromas of the many markets, halls, and walkways in the scenic Jackson Park, a sinister young man is planning his next murder only three miles away.

When he regained consciousness, Chris found himself bloodied and bruised, being loaded into an ambulance. He had no idea that his life had permanently changed. Because, a few days later, an elderly man he had hit with his bicycle would die of injuries sustained in the accident. News would go viral internationally, including articles in the New York Times and Forbes Magazine. The District Attorney of San Francisco would see Chris' case as an opportunity to send a message to the city’s cyclists. But this isn’t a story about cycling. It’s about criminal justice.

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.

The year: 1638. The setting: Providence, near Plymouth Colony. A young Nipmuc tribesman returning home from trading beaver pelts is fatally stabbed in a robbery in the woods near Plymouth Colony by a vicious white runaway indentured servant. The tribesman, fighting for his life, is able with his final breaths to reveal the details of the attack to Providence’s governor, Roger Williams. A frantic manhunt by the fledgling government ensues to capture the killer and his gang, now the most hunted men in the New World.

John Stone was a prolific American serial killer who was found dead from a shotgun wound in Houston Texas in early 2021. In the typewriter next to his corpse, the police found this confession. Stone committed some of the most horrific and disgusting crimes in US history during his 40-year reign of terror.