Serial Killers True Crime Science

Forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant asks, what is it about murder that fascinates us? Is it the chill whisper of fear reminding us we too can kill? Grant describes 10 true murder cases, each with unique triggers. For most of us, murder is an arm's length experience, close enough to frighten and fascinate yet far enough not to traumatise. For those directly affected, murder can be scarring. Our restless chatter about murder, our state of heightened alert, our endless appetite for news, may all just be play therapy, reassuring us that our own killer instincts are under control.

In this, the first book of its kind, Kate Kray, who married gangster Ronnie Kray, peers into the minds of the top 20 worst killers in criminal history and, sparing no detail, reveals the awful truth of their abominable acts. The extreme nature of their violence and their shocking lack of remorse makes for uncomfortable yet fascinating listening.

In this inspirational memoir, one of the best descriptions of UK prison life, Mo expertly tells jaw-dropping stories and brings to life the eccentric characters from a hidden world.

During the early 1970s, more than three dozen teenage boys went missing from the working-class neighborhood of Houston Heights, in the south of Texas. The parents of a number of these boys received strange postcards from their sons, telling them that they were fine and that they had found jobs somewhere else in the state, anywhere from Dallas to Austin. Then, in August 1973, the Houston Police Department made a shocking discovery; something that would later become known as the Houston Mass Murders.

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds.

Absolute Madness tells the disturbing true story of Joseph Christopher, a white serial killer who targeted black males and struck fear into the residents of Buffalo and New York City in the 1980s. Dubbed both the .22-Caliber Killer and the Midtown Slasher, Christopher allegedly claimed eighteen victims during a savage four-month spree across the state.

Ted Bundy was a burglar, rapist, kidnapper, necrophiliac (sexual intercourse with a corpse) and serial killer in the 1970s. It's believed he killed 30 plus women. Jeffrey Dahmer (the Milwaukee Monster), was a rapist, killer, necrophiliac, and cannibal who killed 17 young boys and men between 1978 and 1991. Albert Fish was a child rapist, cannibal, and serial killer who operated between 1924 and 1932. It's believed that he killed at least nine children and possibly more.

Eric Brach's new book Double Lives: True Tales of the Criminals Next Door offers terrifying true stories about the criminals hidden among us and the banality of evil and crime, elevated by its frank discussion of the nation-wide criminal scourge of the moment: opioid addiction. Double Lives chronicles the very monsters who walk unnoticed among us - even serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy. They are neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives.

In this first-person account of becoming the FBI's top serial-killer hunter and a member of a religious order in an attempt to discern the true nature of good and evil, Roger L. Depue searches for an understanding of how evil develops. Between Good and Evil is Depue's look back at a life spent apprehending criminals, especially serial killers, first as a small-town police chief, then an FBI-SWAT team member, Behavioral Sciences Unit chief, and a developer of revolutionary law enforcement programs.

Throughout his time as a murder squad detective, Trevor Marriott has seen firsthand the wanton slayings and butcheries that have been committed by both men and women who have warped, depraved and sadistic minds. In this fascinating and chilling book, he examines the world's most notorious serial killers and the despicable crimes they committed.

By day, Robert Lee Yates, Jr., was a respected father of five, a skilled helicopter pilot who served in Desert Storm and the National Guard, and a man no one suspected of a deadly hidden life. By night he prowled the streets where prostitutes gathered, gaining their trust before betraying them with a bullet to the head. On August 26, 1997, the decomposed bodies of two young women were discovered in Spokane, Washington. Within months, four more women were added to the mounting death toll.

Eine Reise in die Vergangenheit mit Berichten von spannenden historischen Kriminalfällen. Wie in ihrem Podcast Früher war mehr Verbrechen skizzieren die beiden Prähistorikerinnen Nina Batram und Katharina Kolvenbach mögliche Lösungen weit zurückliegender Fälle und Cold Cases und deren Relevanz für die heutige Zeit - dabei stets respektvoll, mit viel Empathie und Sachverstand. Sie beleuchten z. B. eine mordende Familie, eine Giftmörderin, eine falsche Ehefrau, einen intriganten Adelsmörder und den vielleicht bekanntesten Serienmörder der Geschichte: Jack the Ripper.

Before David Wilson became the UK's pre-eminent criminologist, he was just a young boy growing up in the Scottish town of Carluke. As a child, the brutal murder of a young woman rocked this small community, but very quickly a man was arrested for the crime, convicted and put behind bars. For most, life slowly carried on - case closed.

Wenn keine Spur zum Täter führt, wenn nichts mehr geht, wenn die Ermittlungen eingestellt werden müssen, dann spricht man von einem "Cold Case". Die Gerichtsakten der "kalten Fälle" vergilben in den Archiven der Ermittlungsbehörden, dicke, prall gefüllte Stehordner voller grausiger Details, mit Bildern blutbesudelter Leichen, zertrümmerter Schädel oder abgetrennter Körperteile. Und auf der letzten Seite findet sich stets der obligatorische Vermerk des Staatsanwalts: "Ein Täter konnte nicht ermittelt werden. Das Verfahren wird vorläufig eingestellt."

In his account of the sensational life and murder of Grady Stiles Jr., also known as the legendary carnival freak Lobster Boy, author Fred Rosen explains how Stiles' death was engineered by his wife, Mary Teresa, the carny known as the Electrified Girl. Rosen describes how Mary Teresa arranged for her husband's murder after years of physical and emotional abuse. During Mary Teresa's dramatic trial, Rosen becomes a character in his own book.

In October, 1996, young, pretty, and petite women began vanishing off the streets of Poughkeepsie, New York. Most were prostitutes and some were addicts. By August, 1998, the toll had reached eight, when a prostitute told police she had barely escaped being strangled by Kendall Francois, 27, a 6'4", 300-lb. middle school hall monitor whose slovenly personal hygiene had earned him the nickname "Stinky". Inside his house, the smell was worse, as investigators discovered a tangle of rotting flesh and bones.

The story of Richard Cottingham, the "Times Square Ripper" or "Times Square Torso Killer", one of America's most sadistically depraved serial killers. A shocking case of unbridled sex, sadism, prostitution, porn, singles bars, date-rape drugs, abduction, bondage, handcuffs, duct tape, torture, sexploitation, perverted paraphilic fetishes, serial killing, and dismemberment on New York's notorious Times Square and the Forty-Deuce in the 1970s.

A true insider's story of the backpacker murders from the detective who led the team that arrested Ivan Milat. Milat - the serial killer who preyed on young hitchhikers. The backpackers - the innocent victims of a brutal murderer. Belanglo - a place that became synonymous with pure evil. It was the biggest and most complex manhunt in Australian history, an investigation that gripped a nation. Behind the many false leads and dead ends, precious clues emerged that pointed to one man.

In kaum einem Strafprozess sind Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Rechtsprechung so ausgelotet worden wie im Verfahren gegen Beate Zschäpe und ihre Mitangeklagten. Gisela Friedrichsen, Deutschlands bekannteste Gerichtsreporterin, zeigt in ihrer glänzenden Analyse, warum dieser fünf Jahre dauernde Prozess, der erstmals nach 1945 eine rassistisch motivierte Mordserie aufklären musste, für die bundesdeutsche Rechtsprechung so bedeutend ist.

Was läuft im Kopf eines Serienmörders ab? Wie kann sich ein freundlicher, harmlos wirkender Zeitgenosse von einem auf den anderen Moment in ein abscheuliches Monster verwandeln, das bestialisch foltert und mordet, und sich danach wieder verhalten, als wäre nichts geschehen? Der weltbekannte Kriminologe Christopher Berry-Dee hat über viele Jahre Kontakt zu inhaftierten Serienkillern aufgebaut und sie ausführlich befragt. Herausgekommen sind dabei mörderische Storys, von denen sich jede wie ein eigener Thriller liest.