Serial Killers True Crime

H. H. Holmes’ story has become one of legend. Holmes committed his crimes during a time in history where the idea of murdering on a mass scale was being introduced to the world through the actions of Jack the Ripper. Unlike Jack the Ripper, Holmes’ motives were clear; he killed out of greed, convenience, and curiosity.

When 14-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874, a nightmarish reign of terror over an unsuspecting city came to an end. "The Boston Boy Fiend" was imprisoned at last. But the complex questions sparked by his ghastly crime spree - the hows and whys of vicious juvenile crime - were as relevant in the so-called Age of Innocence as they are today.

For weeks, the body count of sexually violated, brutally murdered young women escalated. With increasing alarm, Los Angeles newspapers headlined the deeds of a serial killer they named the Hillside Strangler. The city was held hostage by fear. Darcy O'Brien weds the narrative skill of an award-winning novelist with the detailed observations of an experienced investigator to unravel this chilling true-crime story.

Women have committed some of the most disturbing serial killings ever seen in the United States. Yet scientific inquiry, criminal profiling, and public interest have focused more on their better-known male counterparts. As a result, female serial killers have been misunderstood, overlooked, and underestimated. In this riveting account, Dr. Marissa A. Harrison draws on original scientific research, various psychological perspectives, and richly detailed case studies to illuminate the stark differences between female and male serial killers’ backgrounds, motives, and crimes.

“When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals,” Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most puzzling murder investigations. Incredibly, at the time the words of the world’s most famous fictional detective appeared in print in the Strand Magazine, a real-life Canadian doctor, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, was stalking and murdering women in London’s downtrodden Lambeth neighborhood. In this book, Dean Jobb reveals how bungled investigations, corrupt officials and failed prosecutions allowed Cream to evade detection or freed him to kill, again and again.

What makes someone become a serial killer? What goes through the mind of these coldblooded killers while they pretend to be normal like the rest of the world? We can't say for sure for every single one of them - but for those who were caught and told their stories, we can. Plunge yourself into the dark and chilling abyss, and peek inside the minds of the world's most dangerous monsters - the infamous and cold-blooded serial killers.

Vier erschütternde wahre Kriminalgeschichten in einem Band von bestsellerautor Ryan Green.

From John Wayne Gacy to Jeffrey Dahmer, many of America's most famous murderers have entered into the collective cultural consciousness. They have become pop culture figures, famous for their crimes and the violent nature of their acts. People feel compelled to understand more about these dark and twisted crimes, even when they disgust. For audiences everywhere, the very idea that these people can exist and operate in day-to-day life becomes an issue of abject terror and interest.

It started with a college course assignment, then escalated into a dangerous obsession. Eighteen-year-old honor student Jason Moss wrote to men whose body counts had made criminal history: men named Dahmer, Manson, Ramirez, and Gacy. Posing as their ideal victim, Jason seduced them with his words. One by one they wrote him back, showering him with their madness and violent fantasies. Then the game spun out of control. John Wayne Gacy revealed all to Jason - and invited his pen pal to visit him in prison.... It was an offer Jason couldn't turn down. Even if it made him....

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut, Death in the Air, is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. In winter 1952, London automobiles and thousands of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air. But the smog that descended on December fifth of 1952 was different; it was a type that held the city hostage for five long days.

In this revised, updated, and expanded edition, the author explores the life of Theodore Bundy, one of the more infamous American serial killers on record. Bundy's story is a complex mix of psychopathology, criminal investigation, and the US legal system. This in-depth examination of Bundy's life and his killing spree that totaled dozens of victims is drawn from legal transcripts, correspondence, and interviews with detectives and prosecutors. Using these sources, new information about several murders is unveiled.

Considered one of the most prolific serial killers in Michigan's history, John Eric Armstrong is believed to have attacked at least 10 people in Detroit between summer 1999 and spring 2000, killing five and forever changing the lives of five others. But his numbers beyond Detroit may be even more deadly: With his April 2000 arrest on Michigan Avenue, one of Detroit's thriving areas of prostitution, Armstrong confessed to numerous other killings around the country and world from serving in the Navy aboard the USS Nimitz in the 1990s.

In May 1996, two skilled backcountry leaders, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, entered Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a week-long backcountry camping trip. The free-spirited and remarkable young couple had met and fallen in love the previous summer while working at a world-renowned outdoor program for women. During their final days in the park, they descended the narrow remnants of a trail and pitched their tent in a hidden spot. After the pair didn’t return home as planned, park rangers found a scene of horror at their campsite.

Fred and Rose West are virtually unique in British criminal history: a husband and wife who loved and killed together. During their long relationship, the Wests murdered a series of young women, burying the remains of nine victims under their home at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, including those of their daughter. What was left of Fred West's eight-year-old stepdaughter was dug up from under the Wests' previous Gloucester home; his first wife and nanny were buried in open country.

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert - after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life - went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene - of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap.

Serial killers have haunted the public imagination for hundreds of years. They have struck fear and terror into the collective consciousness for their gruesome and malicious crimes against humanity. What motivates them to commit these murders? How do people, who appear normal on the surface, manage to live secret lives of hedonism, psychosis, and bloodlust?

A marriage made in hell.... Barely five feet tall, sweet and innocent looking, Charlene Gallego used all of her charms to beguile pretty teenage girls and young women into the back of a van, where her lethal husband, Gerald, lay waiting. A killer couple bound together by secrets, lies, and sex slave fantasies... Married multiple times and still in his early 30s, Gerald Gallego found the perfect companion in Charlene. Over a grisly period of twenty-six months, their bloody and brutal rampage of kidnapping, rape, and murder spanned three states and claimed 11 lives.

The most fatal mistake? Trust. It's the foundation of any enduring relationship between friends, lovers, spouses, and families. But when trust is placed in those who are not what they seem, the results can be deadly. Ann Rule, who famously chronicled her own shocking experience of unknowingly befriending a sociopath in The Stranger Beside Me, offers a riveting, all-new collection from her true-crime files, with the lethally shattered bonds of trust at the core of each blood-soaked account.

Known as "serial killer groupies" or even "prison groupies", a great number of these women have shown a surprising desire to get connected to the serial killer of their choice. A large number of these women have become directly aligned with these killers, and some have even married or gotten engaged with these criminals. So why are these so-called "groupies" attracted to serial killers?

After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history.