Serial Killers True Crime

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

Everyone thinks they know the story of Milly Dowler. Haunting headlines about the missing schoolgirl splashed across front pages. The family's worst fears realised when her body was found months later. The years of waiting for the truth, only to learn that the killer, known to the police, lived just yards from where Milly had vanished. The parents subjected to horrific psychological torture at a trial orchestrated by the murderer.

In Unsolved Serial Killers, Volumes 1 and 2, here is just a fraction of what you will discover explorations of the cities and historical contexts of the killings, so you understand the atmosphere when they were taking place, in-depth profiles of the victims of each killer and what happened to them, and much more. If you're a true crime junkie, you may think you know the world of serial killers inside and out, but prepare to be surprised by what you find within these lines.

The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers is the most comprehensive set of its kind in the history of true crime publishing. Written and compiled by Susan Hall, the four-volume set has more than 1600 entries of male and female serial killers from around the world.

On first impressions, Ted Bundy seemed like the perfect all-American boy. He was good-looking, fun, and very charming; many women found him irresistible...But deep inside he was an evil monster who used his insider knowledge of law enforcement to evade detection as he terrorized large areas of America, murdering white females, mostly college students aged between 15 and 25. This is the story of a chameleon-like psychopath and necrophile who lured innocent victims to a horrible end.

Criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee goes behind bars to get the last word from some of the worst criminals in the world. They speak of their violence and shocking deeds in their own words, from within some of the hardest prisons on earth. These interviews have been collated into this disturbing and unflinching analysis of the criminal mind. Here is what happens when you meet the people most of us know only from our nightmares and newspaper headlines.

When you think of serial killers throughout history, the names that come to mind are ones like Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. But what about Tillie Klimek, Moulay Hassan, Kate Bender? The narrative we’re comfortable with is the one where women are the victims of violent crime, not the perpetrators. In fact, serial killers are thought to be so universally, overwhelmingly male that in 1998, FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood infamously declared in a homicide conference, “There are no female serial killers.”

When police in Florida's Volusia County were called to investigate the murder of Richard Mallory, whose gunshot-ridden body had been found in the woods just north of Daytona Beach in December 1989, their search led them to a string of dead ends before the trail went cold six months later. During the spring and summer of 1990, the bodies of six more middle-aged white men were discovered. The police soon discovered the killings were the work of a single culprit, Aileen Wuornos, one of the first women to ever fit the profile of a serial killer.

Ray and Faye Copeland are often known as the oldest couple ever to be sentenced to death in the United States. At the ages of 76 and 69, the couple was sentenced to death in separate trials for the murders of five vagrant men that they had taken in, hired, forced to commit fraud, and then finally killed to keep quiet. While Ray's guilt in the crime was indisputable, Faye's role in the crimes is muddled as she was the victim of severe physical abuse at the hands of Ray.

In Northampton, Massachusetts, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Kristen Gilbert was known as a hardworking, dedicated nurse - so why were her patients dying? So many emergencies and sudden deaths occurred while Kristen made her rounds on Ward C that her colleagues jokingly called her the "Angel of Death".

In 1991, flight attendant Nancy Ludwig checked in to an airport hotel near Detroit. The next morning she was found gagged, raped, and tortured - her throat slit with such rage that she was nearly decapitated. Her husband Arthur never gave up hope that the future would bring enough evidence to close the case. But it was the past that held the clue. In 1985, 55-year-old Margarette Eby, a music professor, met the same grisly death at her cottage in Flint, Michigan. The case went cold - until six years later when the victim's son Mark came upon the story of Nancy Ludwig's slaying.

This is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of the murderer who has become one of America's great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century.

James Keene had it all: cars, girls, houses up and down the Gold Coast. But behind his well-connected star athlete façade was a money-obsessed drug dealer desperate to make the big score to get him out of the business. When he was sentenced to prison, it seemed the only lessons he would learn would be about navigating convict society. Instead, he was offered a chance to regain his freedom in return for going undercover in the nation’s highest security prison for the criminally insane.

Only one TV interview with a serial killer has ever been recorded in a British jail and broadcast. The Dennis Nilsen Tapes: In Jail with Britain's Most Infamous Serial Killer covers four hours of interrogation, two days spent face to face with Nilsen and two years of graphic correspondence and confessions. With fresh insight from world famous psychological profilers and a leading pathologist, Morley completes almost three decades of investigation into what turned the former chef, policeman and civil servant into one of the world's most notorious murderers and necrophiles.

This audiobook focuses on the countless theories that have been put forward with regard to the identity of the notorious Victorian serial killer and offers an extensive section presenting all the known facts in the case. It includes 30 essays by the most famous, often controversial Ripperologists putting forward their own theories. It remains one of the few audiobooks to offer a series of alternative solutions to Jack the Ripper's identity and the truth behind the Whitechapel murders.

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 World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers is the most comprehensive set of its kind in the history of true crime publishing. Written and compiled by Susan Hall, the four-volume set has more than 1600 entries of male and female serial killers from around the world.

Serial killer Gary Heidnik's name will live on in infamy, and his home, 3520 North Marshall Street in Philadelphia, is a house tainted with the memory of unbelievable horrors. What police found there was an incredible nightmare made real. Four young women had been held captive - some for four months - half-naked and chained. They had been tortured, starved, and repeatedly raped. But more grotesque discoveries lay in the kitchen: human limbs frozen, a torso burned to cinders, an empty pot suspiciously scorched....

The stories in this audiobook represent humanity at its absolute worst. Pure evil. In my audiobooks, however, I don’t leave out the details. In my audiobooks, I include details not to shock, but to give the listener a deeper look into the twisted mind of the killer. In the end, it’s unlikely any of us will understand the motives of the criminals in these audiobooks, but the level of depravity will at least keep you resisting the pause button. Volume six of True Crime Case Histories features 12 new stories from the past several decades.

There are many myths about serial killers: that they are all dysfunctional loners; all white males; only motivated by sex; that they all travel and operate across a wide area; cannot stop killing; are all insane, or evil geniuses; and that they all want to get caught. Of course, there are some serial killers who fit into these categories, but the married Green River Killer was not a dysfunctional loner; there are plenty of female and non-Caucasian serial killers, Dr Harold Shipman was certainly not motivated by sex; and many serial killings (such as the Ipswich prostitute murders carried out by Steve Wright) happen within a confined area.