Serial Killers True Crime

Smile is a chilling account of Rodney Alcala, one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. Ryan Green gives a suspenseful narrative that draws the listener into the real-life horror experienced by the victims with all the elements of a captivating thriller.

Ted Bundy was a handsome, charming, and ambitious man who carried his hatred deeper and more hidden than any other murderers do. He was able to lead a life that included normal friendships and relationships, and he even got far as both a student and a politician. But the hatred was there.... It was always there.... Bundy ended the lives of more than 30 young women, ensuring their final moments were ugly and violent. His torture methods were cruel, and there was no mercy shown to each female as he bludgeoned, strangled, or cut them.

Delving into the harrowing true story behind the Milwaukee cannibal, this thrilling true-crime book explores the life and crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer in unparalleled gritty detail. With a gut-churning account of Dahmer’s killings, along with the twisted mind that drove him to commit his sick crimes, Jeffrey Dahmer: The Terrifying Story of the Milwaukee Cannibal offers listeners a detailed glimpse into Dahmer’s morbid and sadistic psyche.

Schoolteacher Olivia Dare Christian was murdered in her Hampton, Virginia, apartment in 1981. Her killer left few clues and the murder went unsolved. Three decades later, in 2011, next-generation detective Randy Mayer re-opened Olivia's dusty cold case file and began unraveling the mystery. Mayer located a reluctant witness who was a teenager back in 1981. She recalled a suspicious man lurking outside Olivia's apartment the morning of the murder and provided a detailed description of the man.

We accompany him on the Journey Into Darkness that marks every case he examines; every instance in which he helps police identify the unknown perpetrator of a violent series of rapes, kidnappings, or murders through his remarkable criminal personality profiling.

To his neighbors, Wayne Nance, a furniture mover from Missoula, Montana, appeared to be an affable, considerate, and trustworthy guy. No one knew that Nance was the "Missoula Mauler," a psychopath responsible for a series of sadistic sex slayings that rocked the idyllic town between 1974 and 1986. Nance's only requirement for murder was accessibility - a preacher's wife, a teenage runaway, a female acquaintance, a married couple. Putting on a friendly façade, he could easily gain his victims' trust. Then, one September night, thirty-year-old Nance pushed his luck.

Eighty thousand words, 100 serial killers, 100 short stories - but thousands of victims. I've selected at random 100 from A to Z. For many beginner true-crime fans, this will give you just enough taste to each story that, if you want to find out more about a particular serial killer, you can search for related books.

United States of True Crime is an anthology series with books devoted to the most disturbing cases in each of the 50 states. This book focuses on 10 of the most chilling crimes in Alabama history. True crime junkies may recognize some of the highly publicized cases, but I’ve made sure to include lesser-known, equally unsettling crimes. If you’re a true crime enthusiast who enjoys hearing about some of the most depraved monsters in our country, you will love United States of True Crime.

When Delia Balmer entered into a relationship with the attentive John Sweeney, she had no idea he was a serial killer. At first he was caring but over the course of their relationship he became violent and controlling. On more than one occasion he held Delia hostage and tortured her. Chillingly, he also confessed to the murder of his previous girlfriend. This is her compelling memoir.

Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, and lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films.

Vampire Killer is a gripping account of Richard Chase and one of the most gruesome true crime stories in California’s history. Ryan Green’s riveting narrative draws the listener into the real-life horror experienced by the victims and has all the elements of a classic thriller.

We may not always see what truly hides within the minds and hearts of certain people, and where we believe is a good, pure individual, lays a terrible murderer capable of the most horrible acts. Robert Berdella was one such man, a helpful and friendly individual who - in a spree separated by a few years - managed to capture and horrifically torture seven young men, murdering six along the way. Control and dominance were his tools, pain was his method.

Born on a dying farm and soon abandoned by his father, Carl Panzram's life was bleak from the start. While other children played and went to school, he toiled away on his family's land, the threat of brutal punishment always looming over his head. Yet, instead of shaping him into the meek, obedient boy his family wanted, Panzram grew meaner with each passing year. His first arrest happened before he had even turned 10.

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.

Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma.

When Chris Bryson was discovered nude and severely beaten stumbling down Charlotte Street in Kansas City in 1988, police had no idea they were about to discover the den of one of the most sadistic American serial killers in recent history. This is the true story of Robert Berdella, nicknamed by the media the Kansas City Butcher, who from between 1984 and 1988 brutally raped, tortured, and ultimately dismembered six young male prostitutes in his unassuming home on a quiet street in Kansas City.

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.

Widowed Blanche Taylor Moore was about to lose her second spouse to symptoms that mysteriously mirrored those that killed her first husband—as well as her previous boyfriend. When an investigation reveals arsenic poisoning, the hideous truth about the wife and mother comes to light. Did the abuse Blanche suffered as a child at the hands of her alcoholic father turn her into a murderer she became?

Four children were abducted and murdered outside of Detroit during the winters of 1976 and 1977; their bodies eventually dumped in snow banks around the city. J. Reuben Appelman was six years old at the time the murders began and had evaded an abduction attempt during that same period, fueling a lifelong obsession with what became known as the Oakland County Child Killings. There were few credible leads and equally few credible suspects. That's what the cops had passed down to the press, and that's what the city of Detroit and J. Reuben Appelman had come to believe.

There was no pattern to the murders, no common thread other than the fact that the victims were all vacationers, robbed of their possessions, and slain in seemingly random crimes. Authorities across three continents and a dozen nations had no idea they were all looking for the same man: Charles Sobhraj, aka "The Serpent". A handsome Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian origin, Sobhraj targeted backpackers on the "hippie trail" between Europe and South Asia. A master of deception, he used his powerful intellect and considerable sex appeal to lure naive travelers into a life of crime.