Serial Killers True Crime

For those who are in any way interested in the depths of human morality, the Wests represent some of the most depraved and sadistic murderers ever to have lived. Not only did they prey on unsuspecting young girls, but their attentions were even turned toward their own daughters. In a case involving kidnap, rape, and murder, Fred and Rose went beyond the realms of what many of us consider possible as people.

In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas, was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class.

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.

Whether venturing into a blood-spattered farm in Texas, down a lonely mountain road in Alabama, or into the deceptively sunny Ohio suburbs, acclaimed mystery writer Craig Rice lends her hard-boiled style and a wicked irony to this gallery of real-life murders. A saintly middle-aged widow bludgeoned to death in her New Jersey home; the headless torsos of two women found floating in the Lake of the Ozarks; a New Year’s fire in Pennsylvania set to cover the traces of a more ghastly crime; a traveling evangelist on a divine mission blown to bits in Berkeley....

Edward Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer—some have called him a “Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter”—whose crimes spanned decades and whose victims were chosen out of revenge, out of envy, and sometimes out of necessity.

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.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told.

After being released from jail, handsome and charming Paul John Knowles embarked on a gruesome joyride of kidnapping, rape, and murder across multiple state borders. As the manhunt gathered pace, the cold-blooded killing spree continued to defy detectives. How many more lives would be lost before the police finally caught up?

Five true crime authors come together to present the fourth annual Serial Killers True Crime Anthology which depicts several horrific cases of serial homicide told in detail. Each case will take the listener from the background of the serial killer, to the crime scene, investigation, trial, and sentencing. Warning: This book contains graphic forensic statements that some may find very disturbing.

Eighteen baffling true-crime cold cases—solved.

In The Murders That Made Us, the story of the San Francisco Bay Area unfolds through its most violent and depraved acts. From the city's earliest days, where vigilantes hung perps from buildings and newspaper publishers shot it out on Market Street, to the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and the Zodiac Killer, crime has made the people of San Francisco who they are. Murder and mayhem are intertwined with the city's art, music, and politics.

On the morning of July 1, 1800, a surveyor and mapmaker named Cayetano Diaz opened the window of his study in Guatemala City to find a horrific sight: a pair of severed breasts. Offering a meticulously researched and evocative account of the quest to find the perpetrator and understand the motives behind such a brutal act, this volume pinpoints the sensational crime as a watershed moment in Guatemalan history that radically changed the nature of justice and the established social order.

Organised thematically according to each killer's twisted passion, Faces of Evil chronicles the crimes of 20 of the most infamous – and less well-known – serial killers of the late 20th and early 21st-centuries, unpicking their means, motives and methods ... and attempting to understand what drove their horrific lust for murder.

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".

Randy Kraft was highly intelligent, politically active, loyal to his friends, committed to his work - and the killer of 67 people - more than any other serial killer known. This book offers a glimpse into the dark mind of a living monster.

En Australie, environ 38 000 personnes - des jeunes pour la moitié - sont portées disparues chaque année. 64 %, soit les deux tiers de ces dossiers, sont résolus dans les 24 heures. Néanmoins, une proportion non négligeable de ces hommes, femmes et enfants ne sont jamais retrouvés. Sans preuve claire de vie ou de mort, nous sommes dans l'incapacité de savoir ce qui leur est arrivé. Par ailleurs, un certain nombre de faits divers choquants - meurtres, agressions, enlèvements etc. - ont émaillé l'actualité australienne de ces quarante dernières années.

In the mid-1920s, young children began to vanish from neighborhoods around New York City. It took the police a decade to find their abductor, an unassuming 64-year-old handyman named Albert Fish. Fish had committed crimes of unspeakable horror: He had not only abducted and murdered the children, but also tortured and, in some cases, eaten them. During Fish's trial, some of the country's most prominent psychiatrists debated the exact nature of Fish's crimes. Was he evil or insane? Who had the power to determine where one ended and the other began?

Spanning murder cases from the beginning of the 20th century to today, this is a must-hear for fans of true crime and will also be compelling to mystery and thriller listeners. The contributors include Harold Schechter, Katherine Ramsland, Carol Anne Davis, Burl Barer, and other leading writers in this genre. Each of the 17 contributors draws on his or her own strengths, backgrounds, interests, and research skills to describe, in a vivid narrative, not only the facts of each notorious case but also the terrible emotions and macabre circumstances surrounding the crimes.

In 1967, during the time of peace, free love, and hitchhiking, 19-year-old Mary Terese Fleszar was last seen walking home to her apartment in Ypsilanti, Michigan. One month later, her naked body stabbed over 30 times and missing both feet and a forearm was discovered on an abandoned farm. A year later, the body of 20-year-old Joan Schell was found, similarly violated. Over the next two years, five more bodies of female students were uncovered around the area.

From true crime legend Ann Rules comes this riveting story of a young woman whose life ended too soon - and a determined mother’s crusade to clear her daughter’s name. Barb Thompson never for one moment believed her daughter committed suicide.