True Con Artist

Where does a moderately popular internet star who never leaves her house look for potential suitors? Online. Tinder, Bumble, Match.com, OkCupid - I tried them all. My 31-year-old self clicked and swiped her little heart out, leading to more dates than I could count, and more disappointment than I was prepared for. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you know all too well the perils of modern dating.

En 2019, le premier livre d'Adrian Langenscheid, True Crime Deutschland (True crime Allemagne), s'est hissé à partir de rien à la première place du podium dans les catégories correspondantes au genre. Près de 4 ans et quelques livres plus tard, Langenscheid est l'un des auteurs du genre True crime les plus connus en Allemagne. Pour le septième ouvrage de sa série à succès, l'auteur a effectué des recherches sur certaines des affaires criminelles allemandes les plus spectaculaires de ces dernières décennies.

One wintery night on tiny, quiet Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington, Russ Douglas spent Christmas with his estranged wife, Brenna. He left Brenna Douglas's home in Langley on the morning of December 26, 2003 to run some errands. He didn't return - dead of gunshot to the head. The suspects included an aging beauty queen, her guitar-teacher lover, and Russell's widow, Brenna. With her trademark aplomb, Ann Rule unravels the fascinating story of a murder, a small town, and a number of potential killers.

When Nancy Cooper moved from Canada to Cary, North Carolina, with her new husband Brad, their future was bright. Living in one of the most picturesque towns in the United States, the couple mingled with neighbors, attended parties, and raised two daughters. Then, on July 14, 2008, the façade came crashing down when Nancy's strangled body was found in a storm pond. Nancy's husband claimed that she had gone for a jog and never come back.

When Ghana achieved independence from Britain in 1957, it instantly became a target for home-grown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to claim whatever assets colonialism hadn’t already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the new nation’s inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the country’s gold overseas. Into this big lie stepped one of history’s most charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi.

David Miller had a dream job and a beautiful family. But one perfect life wasn't enough. So he pretended to be an attorney, then a CIA agent. And he secretly married another woman. He juggled it all quite well—until the day his two wives found out about each other. Miller groped for ways to hold on to his finances and reputation. But when he tried using a gun to silence his second wife, his carefully constructed façade of power and wealth exploded.

When she was 15, Jennifer Mee developed an unrelenting case of the hiccups - hiccupping as many as 50 times a minute for months. Soon the Florida teen's strange story went viral. Dubbed the "Hiccup Girl" by the media, she gained international sympathy and appeared on a slew of popular TV shows. Eventually Jennifer's hiccups went away, and so did her fame.

Rachel DeLoache Williams’ new friend Anna Delvey, a self-proclaimed German heiress, was worldly and ambitious. She was also generous - picking up the tab for lavish dinners at Le Coucou, infrared sauna sessions at HigherDOSE, drinks at the 11 Howard Library bar, and regular workout sessions with a celebrity personal trainer. When Anna proposed an all-expenses-paid trip to Marrakech at the five-star La Mamounia hotel, Rachel jumped at the chance. But when Anna’s credit cards mysteriously stopped working, the dream vacation quickly took a dark turn.

Some $65 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff’s epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme’s exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar’s dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren’t many innocents left standing by the end of this tale.

Texas millionaire Steven Beard, Jr. fell hard for Celeste Martinez, a waitress less than half his age. She served the seventy year old widow his nightly cocktail—along with sexual favors—at a country club in Austin. After they married, Steven gave her cars, homes, jewelry, and designer clothes. But Celeste wanted more. Claiming she had depression, Celeste checked into a psychiatric facility, where she met and seduced fellow patient Tracey Tarlton. Celeste soon convinced Tracey that the only way they could be together would be to kill Steve.

In July 1965, teenagers Sylvia and Jenny Likens were left in the temporary care of Gertrude Baniszewski, a middle-aged single mother, and her seven children. The Baniszewski household was overrun with children. There were few rules and ample freedom. Sadly, the environment created a dangerous hierarchy of social Darwinism where the strong preyed on the weak. What transpired in the following three months was both riveting and chilling.

By the time she was in her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she grew older, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her family—the only people she had in the world—began to unravel. She started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere.

From an award-winning New York Times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy, which left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man.

Twelve true crime stories of murder and mayhem. Fifth audiobook of the True Crime Case Histories Series (2020). When researching these stories, I commonly use actual police reports, court documents, and first-hand descriptions. Some of the details can be disconcerting. I do my best to not leave out any of the details in my audiobooks, no matter how depraved they may be. My intent is not to shock, but to show precisely how twisted the mind of a killer can be. The stories in this volume are shocking and disturbing, but they’re also true. These things really do happen in the world.

Run, Hide, Repeat is a memoir of a childhood steeped in unexplained fear and menace. Gripping and suspenseful, it moves from Dakin's uneasy acceptance of her family's dire situation to bewildered anger. As compelling and twisted as a thriller, Run Hide Repeat is an unforgettable portrait of a family under threat and the resilience of family bonds.

In some murder cases, the truth behind the most tragic of crimes crystallizes with relative ease. Not so with these fascinating accounts drawn from the personal files of Ann Rule. What happens when the case itself becomes an intractable puzzle, when clues are shrouded in smoke and mirrors, and when criminals skillfully evade law enforcement in a maddening cat-and-mouse chase? Even the most devoted true-crime listener won't predict the outcome of these truly baffling cases until the conclusions revealed in Ann Rule's marvelously insightful narrative.

When Bill Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth began their romance, they unknowingly set in motion a diabolical plot that would end with them murdered in their own home, Hayworth holding their mercifully unharmed infant. Chris was a CIA agent who was concerned about Jenelle. Seeing the cyberbullying she had endured, and worried for her safety, Chris got in touch with Jenelle's protective parents and her devoted boyfriend, warning them that Payne and Hayworth were a danger to Jenelle.

Gerard Lee Bevan was the black sheep of one of London's most respectable banking families. A high-living womanizer and upper-class shyster of almost pantomime proportions, he exploited a glittering range of social connections. After a long run of success in City dealings he perpetrated a massive fraud which ruined both the City Equitable Fire Insurance Company and his stockbroking firm, Ellis & Co. He fled the country and was eventually arrested, tried, and jailed.

In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr’s Broken Faith is a terrifying portrait life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.

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.