True Crime Girls

In the fall of 2010, in the all-American town of Apple Valley, Ohio, four people disappeared without a trace: Stephanie Sprang; her friend, Tina Maynard; and Tina's two children, 13-year-old Sarah and 11-year-old Kody. Investigators began scouring the area, yet despite an extensive search, no signs of the missing people were discovered.

Captured in the 1930s before the words psychopath and pedophile were part of common vernacular, notorious serial killer Arnold Sodeman murdered four young girls with little thought of remorse. Without guilt, the evil serial killer strangled them to death with their own clothing and left their small bodies alone in the Australian brush, earning himself a chilling position in the annals of Australian crime.

Mrs. Grace Humiston was an amazing lawyer and a traveling detective during a time when no women were practicing those professions. She focused on solving cases no one else wanted and advocating for innocents. One of her greatest accomplishments was solving the cold case of a missing 18-year-old girl, Ruth Cruger. Her work changed how the country viewed the problem of missing girls, but it came with a price: she learned all too well what happens when one woman upstages the entire NYPD.

In the fall of 1978, teenager Theresa Allore went missing near Sherbrooke, Quebec. She wasn't seen again until the spring thaw revealed her body in a creek only a few kilometers away. Shrugging off her death as a result of 1970s drug culture, police didn't investigate. Patricia Pearson started dating Theresa's brother, John, during the aftermath of Theresa's death. Though the two teens would go their separate ways, the family's grief, obsession with justice, and desire for the truth never left Patricia.

Was a hacker diverting phone calls meant for Las Vegas escort services? The FBI wanted to know, and so did associates of a New York Mafia family. In one of the most unusual undercover operations ever, the FBI had an agent acting as a manager in a real Las Vegas escort service. Federal agents expected to find prostitution and drugs in the Las Vegas escort industry. What their investigation uncovered was even more serious.

Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games. Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears—the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.

Four young women were murdered in the nation’s capital between 1929 and 1935. Their deaths had no connection to each other. Each woman was different. Each murder, though violent and brutal, was unlike the other three women. Other than the fact that all four women were young and beautiful with active love lives, they had little in common until they were murdered, and their cases remained unsolved to this day.

On May 31, 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier’s violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called “Slenderman”. Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case.

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah’s and her assailant’s lives.

Jodie Evelyn can't think of a better place for a fresh start than the exclusive gated community of The Grove. But from the moment she passes through the wrought iron gates, she starts to suspect she's made a mistake. Despite her vow to keep apart from the other residents, Jodie can't help but feel drawn to her unnerving neighbour Norah Williams and terminally ill daughter, Lacey. Jodie knows she should stay away, but something draws her in.When a murder shocks The Grove, Jodie vows to do everything in her power to save Lacey from her mother.

The facts are brutally straightforward. On December 6, 1991, the naked, bound and gagged bodies of four girls - each one shot in the head - were found in an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas. Grief, shock, and horror spread out from their families and friends to overtake the city itself. Though all branches of law enforcement were brought to bear, the investigation was often misdirected, and after eight years only two men (then teenagers) were tried.

The sound of snapping twigs closed in on the five teenagers enjoying an evening around a glowing campfire at Gitchie Manitou State Park. The night of music and laughter had taken a dark turn. Evil loomed just beyond the tree line, and before the night was over, one of the Midwest's most horrific mass murders had left its bloodstains spewed across the campsite. One managed to survive and would come to be known as the "Gitchie Girl".

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.

The nation wept when news broke of nearly three-year-old Caylee Anthony's disappearance from her home in Florida in July 2007. The search for Caylee made front-page headlines. But Casey Anthony continued to lie to law enforcement about her daughter's whereabouts, complicating their search for the truth.

'The only way to comprehend this tragic story of mine is to write it.' On the 10th of February 2017, there was a sentencing hearing for murder in the Victorian Supreme Court. The young woman in the dock, who sat quietly with her hands in her lap, had perfect skin and light-brown hair tied back as neatly as a private school prefect's. When the judge asked her to confirm her plea, the young woman answered in a clear and polite voice. 'Guilty, Your Honour.' That killer is Mary K. Pershall's beloved daughter, Anna.

On Thursday 9th October, Michelle Hadaway's worst fears came true. After watching her daughter Karen playing in the neighbour's garden with her best friend Nicola, Michelle returned to cook dinner for her family. Unbeknownst to her, this would be the last time she would ever see Karen alive. In the following days and months, shocking details would come to light about the nature of Karen and Nicola's murders, and the case which had come to be known as 'the Babes in the Wood murders' would lead to one of the most infamous and cruellest miscarriages of justice in British history.

A shattering, utterly immersive work of investigative journalism, The Good Girls slips behind political maneuvering, caste systems and codes of honour in a village in northern India to tell the real story behind the tragic deaths of two teenage girls and an epidemic of violence against women.

The crime stunned quiet Mineral Wells, Texas: 49-year-old Bob Dow shot execution-style in his own bed, his invalid mother locked in the next room - and a cache of homemade porn, starring the town's underage girls. The two accused killers - teen lovers Bobbi Jo Smith and Jennifer Jones - were on the run, intent on going out in a cross-country blaze of glory.

In 1901 Evelyn Nesbit, a chorus girl, dined alone with the architect Stanford White in his townhouse on 24th Street in New York. Nesbit, just 16 years old, had recently moved to the city. White was 47. As the foremost architect of his day, he was a celebrity. She told no one that White raped her that night until, several years later, she confided in Harry Thaw, the millionaire playboy who would later become her husband. Thaw, thirsting for revenge, shot and killed White in 1906 before hundreds of theatergoers during a performance in Madison Square Garden.

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.