True Crime Girls

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.

A través de testimonios escalofriantes y conmovedores, las autoras de este libro ofrecen explicaciones contundentes para entender por qué nuestros niños y niñas se vuelven criminales ante la indiferencia social, corrupción policiaca y la intolerancia del gobierno. Más aún se detalla la incompetencia de las autoridades, los vacíos legales y la incapacidad de las instituciones para ofrecer a estos adolescentes opciones para alejarse del delito, la drogadicción, las relaciones violentas o evitar la puerte por defender -o estar en contra- algún cártel.

What can drive a young and seemingly innocent child to kill? Murder is horrible enough when perpetrated by adults, and yet the concept takes on a whole new level of chilling morbidity when a murderer is revealed to be a young boy or girl. Is it the result of severe trauma manifesting itself in the most macabre of ways? Is it the progeny of some severe mental disorder? Or were they influenced by the actions of the people they grew up with? Most of the time, the answers to such a question are simple but no less horrific.

Teacher and former rugby league player Chris Dawson appeared to have it all - a loving family and a beautiful home in Sydney's Northern Beaches. But in the summer of 1982 his wife Lynette disappeared and not long afterwards Dawson married a much younger woman, a former student. Less than a decade later this young woman escaped the marriage and went to the police to record her suspicions that Dawson had been involved in Lynette's disappearance. A homicide investigation followed but got nowhere until 1998, when Detective Sergeant Damian Loone was handed Lynette's file.

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.

In the early evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For 13 years, no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders", though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward.

The lone survivor trembled as she pleaded with investigators.... For over 40 years, the events of what happened at Gitchie Manitou the night of November 17, 1973, remained a mystery to all but a few. Then the lone survivor broke her silence. Five teenage friends had driven to the park to spend a few hours around a campfire. By morning, four had been murdered, and only she was still alive. Gitchie Girl Uncovered is a chilling account of the strange twists and bizarre details discovered by an elite team of investigators under intense pressure to catch the killers.

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.

Deborah Larkin was only ten years old when the quiet calm of her California suburb was shattered. Thirty miles north, on a quiet November night in Santa Barbara, a pregnant nurse named Olga Duncan disappeared from her apartment. The mystery deepens when it is discovered that Olga’s mother-in-law—a deeply manipulative and deceptive woman—had been doing everything in her power to separate Olga and her son, Frank, prior to Olga’s disappearance.

For over two decades the identity of Melissa Witt's murderer has been hidden among the dense trees and thorny undergrowth rooted deeply in the uneven ground of a remote mountaintop in the Ozark National Forest. Determined to find answers, LaDonna Humphrey has spent the past seven years hunting for Melissa's killer. Her investigation, both thrilling and unpredictable, has led her on a journey like no other.

Chicago, 1924. There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second City. Life was cheaper than a quart of illicit gin in the gangland capital of the world. But two murders that spring were special - worthy of celebration. So believed Maurine Watkins, a wanna-be playwright and a "girl reporter" for the Chicago Tribune, the city's "hanging paper".

In May 2005, authorities discovered the Groene family murdered in their Idaho home. The family’s youngest members—eight-year-old Shasta and her brother, nine-year-old Dylan—were nowhere to be found. As a community prayed for their return, Shasta and Dylan were already miles away in the woods of Montana at the hands of serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan. After a harrowing forty-eight day ordeal, Shasta was rescued. In many ways, her survival story was only beginning.

On July 28, 1841, the body of Mary Rogers, a twenty-year-old cigar girl, was found floating in the Hudson-and New York's unregulated police force proved incapable of solving the crime. One year later, a struggling writer named Edgar Allan Poe decided to take on the case-and sent his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to solve the baffling murder of Mary Rogers in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt."

On December 30, 1999, in rural Oklahoma, 16-year-old Ashley Freeman and her best friend, Lauria Bible, were having a sleepover. The next morning, the Freeman family trailer was in flames and both girls were missing. While rumors of drug debts, revenge, and police collusion abounded in the years that followed, the case remained unsolved, and the girls were never found.

Shattered Justice, bearing the title chosen by Paul Smith (Sheriff of Mayes County, OK, from 1981 to 1985), describes Smith’s squelched efforts to get justice for three little Girl Scouts murdered deep in the woods just outside Locust Grove, OK, on June 13, 1977. Lori Farmer, 8, Doris “Denise” Milner, 10, and Michelle Gusé, 9, were bludgeoned and strangled while sharing a tent during their first night of summer camp.

Mary "Mae" Foley was a force to be reckoned with. On one hip she held her makeup compact, on the other, her NYPD badge. When women were fighting for the vote, Mae was fighting crime in the heart of New York City—taking down rapists, bootleggers, Nazis, and serial killers. One of the first women to be sworn into the police force, Mae not only fought crime in the city that never sleeps, but also did something much bigger—challenged the patriarchal systems that continually tried to shut her and other women down.

Mord ist schon schrecklich genug, wenn er von Erwachsenen begangen wird, doch das Konzept erreicht eine völlig neue Ebene erschütternder Morbidität, wenn sich herausstellt, dass der Mörder ein junger Junge oder ein junges Mädchen ist. Ist es das Ergebnis schwerer Traumata, die sich auf die makaberste Art und Weise manifestieren? Ist es die Folge einer schweren psychischen Störung? Oder wurden sie von den Handlungen der Menschen beeinflusst, bei denen sie aufwuchsen?

Former stripper-turned-suburban-housewife Marjorie Orbin filed a missing person's report on her husband. She claimed that Jay, a successful art dealer, had left town on business after celebrating their son's birthday more than a month before. Jay loved his family more than life itself - and no one believed he would ever abandon them. Authorities suspected foul play

Chelsea King was a popular high school senior, an outstanding achiever determined to make a difference. Fourteen-year-old Amber Dubois loved books and poured her heart into the animals for which she cared. Treasured by their families and friends, both girls disappeared in San Diego County, just eight miles and one year apart. The community's desperate search led authorities to John Albert Gardner, a brutal predator hiding in plain sight. Now Pulitzer-nominated author Caitlin Rother delivers an incisive, heartbreaking true-life thriller that touches our deepest fears.

The moving true story of a little girl with Asperger syndrome, controlled and abused by the one person she called her friend. Taylor had always struggled to make friends - she felt 'different'. Taylor never knew her father, and her mother wasn't around much. She just didn't understand people and was alone and scared most of the time. That was until, aged just 11, an older married man called Tom befriended her. She loved having someone who would talk to her, listen to her - a protector. But when he moved away a few months later, she was easy prey.