True Crime Kidnapping

More than 200 stories of killers, con artists, master thieves, and brazen kidnappers—and strong survivors, detectives, forensic breakthroughs, and legal minds on all sides of the action. In other words, a mini-encyclopedia perfect for newcomers and hard-core crime fans alike. Here are the big names—Bundy, Manson, Berkowitz, Borden, and the Black Dahlia. The lingering mysteries—like JonBenet Ramsey and Natalie Wood. The disturbing puzzle of the Zodiac Killer. The true story behind the most lurid headline ever: “Headless Body in the Topless Bar.” And more.

These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks. These are the missing whose situations are the hardest on loved ones left behind. The cases that are an embarrassment for park superintendents, rangers, and law enforcement charged with Search & Rescue.

It’s a freezing winter’s night in 1954. A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside. After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.

Loni Ann, Cynthia, Lauren, Cheryl, and Sara seemed to have it all - beauty, wealth, children, and a husband who they believed to be this perfect man - Brad Cunningham. He was handsome, charismatic, and mysterious. They adored him and tried to give him all he wanted. But he wanted everything: sex, money, and it seemed, their very lives. How long would it take before he finally got what he deserved?

College student Lauren Spierer was pursuing her dreams, joining her boyfriend at a party school eight hundred miles from home. Social and gregarious, studying fashion and rooming with friends, Lauren embraced her new adventure with the zeal of a young woman who suddenly had everything she desired. But there was a dark side that she and her inner circle kept secret. And one warm June evening, after heading out with friends, she seemingly vanished.

At ten months old, Holly Marie was brought to the door of a church by three barefoot women in white robes and head coverings. Adopted by the pastor and raised in a loving Christian home, Holly nevertheless struggled with the ache of not knowing what had happened to her biological parents. She still felt their absence even as she married and started a family of her own. When two detectives showed up at the restaurant where she worked and informed her that she had a large family in Florida who had been searching for her for over 40 years, Holly’s past became the reality of her present.

Lucie Blackman - tall, blond, 21 years old - stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo in the summer of 2000 and disappeared. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. The seven months in between had seen a massive search for the missing girl involving Japanese policemen, British private detectives, and Lucie’s desperate but bitterly divided parents. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult or snatched by human traffickers? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? And what did her work as a hostess in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo really involve?

As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown. But in the winter of 1978-79, he became known as one of many so-called “sex murderers” who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s.

In December 1919, Ambrose Small, the mercurial owner of the Grand Opera House in Toronto, closed a deal to sell his network of Ontario theatres, deposited a million-dollar cheque in his bank account, and was never seen again. As weeks turned to years, the disappearance became the most "extraordinary unsolved mystery" of its time.

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.

Verte Regresar cuenta dos historias paralelas: por un lado, la desgracia de una trágica noche en la que el crimen organizado y elementos del Ejército Mexicano, desaparecieron de manera forzada a 43 estudiantes de la Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa que estudiaban para ser maestros. Por el otro, se entrelaza la vida íntima de estos jóvenes para conocer su origen y sus sueños. Se trata de un ejercicio estético y testimonial que parte desde la ausencia para ir hacia el reencuentro, que se sumerge en la incertidumbre para resignificar la esperanza.

When police in Rexburg, Idaho perform a wellness check on seven-year-old J.J. Vallow and his sister, sixteen-year-old Tylee Ryan, both children are nowhere to be found. Their mother, Lori Vallow, gives a phony explanation, and when officers return the following day with a search warrant, she, too, is gone. As the police begin to close in, a larger web of mystery, murder, fanaticism and deceit begins to unravel. Vallow’s case is sinuously complex. As investigators prod further, they find the accused Black Widow has an unusual number of bodies piling up around her.

"Nous étions six – cinq garçons et une fille – insouciants, frivoles, joyeux, dans un été de tous les possibles. Pourquoi a-t-il fallu que l'un d'entre nous disparaisse ?" S'inspirant d'une histoire vécue, Philippe Besson retrace un drame de sa jeunesse, survenu dans l'île de Ré, un soir de juillet, au milieu des années 80.

In March 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn awoke from a sound sleep into a nightmare. Armed men bound and drugged them, then abducted Denise. Warned not to call the police or Denise would be killed, Aaron agonized about what to do. Finally he put his trust in law enforcement and dialed 911. But instead of searching for Denise, the police accused Aaron of her murder. His story, they told him, was just unbelievable. When Denise was released alive, the police turned their fire on her, dubbing her the “real-life ‘Gone Girl’” who had faked her own kidnapping.

What would you do if your son suddenly disappeared in Syria, and you had no idea what had happened to him? Would you contact the FBI? The State Department? Pray? Would you Google “What to do if your son disappears in Syria”? When the unthinkable happened, the answer, in the case of Ann Goodwin and her husband Tag, was: all of the above. Their 30-year-old son Sam, who was attempting to become one of the few people in history to travel to every single country on the planet, vanished in a supposed safe-zone run by the Kurds on the Turkish border.

Casper, Wyoming: 1973. Eleven-year-old Amy Burridge rides with her 18-year-old sister, Becky, to the grocery store. When they finish their shopping, Becky's car gets a flat tire. Two men politely offer them a ride home. Yet they were anything but good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes at the hands of these men before being thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived; the other did not.

Revelatory investigation into the police handling of the Yorkshire Ripper Case which spanned over 14 years. For the first time, the files have been opened, the detectives are talking and the victims are reliving the nightmare. For almost 20 years the dark secrets of the biggest criminal manhunt in British history have remained a closed book.

La crónica de un secuestro real magistralmente retratado por Gabriel García Márquez. "Era, en efecto, el automóvil de Maruja. Había transcurrido por lo menos media hora desde el secuestro, y sólo quedaban los rastros: el cristal del lado del chofer destruido por un balazo, la mancha de sangre y el granizo del vidrio en el asiento, y la sombra húmeda en el asfalto, de donde acababan de llevarse al chofer todavía con vida. El resto estaba limpio y en orden."

In the summer of ’84, fourteen-year-old Frankie Jubilee is shuttled off to Litani, Minnesota, to live with her estranged mother, a county prosecutor she barely knows. From the start, Frankie senses something uneasy going on in the small town. The locals whisper about The Game, and her mother warns her to stay out of the woods and away from adults. When a bullying gang of girls invites Frankie to The Game, she accepts, determined to find out what’s really going on in Litani. She’s not the only one becoming paranoid. Hysteria burns through the community. Dark secrets emerge.

They’re known as the bebés robados, or “stolen babies”–children stolen at birth from their mothers and sold to wealthy families around Spain. For decades, European reporters and activists have tried to penetrate the secretive networks responsible for the crimes, typically with little success. Until now. In The Lost, veteran journalists Matteo Fagotto and Matilde Gattoni investigate the story of a woman named Ana Belén Pintado, a middle-aged woman from a small village in Central Spain.