True Crime Memoir

Married for 26 years, Jose and Kitty Menendez appeared to be a happy couple and proud parents. Twenty-one-year-old Lyle Menendez was enrolled at Princeton, where he was a star on the tennis team. Eighteen-year-old Erik Menendez had just graduated from Beverly Hills High and was about to start college at UCLA. The Menendezes appeared to be living the American dream. But it was all a façade.

Sont-elles pires que les hommes ? L'univers des tueurs en série, et tout le fantasme qui entoure ces êtres capables des actes les plus barbares, attire et interroge. Le nombre de séries, de films, de documentaires, de programmes de télévision comme "Faites entrer l'accusé" ou "Snapped", et de livres basés sur ces affaires plus que macabres le montrent. Mais en dépit de cet engouement médiatique, il y a très peu d'ouvrages consacrés aux tueuses en série. Pourtant ces femmes multi-criminelles existent. Un peu moins nombreuses, certes, mais tout aussi tordues que les hommes !

Longtime ATF agent Ken Croke had earned the right to coast to the end of a storied career, having routinely gone undercover to apprehend white supremacists, gun runners, and gang members. But after a chance encounter with an associate of the Pagan Motorcycle Gang created an opening, he transformed himself into “Slam,” a monstrous, axe-handle wielding enforcer whose duty was to protect the leadership “mother club” at all costs.

The Hunt is a chilling account of Robert Hansen's reign of terror. It delves deep into the psyche of a serial killer and captures the reality of his monstrous acts. Ryan Green provides a suspenseful narrative that draws the listener into the real-life horror experienced by the victims with all the elements of a captivating thriller.

Le destin du plus puissant des gangs criminels canadiens actuels s’est joué dans le dernier quart du 20e siècle, de 1980 à 2000. En vingt ans à peine, une bande de jeunes délinquants jadis désargentés, brutaux et asociaux, liés par leur amour de la Harley-Davidson et par leur quête de sensations fortes, ont fini par conquérir les sommets du crime organisé québécois, voire canadien. Il s’agit d’un fait unique dans l’histoire des pègres occidentales.

On a clear autumn morning in 2004, Rachel O'Reilly, a 30-year-old mother of two, was brutally battered to death in her home. It was a merciless killing that stunned the small, trusting community where she lived and devastated her close-knit family. In the days that followed the discovery of her body, it was thought that Rachel was the victim of a bungled robbery attempt. It soon emerged, however, that police investigating the case believed Rachel had known her killer and that her murder had been carefully planned months in advance.

Will Sandeson seemed like a model son. A member of the Dalhousie University track and field team, he was about to start classes at Dalhousie’s medical school. He worked at a group home for adults with disabilities. He came from a good family. “There’s times for whatever reason that things don’t go quite as planned,” a Halifax police officer told Sandeson shortly after he was arrested for the first-degree murder of Taylor Samson, who also, on the surface, seemed like a model son.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas author Hunter S. Thompson rocked the literary world with his mind-bending style of Gonzo journalism. First published in 1966, Hell’s Angels is Thompson’s up-close and personal look at the infamous motorcycle gang during the time when its moniker was most feared.

Brazen impostors, unscrupulous fortune tellers and cunning con artists - True Crime success author Adrian Langenscheid tells of the craziest, most bizarre, unbelievable incidents in history. Of true destinies and perpetrators, driven by the greed for money and power. Cases written by life that leave the listener at times stunned, at times laughing, and then, again, shaking their heads.

The Phantom Prince chronicles Elizabeth Kendall’s intimate relationship with Ted Bundy and its eventual unraveling. As much as has been written about Bundy, it’s remarkable to hear the perspective of people who shared their daily lives with him for years. This gripping account presents a remarkable examination of a charismatic personality that masked unimaginable darkness.

American serial killer Edmund Kemper III stalked co-eds in California at the height of the era of peace and free love, dismembering his victims and tossing their body parts in remote areas around Santa Cruz. As pieces of young women began washing up on shore and turning up alongside rural highways, female residents - especially college students - were decidedly on edge. A lust killer who savored the act of decapitating his victims - and often used their severed heads for sexual pleasure - Kemper's story is particularly twisted among historical serial killers.

While some of these cases are sure to tickle the memory of any true crime enthusiast, some might just be new to you. One thing all these cold cases have in common is that they’ve finally been solved, some with incredibly shocking outcomes.

In The Killer Across the Table, John E. Douglas, the legendary FBI criminal profiler, number one New York Times best-selling author, and inspiration for Netflix’s Mindhunter, delves deep into the lives and crimes of four of the most disturbing and complex predatory killers, offering never-before-revealed details about his profiling process and divulging the strategies used to help crack some of America’s most challenging cases.

To this day, the LAPD, Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, mainstream media, and much of the world at large remain firmly convinced that O. J. Simpson literally got away with murder. According to private investigator William Dear, it is precisely this assuredness that has led both the police and public to overlook a far more likely suspect. Dear now compiles more than 16 years of investigation by his team of forensic experts and presents evidence that O. J. was not the killer.

Even in Chicago, a city steeped in mob history and legend, the Family Secrets case was a true spectacle when it made it to court in 2007. A top mob boss, a reputed consigliere, and other high-profile members of the Chicago Outfit were accused in a total of 18 gangland killings, revealing organized crime's ruthless grip on the city throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Painting a vivid picture of murder, courtroom drama, family loyalties and disloyalties, journalist Jeff Coen accurately portrays the Chicago Outfit's cold-blooded killers.

American Pain chronicles the rise and fall of this game-changing pill mill and how it helped tip the nation into its current opioid crisis. The narrative, which swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, is populated by a diverse cast of characters.

James Dommek, Jr., an Alaska Native writer and musician, sheds new light on a real-life mystery that pits Native American folklore against the US justice system. In the vast Alaskan Arctic, legend has it there once lived a mythic tribe—Iñukuns—that only existed in rumors and whispers. This changed forever when an actor-turned-fugitive, Teddy Kyle Smith, had an encounter that brought Iñukuns from myth to reality. Smith was an aspiring actor with a promising career until it all came quickly crashing down with a gunshot, a manhunt, bloodshed, and other frightful events.

Martin Scorcese’s The Departed barely touched his story, but radio talk show sensation, crime reporter, and Boston Herald columnist, Howie Carr, takes us into the heart of the life of Johnny Martorano. For two decades Martorano struck fear into anyone remotely connected to his world. His partnership with Whitey Bulger and the infamous Winter Hill Gang led to 20 murders for which Johnny would serve only 12 years in prison.

It’s a chilling reality that homicide investigators know all too well: The last face most murder victims see is not that of a stranger, but of someone familiar. Whether only an acquaintance or a trusted intimate, such killers share a common trait that triggers the downward spiral toward death for someone close to them: They are masters at hiding who they really are. Their clever masks let them appear safe, kind, and truthful. They are anything but - and almost no one can detect the murderous impulses buried deep in their psyches.

Ten years after the school massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, school shootings are a new and alarming epidemic. While sociologists have attributed the trigger of violence to peer pressure, such as bullying and social isolation, prominent psychologist Peter Langman, argues here that psychological causes are responsible. Drawing on 20 years of clinical experience, Langman offers surprising reasons for why some teens become violent. Langman divides shooters into three categories, and he discusses the role of personality, trauma, and psychosis among school shooters.