True Crime Memoir

Nothing could have shocked the sleepy community of Morgantown, West Virginia, more than the lurid details that surfaced after a house fire claimed the life of Shelly Michael's husband, Jimmy. Local authorities suspected possible arson. Then they discovered that Jimmy had been dead before the fire even started - paralyzed by a fatal dose of muscle relaxant.... Did Shelly Michael, a respected nurse and mother, kill her second husband and torch her own home?

At Jessica McCord's house, law enforcement officials found windows covered in blankets, a cache of weapons and ammunition, carpets torn up, new tile on the floors, and the couch missing. Then they learned about the nasty divorce and bitter custody battle that had landed Jessica in jail. Along with her new police officer husband, Jessica became the prime suspect in this brutal double murder.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

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.

On dit de lui qu’il est le virtuose de l’interrogatoire, et pour cause : Jacques Landry en a mené plus de 12 000, d’abord à titre d’en—quêteur de la Sûreté du Québec, où il a travaillé pendant 25 ans, ensuite comme polygraphiste privé. En un demi-siècle de tête-à tête avec des possibles meurtriers, violeurs, voleurs ou fraudeurs, Jacques Landry a peaufiné une méthode qui fait désormais école et qui a permis de résoudre bien des crimes, non seulement au Québec mais ailleurs dans le monde.

The true story of an abused childhood, of shocking brutality and life as the daughter of notorious serial killer and master manipulator Rose West. You're 21 years old. Police arrive on the doorstep of your house, 25 Cromwell Street, with a warrant to search the garden for the remains of your older sister you didn't know was dead. Bones are found, and they are from more than one body. And so the nightmare begins. You are the daughter of Fred and Rose West.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 50 years, you're aware of the many hypotheses that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was not done by one man. Whether you've listened to one or a dozen of the audiobooks on this topic, there's no way to fully grasp the depth of this conspiracy. For the first time ever, New York Times best-selling authors Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell have teamed up with some of the most respected and influential assassination researchers to put together the ultimate compendium that covers every angle - from the plot to the murder - of JFK.

In 1981, ambitious young Ma Anand Sheela transported the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the United States to fulfill his dream of creating a utopia for his thousands of disciples. Four years later, the incendiary Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon collapsed under the weight of audacious criminal conspiracies hatched in its inner sanctum, including the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, an unprecedented election fraud scheme, and multiple attempted murders. Rajneeshpuram explores how this extraordinary spiritual community went so wrong.

A vain man of good looks, small means, and no family links to the mob, Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano steadily worked his way up to acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, becoming its leader when official boss Joseph Massino went to the clink in 2003. But at a time when the Mob was crawling with secret operatives and informants caving to government pressure to flip, Basciano obeyed the code of La Cosa Nostra. "I got faith in one guy," he told a group of mobsters during a secretly taped meeting.

Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of 31 men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue-collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community.

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

The Black Mafia is one of the bloodiest crime syndicates in modern US history. From its roots in Philadelphia's ghettos in the 1960s, it grew from a rabble of street toughs to a disciplined, ruthless organization based on fear and intimidation. Known in its "legitimate" guise as Black Brothers Inc, it held regular meetings, appointed investigators, treasurers and enforcers, and controlled drug dealing, loan-sharking, numbers rackets, armed robbery, and extortion.

The stories in this audiobook represent humanity at its absolute worst. Pure evil. In my audiobooks, however, I don’t leave out the details. In my audiobooks, I include details not to shock, but to give the listener a deeper look into the twisted mind of the killer. In the end, it’s unlikely any of us will understand the motives of the criminals in these audiobooks, but the level of depravity will at least keep you resisting the pause button. Volume six of True Crime Case Histories features 12 new stories from the past several decades.

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.

As a string of high-profile jewel thefts went unsolved during the Swinging Sixties, the press dubbed the elusive thief the King of Diamonds. Like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, the King was so bold that he tip-toed into the homes of millionaires while they were home, hiding in their closets and daring to smoke while they were sleeping. Rena Pederson, then a young reporter with UPI, started following the elusive thief while she managed the night desk. With gymnastic skill, he climbed trees and crawled across rooftops to take jewels from heiresses, oil kings, corporate CEOs.

A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer - the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade - from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

A young woman leaves a party with a wealthy US senator. The next morning her body is discovered in his car at the bottom of a pond. This is the damning true story of the death of campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and of the senator - a 37-year-old Senator Ted Kennedy - who left her trapped underwater while he returned to his hotel, slept, and made phone calls to associates. Leo Damore's 1988 national best seller, originally entitled Senatorial Privilege, almost didn't make it into print after its original publisher, Random House, judged it too explosive....

Getting shot in the chest as a rookie ATF agent, bartering for machine guns, throttling down the highway at 100 miles per hour, and responding to a full-scale, bloody riot between the Hells Angels and their rivals, the Mongols - these are just a few of the high-adrenaline experiences Jay Dobyns recounts in this action-packed, hard to imagine, but true story of how he infiltrated the legendary Hells Angels.

As a premier antiques dealer in Savannah, Jim Williams had it all: style, culture, charisma, and sophistication. But three decades of hard work came crashing down the night he shot Danny Hansford, his wild young lover. Jim Williams stood trial four times over the next decade for premeditated murder. While Clint Eastwood's movie - starring Kevin Spacey and Jude Law - and the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt portrayed the natives of Savannah as remarkably decadent, exotic characters, they missed the surprising dark side of Jim Williams himself.