True Crime Serial Murders

Outside the dining hall of the Alpine Manor nursing home, there is a sign that reads, "This is Grand Rapids, Michigan", a reminder for those who can no longer trust their own minds. For months, Cathy Wood has fed these residents, bathed them, and even moistened their eyes with artificial tears. To her, they live in a state worse than death - and she has decided to relieve them of their pain. Wood and her lover, Gwen Graham, make a pact to kill those whom they were hired to care for.

Criminals reveal who they are and where they live not just from how they commit their crimes, but also from the locations they choose. This is the claim of renowned criminal psychologist and profiler David Canter. In this groundbreaking book, now fully revised and updated, Canter leads us into the labyrinthine psyche of serial killers, rapists, and other violent criminals, and reveals how geographical profiling is changing the way police work and our understanding of the criminal mind.

Spouse-killers, child-killers, and mindlessly brutal murderers all have their abhorrent crimes laid out in this book. You’ll read about Blake Leibel, who mercilessly tortured his girlfriend before killing her and draining her of her blood. I’ll tell you about the murder of Junko Furuta, which saw the teenage girl held hostage by her peers and tortured beyond belief before she succumbed to her injuries and died. The outcome of that case is as unbelievable as it is unjust.

Born on a dying farm and soon abandoned by his father, Carl Panzram's life was bleak from the start. While other children played and went to school, he toiled away on his family's land, the threat of brutal punishment always looming over his head. Yet, instead of shaping him into the meek, obedient boy his family wanted, Panzram grew meaner with each passing year. His first arrest happened before he had even turned 10.

In September 1998, young reporter Claudia Rowe was working as a stringer for The New York Times in Poughkeepsie, New York, when local police discovered the bodies of eight women stashed in the attic and basement of the small colonial home that Kendall Francois, a painfully polite 27-year-old community college student, shared with his parents and sister. Growing up amid the safe, bourgeois affluence of New York City, Rowe had always been secretly fascinated by the darkness and soon became obsessed with the story and with Francois.

On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O'Neil's mother, teenaged Kim Byers, saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. At the end of his shift at the pharmacy where they both worked, fifteen-year-old Rob went outside to speak to a contractor named John Wayne Gacy about a possible job. That night Rob became Gacy's final victim; his body was later found in the Des Plaines River. Kim's testimony, along with a receipt belonging to her found in Gacy's house, proving that Rob had been there, would be pivotal in convicting the serial killer who killed over thirty young men and boys.

This is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of the murderer who has become one of America's great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century.

When Chris Bryson was discovered nude and severely beaten stumbling down Charlotte Street in Kansas City in 1988, police had no idea they were about to discover the den of one of the most sadistic American serial killers in recent history. This is the true story of Robert Berdella, nicknamed by the media the Kansas City Butcher, who from between 1984 and 1988 brutally raped, tortured, and ultimately dismembered six young male prostitutes in his unassuming home on a quiet street in Kansas City.

An account of the crimes of Arthur Shawcross describes how the paroled child killer shot, stabbed, suffocated, and strangled 16 Rochester, New York, prostitutes and examines how the legal system failed his victims.

From perverse acts of cannibalism and dark sexual fantasies to vicious acts motivated by greed and a simple lust for blood, this book reveals the methods and motivations of some of the world's most notorious serial killers, including Juan Corona, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Pee Wee Gaskins, and Ivan Milat.

On September 13, 2016, in the small town of Ashland, Ohio, emergency dispatchers received a 911 call from a terrified woman who claimed to be kidnapped. The man holding her hostage was Shawn Grate, a serial killer whom the press later dubbed “The Ladykiller.” A key to his conviction and death sentence were Grate’s extensive recorded confessions—all extracted by one woman: Detective Kim Mager.

In 1994, an aspiring young cold-case investigator in California’s East Bay, Paul Holes, puts aside trying to solve the Golden State Killer case as he waits for science to catch up. Paul returns to an old file cabinet at the back of the forensic lab to look for another cold case he can work—something with DNA. He finds one. The 1978 murder of a married mother who went for a morning jog in a nearby park. The original investigators believed that a serial killer named Phillip Hughes was responsible; they just couldn’t prove it.

In this collection of true crime murder stories, discover three books containing a full graphic account of the exploits of monstrous individuals.

Have you ever wondered what is in the mind of a killer? Are you fascinated by what makes someone snap and kill, or carry out a carefully planned murder? In this second book in the series, List of Twelve, Volume 2, author Ryan Becker examines 12 individuals who did just that and became notorious as a result.

Dennis Nilsen was jailed for life in 1983 after the murders of 12 men and the attempted murders of many more. Seven years after his conviction, Nilsen began to write his autobiography, and over a period of 18 years, he typed 6,000 pages of introspection, reflection, comment, and explanation. History of a Drowning Boy - taken exclusively from these astonishing writings - uncovers, for the first time, the motives behind the murders, and delivers a clear understanding of how such horrific events could have happened, tracing the origins back to early childhood.

Serial killer Gary Heidnik's name will live on in infamy, and his home, 3520 North Marshall Street in Philadelphia, is a house tainted with the memory of unbelievable horrors. What police found there was an incredible nightmare made real. Four young women had been held captive - some for four months - half-naked and chained. They had been tortured, starved, and repeatedly raped. But more grotesque discoveries lay in the kitchen: human limbs frozen, a torso burned to cinders, an empty pot suspiciously scorched....

On Halloween night, 1828, in the West Port district of Edinburgh, Scotland, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare would be accused of killing 16 people over the course of 12 months in order to sell the corpses as "subjects" for dissection.

H. H. Holmes’ story has become one of legend. Holmes committed his crimes during a time in history where the idea of murdering on a mass scale was being introduced to the world through the actions of Jack the Ripper. Unlike Jack the Ripper, Holmes’ motives were clear; he killed out of greed, convenience, and curiosity.

With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators, and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Best-selling true-crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.

When Delia Balmer entered into a relationship with the attentive John Sweeney, she had no idea he was a serial killer. At first he was caring but over the course of their relationship he became violent and controlling. On more than one occasion he held Delia hostage and tortured her. Chillingly, he also confessed to the murder of his previous girlfriend. This is her compelling memoir.