True Crime Women

Sophie Crockett spent most of her childhood suffering from crippling anxiety. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, she became a virtual prisoner in her own home, afraid to venture outside. After battling with depression, eating disorders and self-harm, Sophie had the courage to re-enter society in her late teens.

In 2016, on stage at Wembley Arena, Dr. Ruja Ignatova promised her followers a financial revolution. The future, she said, belonged to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. And the Oxford-educated, self-styled cryptoqueen vowed that she had invented the Bitcoin Killer. OneCoin would not only earn its investors untold fortunes; it would change the world. By March 2017, more than $4 billion had been invested in OneCoin in countries all around the world. But by October 2017, Ruja Ignatova had disappeared, and it slowly became clear that her revolutionary cryptocurrency was not all it seemed.

From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best - or worst.

"Elle est la plus dangereuse de toutes les espionnes alliées. Nous devons la trouver et la détruire." 1942, la Gestapo lance un message d'alerte. Leur cible ? Virginia Hall. Une jeune femme, recrutée par les services secrets britanniques pour mener d'importantes missions d'espionnage en France occupée. Pourtant, rien ne prédestinait cette jeune américaine, issue d'une riche famille de Baltimore, à devenir cette combattante héroïque de la Résistance française. Amputée d'une jambe à la suite d'un grave accident, elle doit très jeune renoncer à son rêve de diplomatie.

When you think of serial killers throughout history, the names that come to mind are ones like Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. But what about Tillie Klimek, Moulay Hassan, Kate Bender? The narrative we’re comfortable with is the one where women are the victims of violent crime, not the perpetrators. In fact, serial killers are thought to be so universally, overwhelmingly male that in 1998, FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood infamously declared in a homicide conference, “There are no female serial killers.”

Bonnie and Clyde were responsible for multiple murders and countless robberies. But they did not act alone. In 1933, during their infamous run from the law, Bonnie and Clyde were joined by Clyde's brother Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche. Of these four accomplices, only one, Blanche Caldwell Barrow, lived beyond early adulthood and only Blanche left behind a written account of their escapades. Edited by outlaw expert John Neal Phillips, Blanche's previously unknown memoir is here available for the first time.

When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.

No es maldita la mujer asesinada porque era malvada o perversa, sino porque cayó sobre ella la maldición de ser víctima de un feminicida; maldita porque sobre su muerte se abrieron las horas más trágicas y dolorosas para su familia.

When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher “KC” Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone.

The fair sex. We've often heard this cliched expression being used to refer to women. Although it has become increasingly outdated, the mindset still exists that women are the gentle and nurturing sex. When it comes to murder, that notion gets turned on its head. And this isn't a recent phenomenon; we can find plenty of female killers going back in history. In fact, some of the world's most notorious serial killers have been women. These female killers give their male counterparts a run for their money and deserve to be counted among the most famous serial killers.

Based on five years of investigative reporting and research into forensic psychology and criminology, Erased presents an original profile of a widespread and previously unrecognized type of murder: not a hot-blooded, spur-of-the-moment crime of passion, as domestic homicide is commonly viewed, but a cold-blooded, carefully planned, and methodically executed form of erasure. These crimes are often committed by men with no criminal record, men leading functional and often successful lives until the moment they kill the women, and sometimes children, they claimed to love.

Kevin, Meg's cyber-savvy nephew who lives in the basement, comes to her with a problem. He's become involved as the techie for a true-crime podcast, one that focuses on Virginia cold cases and unsolved crimes. And he thinks their podcast has hit a nerve with someone...one of the podcast team has had a brush with death that Kevin thinks was an attempted murder, not an accident. Kevin rather sheepishly asks for Meg's help in checking out the people involved in a couple of the cases.

Saint Paul, Minnesota, is a quiet and comfortable city rich with history. Little known are the days when prostitution was a thriving business hidden in storefront saunas and health clubs. For decades, madams and business owners made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling sex. But as the 21st century drew near, Saint Paul officials were desperate to shut down the trade and rid its city of the stigma surrounding the sex-for-money industry.

Award-winning filmmaker Tanya Selvaratnam bravely recounts the intimate abuse she suffered from former New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, using her story as a prism to examine the domestic violence crisis plaguing America. Sensitive and nuanced, Assume Nothing details how Tanya’s relationship devolved into abuse, how she found the strength to leave - risking her career, reputation, and life - and how she reclaimed her freedom and her voice.

Canadian women judges and criminal lawyers tell of cases that they have found particularly challenging in this fourth book of the Durvile True Cases series. Some were disquieting and perplexing or had surprising turns, many are high-profile, and many continue to have interesting social or personal effect.

For decades, osteopathic physician Larry Nassar built a sterling reputation as the go-to doctor for America's Olympians while treating countless others at his office on Michigan State University's campus. It was largely within the high-pressure world of competitive gymnastics that Nassar exploited young girls, sexually assaulting hundreds of them under the guise of medical treatment. In Start by Believing, John Barr and Dan Murphy confront Nassar's acts, which represent the largest sex abuse scandal to impact the sporting world.

The shocking first true account from one of the young girls who lived through and survived the Rotherham sex abuse scandal. In the summer of 2014, the Rotherham sex abuse scandal sent shockwaves through the nation. A report revealed that since the 1990s, up to 1,400 young girls in the town had been regularly abused by sex gangs, predominantly comprised of Pakistani men.

On August 11, 2008, 18-year-old Marie reported that a masked man broke into her apartment near Seattle and raped her. Within days, the police swiftly pivoted and began investigating Marie. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie - a bid for attention. More than two years later, Colorado detectives pursued a serial rapist who photographed his victims, threatening to release the images online, and whose calculated steps to erase all physical evidence suggested he might be a soldier or a cop.

Women of Southie tells the story of six women who grew up in and, in most cases, still live in their beloved town of South Boston, a place most notably recognized as the home of organized crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger. But while Bulger might have been ruling the town with an iron fist, as depicted by Johnny Depp in Black Mass, what the town ought to have been recognized for are the brave women who ruled their own lives and their families with equally strong but far more beneficial hands. The stories of these women, ages 40 to 67, are filled with honest details.

In Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, longtime intrepid war correspondent Christina Lamb makes us witness to the lives of women in wartime. An award-winning war correspondent for 25 years (she’s never had a female editor) Lamb reports two wars - the “bang-bang” war and the story of how the people behind the lines live and survive.