True Crime Women

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 Although it has become increasingly outdated, the mindset still exists that women are the gentle and nurturing sex.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.

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.

In May 1996, two skilled backcountry leaders, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, entered Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a week-long backcountry camping trip. The free-spirited and remarkable young couple had met and fallen in love the previous summer while working at a world-renowned outdoor program for women. During their final days in the park, they descended the narrow remnants of a trail and pitched their tent in a hidden spot. After the pair didn’t return home as planned, park rangers found a scene of horror at their campsite.

When the winter ice melted in April 1850, residents of Saco, Maine, made a gruesome discovery: the body of a young girl submerged in a stream. Thanks to evidence left at the scene, a local physician was arrested and tried for the death of Mary Bean, the name given to the unidentified young girl; the cause of death was failed abortion. Garnering extensive newspaper coverage, the trial revealed many secrets: a poorly trained doctor, connections to an unsolved murder in New Hampshire, and the true identity of "Mary Bean" - a young Canadian mill worker named Berengera Caswell, missing since the previous winter. The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories examines the series of events that led Caswell to become Mary Bean and the intense curiosity and anxiety stimulated by this heavily watched trial.

It's a case reminiscent of the explosive story of Susan Smith, convicted in the drownings of her two young sons in South Carolina. But in The Unforgiven, three young children are in the back seat of a car driven by Amanda Hamm's boyfriend as it slips into an Illinois lake. Amanda and her boyfriend survive. Her three children do not.

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.

Death Served Cold is a painstakingly researched collection of true, blood-curdling accounts of gruesome murders committed by India’s most dangerous women over the last three decades. These stories explore the dark recesses of the female psyche and challenge popular stereotypes by revealing shocking excesses of sadism and aggression rarely associated with women.

On May 23, 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith drove to the middle of the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and dropped her two children into the Willamette River. Forty minutes later, rescuers found the body of four-year-old Eldon. Miraculously, his seven-year-old sister, Trinity, was saved. As the public cried out for blood, Amanda was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

Call me naïve, but when I was a girl - watching James Bond and devouring Harriet the Spy - all I wanted was to grow up to be a spy. Unlike most kids, I didn't lose my secret-agent aspirations. So as a bright-eyed, idealistic college grad, I sent my resume to the CIA. Getting in was a story in itself.

Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered around the murky canals and crawfish ponds of Jennings, Louisiana, a bayou town of 10,000 in the Jefferson Davis parish. Law enforcement officials were quick to pursue a serial killer theory, opening a floodgate of media coverage, from CNN to the New York Times. Collectively the victims became known as the "Jeff Davis 8," and their lives, their deaths, and the ongoing investigation reveals a small community's closely guarded secrets.

In this provocative book, award-winning journalist Patricia Pearson argues that our culture is in denial of women's innate capacity for aggression. We don't believe that women batter their husbands or abuse the majority of children in North America. We ignore the 200 percent increase in crime by women in a period when most crime statistics are dropping. Pearson weaves the stories of women such as Karla Homolka and Mary Beth Tinning (who smothered eight of her children) with the results of criminologists and psychiatrists to expose the myth of female innocence.

Back in her natural habitat, Dr Nell Ward heads to a woodland pond to survey local newt populations. She's shocked to discover a car submerged in the water - with the driver dead behind the wheel. Nell recognises the dead man as professional racing driver, and tabloid love rat, Jack Rafferty, whose performance on (and off) Finchmere's racetrack had earned him enemies. Suspecting this isn't the tragic accident it appears DI James Clark calls upon Nell and her ecological skills to help find the murderer.

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.

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah’s and her assailant’s lives.

Widely known in the criminal underworld as the 'Black Widow', Linda Calvey spent the first half of her life running with the UK's top gangsters, robbing banks and rubbing shoulders with the Kray twins. That is, until, in 1990, her lover Robbie Cook was murdered at point-blank, and she found herself falsely convicted. Linda was sent away for decades, and would go on to become Britain's longest-serving female prisoner. This is her story of life inside, and how she learnt to survive the many years she spent behind bars.

In June 1952 a woman was murdered by an obsessed colleague in a hotel in the South Kensington district of London. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising; that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable. The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocrat and his wealthy Jewish wife, Granville would become one of Britain's most daring and highly decorated special agents.

Laci Rocha Peterson, eight months pregnant, was last seen by her sister, Amy, in the late afternoon of December 23, 2002. She spoke to her mother, Sharon Rocha, at 8:30 p.m. that night. This would be the last time anyone from her immediate family ever spoke to her.

A riveting blend of science writing and true-crime narrative, The Nature of Life and Death details Wiltshire's unique journey from college professor to crime fighter: solving murders, locating corpses, and exonerating the falsely accused. Along the way, she introduces us to the unseen world all around us and underneath our feet: plants, animals, pollen, spores, fungi, and microbes that we move through every day. Her story is a testament to the power of persistence and reveals how our relationship with the vast natural world reaches far deeper than we might think.

An unprecedented look inside a deadly and obscenely wealthy branch of the Italian mafia and the electrifying story of the women who risked everything to bring them down. The Calabrian Mafia - known as the ’Ndrangheta - is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls 70 percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals - supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists - and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the EU.

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.