Showing results by author "Jack Olsen" in All Categories

A full account of the most heinous crime of the century in which nearly 30 young boys were sexually tortured to death.

In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of Taunja Bennet. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people. And the real killer wasn't about to let anyone take credit for his kill.

Jack Olsen's true account, traces the causes of the tragic night in August 1967 when two separate and unrelated campers, a distance apart, were savagely mangled and killed by enraged bears.

Recounts the tragic events that followed the arrest of Fred Coe, a conservative, clean-cut young man, for a series of rapes committed in the city of Spokane and led to revenge and murder.

The author of Predator traces the story of George Russell, Jr., a bright, young, popular black man whose thirty-year psychological unraveling led to a shocking killing spree.

An account of the life and crimes of psychopath Mac Smith that describes how Seattle police, eager to make an arrest in the murders of the city's women, arrested the wrong man for Smith's crimes.

In the heart of the Swiss Alps stand the three majestic peaks of the Bernese Oberland, Europe's most famous mountain range. The highest, at 13,638 feet, is the Jungfrau. Next is the Mönch at 13,465 feet. But it is the smallest, the Eiger, rising 13,038 feet above sea level, that is by far the deadliest.

For twenty-five years, the trusted family doctor in a small Wyoming town had been raping and molesting the women and children who most relied on him. Mostly Mormons, the naive victims sometimes realized on their wedding nights the truth about what had happened in Dr. Story's office.

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.

David loved Cindy and was loved in return. Or so he thought. The troubled young man clung to his new love and dreamed of their future together. So begins the chain of events that was to evolve into a horror of terrifying proportions. Jack Olsen, best-selling author of Son, now reveals the details of a true-life romance gone hideously awry.

Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his 12-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied. Tips and sightings poured in as lawmen and volunteers combed the Cascades forest.

A classic true story.

And on its surface, the Chappaquiddick Incident (as it has infamously become known) was a simple but tragic traffic accident. However, its political fallout caused it to become the most speculated-upon car accident until Princess Diana's fatal ride, some 28 years later: Was Kennedy drunk? Was he trying to conceal an affair by deliberately killing Kopechne? Why did he wait for so long before reporting the accident? And who else was involved?

One cool April day, Mike Pritcher visits the home of his estranged wife, Lael, and takes their son, Ace, for an overnight outing. "She pushed her son's black-rimmed glasses up the slope of his thin nose. He jerked away like a puppy slipping its leash. A giggle, a crunch of gravel, a single wave of a grimy hand, and her only child was gone."

In June 1994 the Oakland Tribune cracked the story of a string of bizarre deaths in the San Francisco area. The victims were elderly, well-to-do, and, in each case, had been befriended by members of an extended Gypsy family - the Tene Bimbos.

A young woman lies dead, strangled by a killer still prowling the sweltering, run-down neighborhood. The young wife of a police lieutenant receives threatening phone calls; the precinct's patrol cars are sabotaged; even the puppies the officers have adopted as mascots are savagely slain. It looks like there's a psycho on the loose with a vendetta against the cops. And then the widow of a precinct cop is found horribly murdered. The signature of the first crime is on this one. But a deadly new element has been added - another murderer is imitating the first one's methods.

Fire 5 is a special roving unit which comes to the aid of other fire companies that run into trouble all over the city. Its story is told by one of the men of the unit, Charly Sprockett, and from the very first scene Jack Olsen hooks the listener with his remarkable ability to write dialogue that rings true and to create characters who jump to life.

Could it happen to you? Severn Gamble's wife walks into the Justice Building of a major Northwestern city to pick up some typing - and never comes out. ("Margot?") No one has seen her. ("Margot!") She has disappeared. ("Margot!") And the nightmare begins.

Monte Sole--Mountain of the Sun--had the bad luck to lie on the main route of withdrawal of the retreating German armies in autumn 1944. As the Allied advance stormed up Italy to the very shadow of Monte Sole, Axis frustration over their retreat and the harassing Italian partisans reached its peak. With full authorization of Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, and with an infusion of dread SS reinforcements, the Germans determined to neutralize Monte Sole.

Poisoned, hunted, a bounty placed on their heads, their pelts nailed to fence posts, the coyotes symbolize the heartless and brutal way in which man has made the West his own, as if nature had no place there. By decimating those species that seem to him inconvenient or wasteful or unprofitable, man has laid waste his own heritage, sown the seeds of a poisoned Earth, and gone far along in the destruction of his own humanity.