Forensics True Crime

Before Edward Snowden's infamous data breach, the largest theft of government secrets was committed by an ingenious traitor whose intricate espionage scheme and complex system of coded messages were made even more baffling by his dyslexia. His name is Brian Regan, but he came to be known as the Spy Who Couldn't Spell.

Chilling. One of the best words to describe the cases recounted in this audiobook. These gruesome crimes seemed to hit a dead end. That is until the case was reopened for investigation years later and solved. From the more famous cases to the more obscure, the crimes and hardships that the victims had to suffer will send shivers down your spine. Notably detailing the disappearance of Chandra Levy to the multiple murders committed by Dennis Rader.

Locard’s Exchange Principle underpins all forensic science and holds that the perpetrator of a crime will bring something to the crime scene and leave with something from it. Forensic experts use this principle daily to catch murderers and assailants. In Risking Life for Death, South African forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal offers a master class in this singular forensic technique based on real-life case studies.

In the 1970s and early '80s, southern California was shocked when dead boys began turning up with disturbing regularity alongside some of the state's most heavily traveled freeways. Victims of sadistic torture, the dead boys and young men had been raped and strangled, and their untimely deaths were eventually attributed to the Freeway Killer, an elusive psychopath whose trail of death would go down in California history as one of the worst true crime stories in the country.

After a wealthy woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home in 1908, the police found a convenient suspect in Oscar Slater, an immigrant Jewish cardsharp. Though he was known to be innocent, Slater was tried, convicted, and consigned to life at hard labor. Outraged by this injustice, Arthur Conan Doyle, already world famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, used the methods of his most famous character to reinvestigate the case, ultimately winning Slater’s freedom.

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds.

On November 23, 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city's richest men vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston's West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor - some leads put Parkman at sea or in Manhattan - but a Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never even left the Medical School building. His shocking discovery engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials.

Despite advances in DNA evidence and forensic analysis, almost half of murder cases in Canada and the US remain unsolved. By 2016, the solved rate had dropped so significantly in the United States that it was the lowest in recorded history, with one in two killers never even identified, much less arrested and successfully prosecuted. And the statistics are just as bad in Canada.

In 1990, a young woman was strangled on a jogging path near the home of Pat Brown and her family. Brown suspected the young man who was renting a room in her house, and quickly uncovered strong evidence that pointed to him - but the police dismissed her as merely a housewife with an overactive imagination. It would be six years before her former boarder would be brought in for questioning, but the night Brown took action to solve the murder was the beginning of her life's work.

The murder of Sarah Payne, Adam the Thames Torso, the London bombings, the Night Stalker and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko... The solving of all these cases can be linked to one man: Ray Fysh, a Charlton Athletic fan from Woolwich, a natural raconteur and also one of the finest forensic detectives the country has ever seen. Ray began work for the Met Police in the 1970s when forensic investigation was seen as little more than a geeky side show, only in existence to confirm or eliminate evidence. But by the mid 90s, Ray and his team had made huge progress in their field.

Dorothy Davis and Kerry Whelan were both happy, healthy, affluent, middle-class women from conservative, loving families. Such women are hardly ever among the ranks of the missing. They were not hitchhikers, or associates of drug dealers, or unhappy with their family relationships, or suffering from mental health issues. Dorothy Davis and Kerry Whelan came from different parts of Sydney, mixed in quite different circles, and led completely different lives.

For decades, when criminal cases of the most unprecedented nature went to trial, one woman took the stand to separate truth from fiction. Expert Witness is the extraordinary story of forensic and psychiatric pioneer Dr. Ann Burgess—inspiration for Hulu’s forthcoming docuseries Mastermind—and how she revolutionized what it means to be an expert witness in the American court system. Written through Burgess’ singular lens of compassion and lived experience, Expert Witness pulls back the curtain on some of the biggest cases in the last thirty years.

The terrifying story of the most monstrous serial killers through history. Serial killers are the most notorious and disturbing of all criminals, representing the very darkest side of humanity. Yet they endlessly fascinate and continue to capture the public's attention with their strange charisma and deadly deeds. From Jack the Ripper to Ted Bundy and the Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, these killers transfix us with their ability to commit utterly savage acts of cruelty and depravity.

For most people, dead bodies are horrifying. They are the physical representation of everything we’re afraid of–our own mortality, the unknown, the inevitability, and lack of dignity of the end. But for Jo Ward, a dead body is absolutely fascinating....

Helena Greenwood, a doctor with a Ph.D. in chemical pathology, was working in biotechnology when she was the victim of sexual assault. She survived and was scheduled to testify against her attacker until she was found brutally murdered in her garden. Everyone believed the killer was her past attacker; but there was not enough evidence to convict him, until ten years later when a local District Attorney working the "cold cases" used Helena's own DNA research to finally bring her killer to justice.

In 1984, Jean Road, a 49-year-old mother of three, awakes at home in Bath, Somerset, and wonders where her 17-year-old daughter Melanie can be. Her bed hasn’t been slept in. Just then, Jean and her husband, Tony, hear someone shouting through a loudspeaker: ‘Does anyone know Melanie?’ Jean runs to the police car outside only to discover that her daughter has been murdered in a nearby street as she walked home from a club in the early hours. Britain’s biggest manhunt begins.

More chilling cold cases solved! Listen to the fascinating true crime stories that were solved years later thanks to modern technologies and investigation techniques. Solving a criminal investigation is never as simple as it looks on television. In this book, we will be looking into some of the highest profile criminal investigations that go years without being solved. These are known as cold cases. But this book will examine those cold cases which have been solved.

Paul Verhoeven's ex-cop dad, John, spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. What unfolded in Loose Units was a goldmine of true-crime stories, showcasing John's dramatic experience of policing in Sydney in the 1980s and brilliantly twisted sense of humour. But what happened next in John's career was twice as weird. Electric Blue spans the final years of John's stint in the New South Wales police force, when he took up an offer to move into the grimy, analytical world of forensics.

A deep investigation into historical documents that prove the notorious outlaw Jesse James faked his own death The story of the notorious outlaw Jesse James’ assassination at the hands of Robert Ford has been clouded with mystery ever since its inception. Now, James’ great-great-grandchildren Daniel and Teresa Duke present the results of more than 20 years of exhaustive research into state and federal records, photographs, newspaper reports, diaries, and a 1995 DNA test in search of the truth behind Jesse James’ demise.

In the early hours of 7th August 1985, five members of the Bamber family were shot dead with a .22-calibre Anschutz rifle. Sheila Caffell, who was known to have struggled with mental illness, was at first thought to have murdered her twin sons and adoptive parents and then to have turned the gun on herself. Forensic evidence, however, told a different story and raised such questions as how Sheila could have received two shots in an act of suicide. A year later it was Jeremy Bamber, the only survivor, who was convicted of the callous murders of his entire family.