True Crime Memoir

On July 13, 2011, Laura Jean Ackerson of Kinston, North Carolina, went to pick up her two toddler sons. It would be the last time she was seen alive. Laura's ex, Grant Hayes - the father of her two sons - and his wife, Amanda, the mother of his newborn daughter, both pointed the finger at each other as the one guilty of murdering Laura, cutting up her body, and then transporting and disposing of the remains on the shores of Oyster Creek, Texas.

For 10 years, the California Interstate 5 highway was haunted by a dangerous serial killer. Incredibly skilled at staying ahead of the investigators as the bodies started to pile up, there wasn't enough evidence to charge the culprit with murder even once he'd been identified. Instead, they had to build a first-degree murder case in a few months while the killer was locked up on an assault conviction. Key to this was a cast of four: Vito Bertocchini, Kay Maulsby, Ray Biondi, and Faye Springer.

Pain, torment, and torture. Cruelty, brutality, and violence. The twisted psyches, murder. and yes, even the ability to charm people. Take a deep dive into the terrifyingly real serial murderers, spree killers, and true faces of evil.

On August 13, 1986, just one day after his 32nd birthday, Michael Morton went to work at his usual time. By the end of the day, his wife Christine had been savagely bludgeoned to death in the couple's bed - and the Williamson County Sherriff's office in Texas wasted no time in pinning her murder on Michael, despite an absolute lack of physical evidence. Michael was swiftly sentenced to life in prison for a crime he had not committed

In 1988 a troubled young man and his flamboyant mother were arrested for murdering a wealthy widow in her New York City mansion. Suddenly America was transfixed by a pair of real-life film noir characters. The media couldn't get enough of the twisted relationship between Sante Kimes and her 23-year-old son Kenny. But the most chilling story of all was never told - until now. Kent Walker, Sante's elder son, reveals how he survived 40 years of "the Dragon Lady's" very special brand of motherly love and still managed to get away.

William Pepper was James Earl Ray's lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and even after Ray's conviction and death, Pepper continues to adamantly argue Ray's innocence. This myth-shattering expose is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper's original best-selling and critically-acclaimed book of the same name, with 26 years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy.

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.

Mobster Al "Scarface" Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert Stroud, aka the Birdman: only the most violent, desperate criminals went to Alcatraz Island, called "The Rock" and known for its harsh conditions. This gripping true crime classic, originally written in 1963 and newly reissued, tells the story of life on The Rock and of 14 ingenious escape attempts by the prisoners.

Five book collection: first five states in the United States of True Crime series. Sixty chilling true crime cases of murders, kidnappings, and serial killers from across the United States!

In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.

Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the boss of New York's Lucchese crime family, was a Mafia superstar, responsible for more than 50 murders. Currently serving 13 life sentences at a federal prison in Colorado, Casso has given journalist and New York Times best-selling author Philip Carlo the most intimate, personal look into the world of La Cosa Nostra ever seen.

Mike DeBardeleben was known as the Mall Passer for the way he passed off fake money at local shopping centers. But when US Secret Service agents finally arrested him, they were met with more than just phony bills. They found that their counterfeiter led a shocking double life.... DeBardeleben's home was littered with drugs, bondage gear, and a collection of audio tapes in which he recorded the abuse of his countless victims.

John "Sonny" Franzese reportedly committed his first murder at the age of fourteen. As a "made man" for the Colombo crime family, he operated out of his Long Island home specializing in racketeering, fraud, and other illicit deeds he would deny to his dying day. His career in organized crime spanned over eight decades - and he was sentenced to fifty years in prison for robbery. This is the true story of an old-school Mafioso as it's never been told. Newsday reporter S. J. Peddie interviewed Franzese in prison and uncovered a lifetime of shocking secrets from the legend himself.

Richard "The Ice Man" Kuklinski led a double life beyond anything ever seen on The Sopranos, becoming one of the most notorious professional assassins in American history while hosting neighborhood barbecues in suburban New Jersey. Now, after 240 hours of face-to-face interviews with Kuklinski and his wife and daughters, author Philip Carlo tells his extraordinary story.

James Keene had it all: cars, girls, houses up and down the Gold Coast. But behind his well-connected star athlete façade was a money-obsessed drug dealer desperate to make the big score to get him out of the business. When he was sentenced to prison, it seemed the only lessons he would learn would be about navigating convict society. Instead, he was offered a chance to regain his freedom in return for going undercover in the nation’s highest security prison for the criminally insane.

The Search for the Green River Killer is the ultimate authoritative account of the Pacific Northwest killing spree that held a nation spellbound - and continues to horrify and fascinate, spawning dramatizations and documentaries of a demented killer who seemed unstoppable for decades.

The astonishing story of Benny Binion - a rip-roaring saga of murder, money, and the making of Las Vegas. Benny Binion was many things: a cowboy, a pioneering casino owner, a gangster, a killer, and founder of the hugely successful World Series of Poker. Blood Aces tells the story of Binion's crucial role in shaping modern Las Vegas. From a Texas backwater, Binion rose to prominence on a combination of vision, determination, and brutal expediency.

James Dommek, Jr., an Alaska Native writer and musician, sheds new light on a real-life mystery that pits Native American folklore against the US justice system. In the vast Alaskan Arctic, legend has it there once lived a mythic tribe—Iñukuns—that only existed in rumors and whispers. This changed forever when an actor-turned-fugitive, Teddy Kyle Smith, had an encounter that brought Iñukuns from myth to reality. Smith was an aspiring actor with a promising career until it all came quickly crashing down with a gunshot, a manhunt, bloodshed, and other frightful events.

In the summer of 1985, a brilliant young British DNA scientist Helena Greenwood is found murdered in her front garden in a quiet suburb in California. The police believe they know the killer’s identity but there’s no evidence against him, and the only thing linking him to the crime is the fact he’d been charged with sexually assaulting Helena just a few months previously.

Author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country's most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law.