True Crime Serial Murders

Boasting a gritty and authentic look into the tragic life of Aileen Wuornos, this profound true crime audiobook offers a complete biographical sketch of a terrifying female serial killer who claimed over half a dozen lives. Drawing on real police investigations, firsthand accounts, and psychological theories, you’ll be taken on a journey to examine the mind of a serial killer–and the deadly delusions that drove her to commit her crimes.

A master of deception, he was a rapist, arsonist, bank robber, and a new breed of serial killer, one who studied other killers to perfect his craft. In multiple states, he methodically buried kill-kits containing his tools of murder years before returning and putting them to use. Viewing the entire country as his hunting grounds, he often flew to distant locations where he rented cars and randomly selected his victims. Such were the methods and madness of serial killer Israel Keyes. Such were the demands of the “Devil in the Darkness.”

Stories about serial killers are incredibly popular. Tracking down a mass murderer is a constant plot line in films, television, and literature. But these stories are so often based on real life. In certain circumstances, however, real life goes a step beyond what we could imagine happening in fiction. Sometimes, the actions of a serial killer can seem so extreme and strange, their motivations so twisted and evil, that we struggle to comprehend exactly how they fit into the modern world.

Portland author Trevor Church dives into one of the most shocking crimes in Oregon history - the disappearance and murder of one of his former schoolmates and her friend. Ashley Pond left for school early one morning, running a few minutes late as always, she hurried up the hill outside of her apartments to the school bus. She was never seen again. News crews gathered at the bus stop, outside of the apartments, and the school. For weeks they interviewed everyone on camera, alongside the private interviews conducted by investigators. One of the girls interviewed on the morning news at the ...

Welcome to the latest box set in the New York Times best-selling series of stories about America's most notorious criminals. For DARKEST WATERS, Wall Street Journal best-selling author Katherine Ramsland is the perfect guide to the famous and not so famous cases that still haunt the states huddled around the Great Lakes. Say hello to Notorious USA!

When Chris Bryson was discovered nude and severely beaten stumbling down Charlotte Street in Kansas City in 1988, police had no idea they were about to discover the den of one of the most sadistic American serial killers in recent history. This is the true story of Robert Berdella, nicknamed by the media the Kansas City Butcher, who from between 1984 and 1988 brutally raped, tortured, and ultimately dismembered six young male prostitutes in his unassuming home on a quiet street in Kansas City.

To the average American, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Edmund Kemper before 1973. Standing at six-foot-nine, the young man was a giant, but he was gentle, soft spoken, and shy. He lived with his mother into his mid-20s and frequented local bars, cozying up to police officers. This was one reality of Kemper's life - the reality he wanted those around him to see. There was another side to the man though, a much darker side. Kemper's actions in his life shocked America, who dubbed him the Co-Ed Killer for his urge to murder and violate co-ed girls in Northern California.

The year 1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Long-haired teenagers roam the streets, strumming guitars and preaching about peace and love...and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire—the leader of their counterculture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands out hallucinogenic drugs like candy. But beneath his benign persona lies a twisted and uncontrollable rage that threatens to break loose at any moment. Tony Costa is the most dangerous man on Cape Cod.

Whether you’re addicted to true crime like us, are curious about the evils people visit on one another, or simply want to listen to twisted tales, this book will tick all your boxes. From a horrific campus crime to manipulation and murder, these stories will send a shiver down your spine.

In September 2001 Carmen Rodriguez, a beautiful 32-year-old Hartford mother of four, went missing. At first police were stymied - until a killer's crucial mistake led investigators down a long, dark road of cold, calculated murder.

In November 1987, a young couple on an overnight trip to Seattle vanished without a trace. A week later, the bodies of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook were found in rural Washington. It was a brutal crime, and it was the perfect crime: With few clues and no witnesses, an international manhunt turned up empty, and the sensational case that shocked the Pacific Northwest gradually slipped from the headlines.

In the late hours of July 22, 1991, Detective Patrick "Pat" Kennedy of the Milwaukee Police Department was asked to respond to a possible homicide. Little did he know that he would soon be delving into the dark mind of one of America's most notorious serial killers, the "Milwaukee Cannibal", Jeffrey Dahmer. Kennedy spent the next six weeks locked in an interrogation room with Dahmer. There, the killer described in lurid detail how he lured 17 young men to his apartment, where he strangled, sexually assaulted, dismembered, and in some cases, cannibalized his victims.

In an area of Houston known as the Heights, boys had been going missing for years, but it was the peace-and-love 1970s, so police just called them runaways. When the truth was uncovered, and police - and the rest of Houston - realized the boys had become victims of notorious American serial killer Dean Corll, Houston recoiled in horrified shock. Residents realized that they had not only become the site of the most grisly mass murder in Texas history, but the worst mass murder in all of US history.

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut, Death in the Air, is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. In winter 1952, London automobiles and thousands of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air. But the smog that descended on December fifth of 1952 was different; it was a type that held the city hostage for five long days.

Between December 1968 and October 1969, a hooded serial killer called Zodiac terrorized San Francisco. Claiming responsibility for 37 murders, he manipulated the media with warnings, dares, and bizarre cryptograms that baffled FBI code-breakers. Then, as suddenly as the murders began, Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog. After painstaking investigation and more than 30 years of research, Robert Graysmith finally exposes Zodiac's true identity.

Spouse-killers, child-killers, and mindlessly brutal murderers all have their abhorrent crimes laid out in this book. You’ll read about Blake Leibel, who mercilessly tortured his girlfriend before killing her and draining her of her blood. I’ll tell you about the murder of Junko Furuta, which saw the teenage girl held hostage by her peers and tortured beyond belief before she succumbed to her injuries and died. The outcome of that case is as unbelievable as it is unjust.

On September 6, 1949, 28-year-old Howard Barton Unruh shot 13 people, in less than 12 minutes, on his block in East Camden, New Jersey. The shocking, true story of the first recorded mass-shooting in America has never been told, until now. Through the eyes of the young boy who visited Howard regularly to listen to his war stories, and the mother trying to piece together the disturbing inner-workings of her son’s mind, Ellen Green uncovers the chilling true story of Howard Unruh - the quiet oddball who meticulously plotted his revenge on the neighbors who shunned him.

Serial killer Gary Heidnik's name will live on in infamy, and his home, 3520 North Marshall Street in Philadelphia, is a house tainted with the memory of unbelievable horrors. What police found there was an incredible nightmare made real. Four young women had been held captive - some for four months - half-naked and chained. They had been tortured, starved, and repeatedly raped. But more grotesque discoveries lay in the kitchen: human limbs frozen, a torso burned to cinders, an empty pot suspiciously scorched....

William Neal, who called himself "Wild Bill Cody," was seductive and skillful at separating love-struck women from their money, and ultimately, their lives. Apprehended by police, Neal, who proclaimed himself “better than Ted Bundy,” pleaded guilty to three murders then insisted on representing himself at his death penalty trial. But the psychopathic killer found himself up against the incredible courage of his one surviving victim.

In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who once resided on the property were nowhere to be found. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an epic manhunt for the Benders.