True Criminal

In March 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn awoke from a sound sleep into a nightmare. Armed men bound and drugged them, then abducted Denise. Warned not to call the police or Denise would be killed, Aaron agonized about what to do. Finally he put his trust in law enforcement and dialed 911. But instead of searching for Denise, the police accused Aaron of her murder. His story, they told him, was just unbelievable. When Denise was released alive, the police turned their fire on her, dubbing her the “real-life ‘Gone Girl’” who had faked her own kidnapping.

On June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana campground where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of their tent and snatched her from under their noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished into thin air, plucked by a shadow. As days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months, Special Agent Pete Dunbar attended a workshop at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virgina, led by two agents who had hatched a radical new idea: What if criminals left a psychological trail that would lead us to them?

They pulled the trigger to change the world. They were wrong. An assassin's bullet is the ultimate act of control, yet it almost always results in the absolute loss of it. This is the central paradox explored in True Crime - Assassins, a gripping investigation that goes beyond the headlines and into the hidden legacies of history's most infamous political murders. Forget what you think you know about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. This book unearths the profound and often ironic consequences of these world-altering events, revealing how ...

On June 9, 2008, the butchered body of Travis Alexander was found in his Mesa, Arizona, home. The grisly nature of his death made instant headlines: With 29 knife wounds, his throat slit, and a gunshot to the head, Travis was left to die. The prime suspect in the case was Alexander's ex-girlfriend, the attractive and soft-spoken Jodi Arias. Though Arias initially said that she was nowhere near the scene of crime, little about this case was as it seemed, and before long she had been caught lying to police. As the investigation progressed, her lies evolved multiple times before finally resting on an appalling claim: She had killed Travis in self-defense.

The Genovese family created a name for themselves from their decades-long reign over the streets of New York, dominating from the 1930s through the 21st century.

Jim Doherty, "Just the Facts" columnist for Mystery Readers Journal and a third generation policeman, tells the stories of law enforcement legends in Just the Facts: True Tales of Cops and Criminals. Bill Tilghman, legendary Oklahoma lawman and town-tamer from the territorial era to the Roaring Twenties. Richard Crafts, an airline pilot who killed his stewardess wife and fed her frozen body into a rented wood chipper. And many more....

In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth? In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind.

Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force―the yakuza. Saigo, nicknamed “The Tsunami”, quickly realizes that even within the organization, opinions are as varied as they come, and a clash of philosophies can quickly become deadly. One screw-up can cost you your life, or at least a finger.

Any murder causes pain and suffering that ripple through families and communities - of both the victims and the perpetrators - but premeditated murders cause the worst kind of damage. The Allure of Premeditated Murder is about the worst kinds of premeditated homicide in which the perpetrator plans an attack over a period of days, weeks, or months, leaving behind massive carnage and unspeakable suffering. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with murderers, sociologists Jack Levin and Julie B. Wiest help listeners understand why such vicious murders occur.

The Line Fire Arsonist: The True Story of Justin Halstenberg is a harrowing, meticulously researched exploration into one of California’s most chilling and destructive criminal minds. Written by investigative true crime author Elliot Christpher, this narrative delves deep into the life, crimes, and psychology of Justin Halstenberg—a man whose fires lit up the night sky and left behind charred landscapes, ruined lives, and a community scarred forever. From the smoldering ashes of the Keller Peak Line Fire to the quiet panic that gripped Southern California towns, Inferno Within ...

True Stories: Mysteries of Crime and Punishment Every story in this book is true - except one. Some tell of crimes that have gone unpunished by the law. Some are crimes against laws that are unwritten. And some are crimes that exist only in the mind. This collection of short stories covers a multitude of sins. Getting away with murder is easy if you know how - even easier if you’re a high-flying City trader like Terry Hills and have the help of someone who has been Yakuza trained. Most of us have wanted Peace and quiet at some time in our lives. Simon and Petra found the perfect spot in ...

On July 20, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, a man in dark body armor and a gas mask entered a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises with a tactical shotgun, a high-capacity assault rifle, and a sidearm. Soon twelve were dead and fifty-eight were wounded. A Dark Night in Aurora uses the twenty-three hours of unredacted interview transcripts never seen by the public and Reid’s research to bring the listener inside the mind of a mass murderer. The result is chilling, gripping study of abnormal psychology and how a lovely boy named Jimmy became a killer.

In this gripping – and sometimes terrifying – account, former South African Police Service (SAPS) head profiler Dr Gérard Labuschagne, successor to the legendary Micki Pistorius, recalls some of the 110 murder series and countless other bizarre crimes he analysed during his career. An expert on serial murder and rape cases, Labuschagne saw it all in his 14 and a half years in the SAPS.

Based off Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala's popular podcast of the same name, RedHanded explores real-life true-crime cases to help answer once and for all if a killer is born or made.

When Bill Bratton became a Boston street cop after his return from serving in Vietnam, he was dismayed by the corrupt old guard, and it is fair to say the old guard was dismayed by him, too. But his success fighting crime could not be denied. Propelled by extraordinary results, Bratton had a dazzling rise, and ultimately a dazzling career, becoming the most famous police commissioner of modern times. The Profession is the story of that career in full.

A MUST READ story of a small town doctor and his battle against an unjust legal system. "In the blink of an eye, Dr. Scott Geise went from respected small-town dentist to convicted felon. His crime? Trying to provide the best care for his patients. In this story you will find a chilling account of how an all-American success story became a nightmare of false accusations, legal manipulation, and ultimate betrayal. With raw honesty and dark humor, Geise recounts his journey from the heights of professional success to the depths of a federal prison cell. This gripping memoir exposes the ...

It was the most audacious crime of the 1970’s; a gang of villains tunnelled their way into the safety deposit box vault of Lloyds Bank on Baker Street, London. The ‘walkie-talkie’ robbery (as it became known) was later immortalised in the hit 2008 film ‘The Bank Job’ starring Jason Statham. Dan Shaw, Author of ‘The Krays: Their Life and Crimes’ and ‘The Great Train Robbery’ presents the explosive true account of one of the most daring and ingenious heists in British criminal history. It’s a story packed with suspense and intrigue, near misses, and edge of the seat plot ...

From New York Times best-selling author Nick Bilton comes a true-life thriller about the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, aka the Dread Pirate Roberts, the founder of the online black market Silk Road. In 2011, Ulbricht, a 26-year-old libertarian idealist and former Boy Scout, launched 'a website where people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them'. He called it Silk Road, opened for business on the Dark Web, and christened himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.

The model for The Great Gatsby's Meyer Wolfsheim and Nathan Detroit from Guys and Dolls, Arnold Rothstein was an underworld genius, racketeer, rumrunner, and mastermind who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, played "with the faith of 15 million people with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."

In 1945, US intelligence officers in Manila discovered that the Japanese had hidden large quantities of gold bullion and other looted treasure in the Philippines. President Truman decided to recover the gold but to keep its riches secret. These, combined with Japanese treasure recovered during the US occupation, and with recovered Nazi loot, would create a worldwide American political action fund to fight communism.