True Kidnapping

From 1977 to 1981, Ruth Finley, an ordinary wife and mother from Kansas, was tormented by an elusive maniac known as The Poet. The police, already on edge from BTK’s reign of terror, spent years searching for the stalker. Meanwhile, his cryptic letters in rhymed verse grew more disturbing and violent, spilling into deeds like stabbing and kidnapping.

Charlie works at St Patrick’s residential home, where the walls are so thick no one can hear you cry. He’s asking child protection expert Shane Dunphy for help, before someone gets murdered. Charlie tells him of mistreatment, brutality and random cruelty, and now Maisie, his girlfriend, a resident at the home, has gone missing. When Shane finds out what has happened to Maisie, he knows he’s uncovered a world of trouble. Shane works his connections and, together with the ingenuity of the care home residents, attempts to bring the guilty to justice.

The house was like something out of a Jane Austen novel, but the truth of what lay in the shadows was more terrifying than any fictional imagining. Shane Dunphy recalls the experience of his darkest nightmares: a young girl describing missing children as playthings at house parties, but no one was listening; a malevolent, threatening presence looming in the residence they called the Bad Place, and Shane was forced to flee. And now, 20 years later, a mother pleads with him to find her son who vanished at age five.

Emerging from the pile of rubble, larger-than-life Navy SEAL Bart Nelson stood confident. His admirers cannot believe their eyes, thinking he had been destroyed by the violent blast that was created by his own teammate, the “Hammer.” Indescribably swift thinking and precise intuition had saved this giant of a man, once again. Just as the dawn of a new day greeted them, the image of their hero could be seen. Without his efforts and bravery, all of these young victims of human trafficking would have perished. Yet, the long dangerous journey back home had only begun. There were two choices...

In the second book of the PATHS CROSSED series, the listener shadows the author as he sheds the uniform of a trooper for the plainclothes of a detective to take a closer look at unsolved crimes. These true cases, ranging from murders, to a serial kidnapper of children, to organized crime, to police shootings, and more, are full of twists and turns that often sound like fiction.

This is a heart-wrenching collection of true stories told through the eyes of family members who have experienced the trauma of a missing loved one. It follows their journeys from the desperate searches in the first days, through the Police investigations and, in many cases, the heartbreak as the years roll by without any news. These stories are just a glimpse into ten of the thousands of missing persons still out there, waiting to be found.

Soon after the first maritime trade routes became operational, seafaring bandits appeared to prey upon the cargo, crews, and ships of others. Crimson Waters traces the history of piracy around the globe, stretching back from its roots in 2500 BCE, through the Golden Age of Piracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and up to the modern-day pirates who still threaten boats along coastlines and on the open seas.

In 1968, during Albert Lepard's fifth escape from a life sentence at Parchman Penitentiary, he kidnapped Lovejoy Boteler, then 18 years old, from his family's farm in Grenada, Mississippi. Three decades later, still beset by half-buried memories of that time, Boteler began researching his kidnapper's nefarious, sordid life to discover how and why this terrifying abduction occurred.

Den 11.11.11 anholdes forretningsmanden Pierre Fle�nsborg i Mexico City, ankla�get for at vill�e smugle� diktatoren Gaddafis søn over grænsen. I 533 dage sidder danskeren i nogle� af Mexicos værste fængsle�r. F�lensborg hævder at være uskyldig og Mads Brügger kommer på sagen. Under gravearbejdet opdager Brügger imidlertid, at intet i Pierre F�lensborgs li�v er, hvad det giver sig ud for at være. Mere og mere tvivlsomt bli�ver det også, hvi�lken roll�e Mads Brügger har påtaget sig som journa�list.

Though her name was not divulged, viewers would learn that she was hit over the head near the entrance of her home, abducted, sexually assaulted, and forced into the trunk of her own car. News cameras would capture footage of Michelle’s personal items strewn across the lawn around her home and along the wooded area behind a local restaurant. The community would breathe a sigh of relief after learning that she had somehow survived and that the assailants had been caught, ending a string of similar crimes. But there is so much more to the story.

What possesses a mum to kidnap her own child? That's what Maggie asks herself when she's asked to foster 13-year-old Saskia, the subject of a bitter custody battle between her parents. When Saskia's mum Rosa fears the courts are going to favour her ex-husband, James, she takes matters into her own hands. With Rosa facing criminal charges, and Saskia refusing to live with her dad, her future looks uncertain. Will Maggie be able to step in and discover the bombshell that will tear this family apart?

Australia's most prolific serial sexual killers met in prison. They were a complete contrast: Christopher Worrell, the charismatic psychopathic youngster; and James Miller, the older and socially awkward loner. For Miller, it was love at first sight. They developed an ominous sexual bond–proving that opposites can attract–and then kill. Once free, the inseparable tag team slayed as many people as notorious Australian serial killer Ivan Milat. Whereas Milat took a year to murder seven victims, the duo achieved the same in seven short weeks … the last four killed in only six days.

Op 1 april 2014 keren Kris Kremers (21) en Lisanne Froon (22) niet terug van een wandeling in de jungle van Panama. Maandenlange zoekacties, bemoeilijkt door het slechte weer, leveren niets op. Twee maanden later wordt er diep in de jungle een rugzak gevonden met daarin onder meer hun telefoons en camera, waarop vreemde foto's gevonden worden. Dit leidde tot wilde speculaties over de verdwijning die tot op de dag van vandaag voortduren. Zijn ze verdwaald, ontvoerd, beroofd?

The silence of the Escondido Police Department in the face of injustice echoed loudly, betraying the trust of those they had sworn to protect and leaving a stain on the reputation of law enforcement in the community. As the victim grappled with the aftermath of their stolen identity and the crimes that followed, they were left to wonder how different things could have been had their pleas for help been heard and acted upon. In the end, the tale of the Escondido Police Department’s failure to investigate the identity theft that led to more serious crimes served as a stark reminder of the ...

Caught between Camorra gunrunners selling to ISIS and Nigerian drug gangs along Italy's picturesque coast, each year thousands of refugees and migrants are lured into their underworld, forced to become sex slaves, drug mules, or weapon smugglers. In this powerful expose, investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau follows the weapons trail, meets the trafficked women trapped by black magic, the brave nuns who try to save them, and the Italian police who turn a blind eye as the most urgent issues facing Europe play out in broad daylight.

Featuring cameos by Abby and her kidnapper! A true crime classic that made headlines around the world, shocking and moving everyone including some of the biggest celebrities—among them tough guy crooner Frank Sinatra still pained by his own son's kidnapping a decade before.

Arabelle's beloved town matriarch, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, is snatched from her car, held for ransom, and propped up to the sympathy of thousands online. Her leaked ransom video might have been enough to placate the headline-starved, but for the endlessly bored detective, Robert Ellery, the ticking time-bomb, Alice Daniels, and for Mrs. Thomas herself, a simple headline could never unfurl the secrets they keep from the lies they tell. There is far more to this story than meets the eye. There is more to the dueling towns of affluent, picturesque Arabelle and impoverished, crime-riddled Wood's...

With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators, and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Best-selling true-crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.

"Yo pensaba: al final se ha disfrazado de guardia civil y, para escarnecerme más, me va a sacar de aquí para matarme fuera. Entonces fue cuando le dije: "No, no, fuera no. Hazlo aquí, que es más fácil y no quiero salir"". Así describe José Antonio Ortega Lara su liberación en una extensa entrevista en la que relata, por primera y única vez, los detalles de su cautiverio por parte de la banda terrorista ETA en aquel zulo de cuatro metros cuadrados en el que permaneció secuestrado 532 días.

Willem Holleeder is one of the most notorious criminals in contemporary history. Best known for his involvement in the 1983 kidnapping of Alfred Heineken, CEO and Chairman of Heineken, and his infamous 2006 trial in which he was convicted of extortion, money laundering and membership in a criminal organization, Willem Holleeder captured the attention of the world.