True Kidnapping

For twenty years, the Taliban was the number one enemy of Western forces in Afghanistan. But it was an enemy that they knew little about, and about whose founder and leader, Mullah Omar, they knew even less.

The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his “taker” or “receiver” device for his family on the front lawn. The device is meant to capture 10 to 12 images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. No human experience—from the most mundane to the most momentous—would need to be lost to history.

One hot summer, two young children disappeared from their first-floor apartment in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York. Their mother, Alice Crimmins, reported them missing to the police. Later that day, the body of four-year-old Missy was found in a vacant lot, showing signs of having been strangled. The body of five-year-old Eddie, Jr., was found several days later.

"Nous étions six – cinq garçons et une fille – insouciants, frivoles, joyeux, dans un été de tous les possibles. Pourquoi a-t-il fallu que l'un d'entre nous disparaisse ?" S'inspirant d'une histoire vécue, Philippe Besson retrace un drame de sa jeunesse, survenu dans l'île de Ré, un soir de juillet, au milieu des années 80.

THE STORIES OF THOSE WHO HAVE VANISHED ON KAUAI Experience the bizarre, unusual, and heartbreaking stories of those who have gone missing on Kaua’i, never to be seen again. In recent years, this Pacific paradise has been plagued by a series of disappearances and unexplained occurrences that have left families shattered, communities stunned, and authorities baffled. Through meticulous research and intimate storytelling, we'll explore the cases of those who have vanished from the island without a trace.

In September 2002, Mexican writer Ernestina Sodi and her sister, actress Laura Zapata, were kidnapped at gunpoint in Mexico City. Deliver Us from Evil is a first-person account of the living nightmare endured by the two women. Blindfolded for much of her ordeal, Ernestina Sodi learns to identify the members of this well-organized, brutal, and professional kidnapping gang by voice and smell. Plunging listeners into the dark world of crime, rage, and violence without mercy, this real-life drama culminates in a thrilling and truly unforgettable climax.

Twenty-one-year-old Vancouver student Elisa Lam was last heard from on January 31, 2013, after she checked into downtown LA's Cecil Hotel - a 600-room building with a nine-decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day, Elisa vanished. A search of the hotel yielded nothing. More than a week later, complaints by guests of foul-smelling tap water led to a grim discovery: Elisa's nude body floating in a rooftop water tank, in an area extremely difficult to access without setting off alarms.

In 1931, San Diego's idyllic image as a beach town with peaceful suburbs concealed a harrowing reality: a series of unsolved crimes targeting women, fueling fear and vulnerability. Monsters on the Loose tells the tragic and true stories of three women murdered early that year: Virginia Brooks, Louise Teuber, and Hazel Bradshaw. Local law enforcement, out-of-town criminologists, and investigators from what would become the FBI pursued hundreds of leads. Yet, the killer(s) were never identified and brought to justice.

He pulled off what some deem the crime of the century: skyjacking a commercial jetliner, collecting a ransom of $200,000, parachuting off the aft stairs of the Boeing 727 into the night, and simply disappearing. Since November 1971, “D. B. Cooper”—no one knows his real name or identity—has become a figure of enduring fascination and obsession. The FBI pursued him for over forty years, before closing the case and leaving it unsolved. Unsolved, perhaps, but much admired. D. B. Cooper’s exploit over the skies of the American Northwest has inspired books, films, and endless speculation.

The Great Depression was a time of desperation in America - parents struggled to feed their children and unemployment was at a record high. Adding to the lawlessness of the decade, thugs with guns and corrupt law-enforcement officers ran rampant. But amidst this panic, there was one surefire way to make money, one used by criminals and resourceful civilians alike: kidnapping. The Kidnap Years is a thoughtfully reported pause-resister that chronicles the sweep of abductions that afflicted all corners of the country as desperate people were pushed to do the unthinkable.

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.

Crisis Cops 2, much like the first book, will take you into the world of Hostage/Crisis Negotiations. These are interesting real-life stories from police officers that have been negotiating crisis situations for decades. Crisis Cops 2 will explore first-hand accounts of some of the most intense, life-or-death situations that have happened over the last several decades.

My Search for Madeleine is a tirelessly researched, personal search by one of the UK's top investigative journalists. Jon Clarke looks into the bizarre and harrowing abduction of toddler Madeleine McCann, three, from her holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007. He was the first national newspaper journalist on the scene and has spent the last 15 years investigating the crime, from claims that the parents killed her to the most recent prime suspect Christian Brueckner, a dangerous pedophile and rapist. Ultimately, this is an intriguing descent into the dark heart of Europe.

One second he was there; the next, gone. Taken, forever, without any clue as to how or why - until a family friend developed their vacation photos. These tales aren’t the dramatic reenactments of kidnappings, pieced together from sloppy clues that you’d hear about on the news or Unsolved Mysteries. Be it human, alien, ghost, or monster perpetrator, this collection of weird and frightening disappearances, assembled from true reports, proves unexplainable kidnappings happen more than we like to admit - and no one knows what really happened.

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?

When her son disappears, a mother is forced to confront a past she thought she had left behind. When young Charlie is abducted from a hardware store, his mother Bria must uncover the secrets hidden within their small town of Hollow Oak, North Dakota. As winter sets in, Bria and her husband Lester rely on their tight-knit community and relentless determination to bring Charlie home.

Saving Abigail is a true story about a little girl taken hostage by Hamas the morning of October 7, 2023, after thousands of terrorists breached Israel by land, sea, and air. That day, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children, and 246 innocent people were dragged across the border into Gaza against their will. Among them was three-year-old Abigail Mor Edan.

Revolution's End fully explains the most famous kidnapping in US history, detailing Patty Hearst's relationship with Donald DeFreeze, known as Cinque, the head of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Not only did the heiress have a sexual relationship with DeFreeze while he was imprisoned, she didn't know he was an informant and a victim of prison behavior modification.

For more than a year, over two brutal Northeast winters, the whole of Vermont was captivated by the hunt for a runaway golden retriever named Murphy. He was more than a missing dog - he was a target for capture, and journalistic obsession. This is that story. Murphy’s disappearance would unite the dog’s increasingly anxious owners with an impassioned reporter - Wilson Ring, the state’s correspondent for the Associated Press - and an online community of animal lovers. As Murphy kept running, the quest to bring him home, safe and sound, seemed more and more impossible.

Caught in a deadly game, Dominic Deluca must choose between the family he leads and the family he loves, as a father's war collides with a mobster's oath. Dominic Deluca has two families. The first is his wife Maria and young daughter Isabella. The second is the Deluca New Jersey Crime Family, which he leads with an iron fist. But when a rival family kidnaps his daughter, Dominic will go to war as both a feared crime boss and a father desperate to get his little girl back. Dominic's loyalties to both families will be tested when the FBI approaches him with an offer to help. Will Dominic ...