Showing titles in True Crime

When Bugsy Siegel was executed, ruthless Mickey Cohen, a former pro boxer and cunning provocateur, took over criminal activity in L.A., a move sanctioned by Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. Attaining immense power and dominance, from the late 1940s until 1976 the semi-literate Angeleno became an above-the-fold newspaper name, accumulating a remarkable count of more than 1,000 front pages in Los Angeles papers alone, and hundreds of articles in national and international periodicals.

In the spring of 2007, a brilliant computer programmer named Hans Reiser stands accused of murdering his estranged wife, Nina. Despite a mountain of circumstantial evidence against him, he proclaims his innocence. The case takes a twist when Nina’s former lover, and Hans’s former best friend, Sean Sturgeon, confesses to eight unrelated murders that no one has ever heard of. At the time of Sturgeon’s confession, Stephen Elliot is paralyzed by writer’s block, in the thrall of Adderall dependency, and despondent over the state of his romantic life. But he is fascinated by Sturgeon, whose path he has often crossed....

In 1955, former nightclub manageress Ruth Ellis shot dead her lover, David Blakely. Following a trial that lasted less than two days, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. She became the last woman to be hanged in Britain, and her execution is the most notorious of hangman Albert Pierrepoint's 'duties'. Despite Ruth's infamy, the story of her life has never been fully told. Often wilfully misinterpreted, the reality behind the headlines was buried by an avalanche of hearsay.

Sex, violent childhood, fear, fits of rage, belief in destiny: They all played a part in creating the personality of Adolf Hitler. What secrets were in Hitler's life? Psychoanalysis has proven that a person's adult life is determined by his or her childhood. This is the method used to reverse-engineer Hitler in this professional psychological analysis. It looks at his adult life and determines what led him to be the person he became. It reveals many previously unknown characteristics.

On December 7, 1941, the nation of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and prompted the United States’ entry into the bloodiest war in human history. Americans have long debated the cause of the bombing; many have argued that the attack was a brilliant Japanese military coup or a failure of US intelligence agencies or even a conspiracy of the Roosevelt administration. But despite the attention historians have paid to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the truth about that fateful day has remained a mystery - until now.

A gripping memoir from Amanda Knox's Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, chronicling his relationship with Amanda and the four years they spent in an Italian prison for a crime they did not commit.

The definitive memoir by Damien Echols of the "West Memphis Three", who was falsely convicted of committing three murders. Hear this unforgettable account of his 18 years on death row.

In this bold and suspenseful true-crime story, former homicide prosecutor Timothy M. Burke makes his case against one Leonard Paradiso. Lenny 'The Quahog' was convicted of assaulting one young woman and paroled after three years, but Burke believes that he was guilty of much more - that Paradiso was a serial killer who operated in the Boston area, and maybe farther afield, for nearly 15 years, assaulting countless young women and responsible for the deaths of as many as seven.

Once he was a young, happily married businessman. Then he lost his wife to human madness and that young man was gone, replaced by the Loner, the wandering son of legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan, and now the current occupant of a cell in the brutal and unforgiving Hell Gate prison. The Kid's crime? He looked too much like an outlaw who escaped from this very prison. So the Kid teams up with a fellow inmate with an escape plan, vowing to hunt down a look-alike killer on the loose.

Early on the morning of February 17, 1970, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a Green Beret doctor named Jeffrey MacDonald called the police for help. When the officers arrived at his home they found the bloody and battered bodies of MacDonald's pregnant wife and two young daughters. The word "pig" was written in blood on the headboard in the master bedroom. As MacDonald was being loaded into the ambulance, he accused a band of drug-crazed hippies of the crime.

This book is an astounding compilation of 50 of the world's most notorious and ruthless serial killers, including: Serial Killers Who Were Captured, Serial Killings That Were Never Solved, Female Serial Killers, and Doctors Who Killed Their Patients. Some of the more infamous cases are: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Son of Sam, Karla Homolka, Christine Fallings, the Green River Killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes and the Zodiac

Francesca Alinovi, Alberica Filo della Torre, Meredith Kercher: tre donne diversissime tra loro eppure unite da un tragico destino. Tre donne protagoniste loro malgrado di tre casi di cronaca nera tra i più discussi e intricati degli ultimi anni e che, dopo tutto questo tempo, continuano a far discutere. Tre storie di ordinaria violenza sulle donne che, ancora una volta, sono costrette ad interpretare l’odioso ruolo delle vittime. I carnefici sono sempre loro: gli uomini.

La scomparsa di Emanuela Orlandi e il massacro delle guardie svizzere sono due tra i casi più bui e intricati della recente storia Vaticana. Da una parte una ragazzina di appena 15 anni che sparisce senza motivi e, soprattutto, senza lasciare la minima traccia, nel pieno di un'estate romana come tante altre; dall'altra un doppio omicidio e un suicidio (per lo meno questa è la versione ufficiale dei fatti) che rappresentano il più grave fatto di sangue avvenuto in Vaticano nel secolo scorso.

Throughout John Mortimer's career, he established profound friendships with people accused of various crimes. He also indulged his passion for writing, penning Paradise Postponed and a series of stories about Rumpole, for whom he was often mistaken. With wit, wisdom and tenderness, he has written the story of his life.

More than a million listeners have thrilled to Bill O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln, the can't-stop-listening work of nonfiction about the shocking assassination that changed the course of American history. Now the anchor of The O'Reilly Factor recounts in gripping detail the brutal murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy—and how a sequence of gunshots on a Dallas afternoon not only killed a beloved president but also sent the nation into the cataclysmic division of the Vietnam War and its culture-changing aftermath.

The robbers had a crew of two dozen specialists, a stolen helicopter, perfectly-designed explosives, and inside information on a $150 million cash repository in Stockholm. The police were on to them - or so they thought. What happened next would make headlines around the world, but the robbery was just part of the story. Evan Ratliff presents the inside tale of one of history's most elaborate heists, and the race to unravel it.

Could you imagine being in an area like a mall or restaurant when someone pulls out weapons and starts killing people? It's scary! I have chosen 10 of these stories to write about and compiled them in this book.

In the early days, before he founded the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas and became the patron saint of the World Series of Poker, cowboy Benny Binion was a horse trader, a bootlegger, and the "boss gambler" of Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. This book traces Binion's rise to power in the Dallas underworld during World War II. By 1946, more than two dozen "casinos" operated illegally in downtown Dallas in hotel suites, and Benny Binion owned at least half of them.

Author Ron Chepesiuk chronicles the little known history of organized crime in Harlem.

African American organized crime has had as significant an impact on its constituent community as Italian, Jewish, and Irish organized crime has had on theirs. Gangsters are every bit as colorful, intriguing, and powerful as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, and have a fascinating history in gambling, prostitution, and drug dealing. In the late 1800s, Harlem became a highly fashionable neighborhood.

On a cool Pensacola night in January 1991, just a few minutes before midnight, three teenagers pulled up to the Trout Auto Parts store. Patrick Bonifay, his body coursing with adrenaline, entered the store clad in a ski mask carrying a loaded gun, intent on carrying out a poorly laid plan. Little did he know that it was his life - as well as the lives of his companions - that was about to be forever changed. Bonifay, Clifford Barth, and Eddie Fordham were hired to kill Daniel Wells by Robin Archer, who blamed Wells for losing his job nine months prior.