Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in True Crime

Bruce Sterling delves into the world of high-tech crime and punishment in one of the first books to explore the cyberspace breaches that threaten national security. From the crash of AT&T’s long-distance switching system to corporate cyberattacks, he investigates government and law enforcement efforts to break the back of America’s electronic underground in the 1990s.

When Sergeant Charlie McCabe returns from fighting in Afghanistan, she hopes to leave the war behind. Instead, she comes home to a father whose gambling has put him in deep trouble with a violent loan shark. She finds work as a professional bodyguard, but to save her father, she needs to get serious cash together fast. However, her father isn’t the only one who needs saving. When Charlie’s first client - a wealthy executive with a shady past - narrowly escapes a bomb plot, Charlie’s investigation leads her into the heart of Boston’s criminal underworld.

A Fever in the Heart dissects an explosive triangle that led to obsession and murder in a small town in the northwest of America. Ann Rule reveals the story of an alluring wife and the two men desperate for her love; a story with a bizarre and deadly twist that no one could have suspected. In this and several other riveting true-crime cases from her personal files, Ann Rule masterfully probes the delusions of the criminal mind, the fateful circumstances and the unrelenting investigative forces at work in the aftermath of murder.

In this brilliant biography T. J. Stiles offers a new understanding of the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Although he has often been portrayed as a Robin Hood of the old west, in this ground-breaking work Stiles places James within the context of the bloody conflicts of the Civil War to reveal a much more complicated and significant figure.

A wealthy and well-connected legal ace and the proud owner of a champion show horse, Larry McNabney had every reason to love his life. But when he disappeared in September 2001, his wife, Elisa, claimed he joined a cult. When Larry's body was found in a shallow grave three months later, Elisa was already gone. In a red convertible Jaguar, her brown hair dyed blond, Mrs. McNabney was speeding toward a new life in Florida - and a brand new identity. Who was Elisa McNabney? Beautiful, seductive, and ruthless, she had thirty-eight aliases and a rap sheet a mile long.

In 1997 a six-year-old boy questioned by authorities relayed disturbing stories of abuse. The more he talked, the more people were implicated in his shocking revelations. And he was only the first child to come forward. Within a year, fifteen more children with similar tales were transferred out of the Bassa region of Italy to protected locations. Their parents were accused of belonging to a satanic sect that performed sex rituals under the aegis of beloved local priest Don Giorgio Govoni. With each child’s confession, the network of monsters grew.

In 1973, Roseann Quinn, an Irish-Catholic teacher at a school for deaf children, was killed in New York City after bringing a man home to her apartment from an Upper West Side pub. The crime made headlines and the ensuing case quickly evolved into a cultural phenomenon. In this groundbreaking true crime tale, Lacey Fosburgh, the New York Times reporter first assigned to the story, utilizes an inventive dramatization technique to veer between the chilling, suspenseful personal interactions leading up to the brutal stabbing and the gritty details of its aftermath.

In late summer of 2012, millionaire landowner Göran Lundblad went missing from his farm in Sweden. When a search yielded nothing, and all physical evidence had seemingly disappeared, authorities had little to go on - except a disturbing phone call five weeks later from Göran’s daughter Maria. She was sure that her sister, Sara, was somehow involved. At the heart of the alleged crime: Sara’s greed, her father’s land holdings, and his bitter feud with Sara’s idler boyfriend. With no body, there was no crime - and the case went as cold and dark as the forests of southern Sweden.

Growing up, Lisa Nikolidakis tried to make sense of her childhood, which was scarred by abuse, violence, and psychological terrors so extreme that her relationship with her father was cleaved beyond repair. Having finally been able to leave that relationship behind, surviving meant forgetting. For years, “I’m fine” was a lie Nikolidakis repeated. Then, on her twenty-seventh birthday, Nikolidakis’s father murdered his girlfriend and her daughter, and turned the gun on himself.

On a May evening in 1998, the idyllic marriage of wealthy Lake Tahoe couple Peter and Rinette Bergna ended in a crush of metal. Peter was thrown from the vehicle and lived. Rinette, strapped in her seat, died on impact. In time, the grieving widower would meet a new woman, and put the tragic past behind him. Two-and-a-half years later, his life took another fateful turn. Bergna, esteemed art appraiser and son of one of California's most prominent attorneys, was indicted for the murder of his wife. Was Rinette's death really an accident - or deliberate homicide?

From 1974 to 1991, someone in the midwestern city of Wichita was leaving behind slain tortured bodies and anonymously proclaiming himself to police and reporters as "BTK" for "Bind, Torture, Kill." Then, for the next 14 years, BTK was silent. But when he began sending letters again, investigators would not miss their chance... Stunningly, police arrested Dennis Rader, the president of his church board and the father of two. As a shocked community watched, evidence began to pile up.

Ellen Boehm, a single mom from St. Louis, Missouri, appeared devoted to her children. But in reality, she was unequipped for motherhood, financially strapped, and desperate. Within a year of each other, her sons, ages two and four, died mysteriously, and Boehm's eight-year-old daughter then suffered a near-fatal mishap when a hair dryer fell into the girl's bath. While neighbors wondered how Boehm remained so calm through it all, Det. Sgt. Joseph Burgoon of St. Louis Homicide had darker suspicions.

In the early 1980s on a remote part of the Sudanese coast, a new luxury holiday resort opened for business. Catering for divers, it attracted guests from around the world. Little did the holidaymakers know that the staff were undercover spies, working for the Mossad - the Israeli secret service. Providing a front for covert night-time activities, the holiday village allowed the agents to carry out an operation unlike any seen before. What began with one cryptic message pleading for help, turned into the secret evacuation of thousands of Ethiopian Jews....

Ann Rule, who shared her own nerve-jangling account of unknowingly befriending sadistic sociopath Ted Bundy in The Stranger Beside Me, chronicles other fateful encounters with the hidden predators among us in this riveting collection, fifteenth in the best-selling series drawn from her personal files. First in line is a stunning case that spanned thirty years and took a determined detective to four states - ending, finally, in Alaska - where he unraveled not one but two murders.

Jerry Harris was a self-made California millionaire who, at age forty-four, had it all: booming businesses, yachts, a mansion, a beautiful wife, and a voice to rival Elvis. No one who knew this well-liked, generous man could make sense of his sudden disappearance one autumn night. On a final phone call to his brother from his Mercedes, Jerry breathed a muffled oath - then the line went dead. For Jerry's wife, Susan, it was just the beginning of an unwavering, eight-year search for the truth behind her husband's vanishing.

In 1908, Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of Twin Peaks. Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities - a young, beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the even trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew? The investigation that followed her brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and unreliable witnesses.

On October 22, 2001, handsome multimillionaire financier Ted Ammon was found bludgeoned to death in the magnificent East Hampton mansion he'd built with his beautiful - and volatile - wife, Generosa. She stood to make millions, but it wasn't the money that made Ted's friends suspicious: Generosa Ammon had a history of violent outbursts and bizarre obsessions.

On May 23, 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith drove to the middle of the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and dropped her two children into the Willamette River. Forty minutes later, rescuers found the body of four-year-old Eldon. Miraculously, his seven-year-old sister, Trinity, was saved. As the public cried out for blood, Amanda was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

A former Seattle policewoman, Ann Rule has extensive experience of violent crime and brings this knowledge to bear in this collection of fascinating case studies. You Belong to Me focuses on one of Florida's most shocking criminals - Tim Harris, the poster-perfect 'All-American' State Trooper who hid bizarre and fatal fantasies behind his badge of authority.

Until recently, historians believed America gave asylum only to key Nazi scientists after World War II, along with some less famous perpetrators who managed to sneak in and who eventually were exposed by Nazi hunters. But the truth is much worse, and has been covered up for decades: the CIA and FBI brought thousands of perpetrators to America as possible assets against their new Cold War enemies.