True Crime

Surviving prison as an innocent person is a surreal nightmare no one wants to think about. But it can happen to you. 
 
Justin Brooks has spent his career freeing innocent people from prison. With You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent, he offers up-close accounts of the cases he has fought, embedding them within a larger landscape of innocence claims and robust research on what we know about the causes of wrongful convictions.
 
Putting readers at the defense table, this book forces us to consider how any of us might be swept up in the system, whether we hired a bad lawyer, bear a slight resemblance to someone else in the world, or are not good with awkward silence. The stories of Brooks's cases and clients paint the picture of a broken justice system, one where innocence is no protection from incarceration or even the death penalty. Simultaneously relatable and disturbing, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand how injustice is served by our system.

America has spawned hundreds of cults. Charismatic leaders periodically burst into the news for the most awful of reasons. We are awash with stories of brainwashed members’ struggles to leave. Meet the messianic leaders, see the indoctrination and manipulation, look at their beliefs, and read the stories of some of America’s most notorious, eccentric, and unusual cults!

From false religions and offshoots of traditional religions to political, financial, sexual, and hate groups, American Cults: Cabals, Corruption, and Charismatic Leaders looks at 40 groups and leaders, including their histories, deceits, manipulations, and twisted ideologies. Some rely on systems of obedience, submission, and dependency. More than a few have mystifying beliefs. Others are dark and murderous. You’ll encounter curious, bizarre, and sometimes upsetting stories of …

Charming, manipulative, and exploitative leaders—Jim Jones, Jim Baker, David Berg, David Koresh, and many, many others.

The breakaways from traditional religions—Father Divine and the Peace Mission, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Westboro Baptist Church, the Gospel of Prosperity, and many more.

Political, Ponzi, metaphysical, and science schemes—the cult of the scientific method, pyramid schemes, political cults, the Unification Church, and much more.

Aliens, extraterrestrials, and the cosmos—Church of Scientology, Raëlians and Heaven’s Gate, to name a few.

End-times and doomsday cults—rapture beliefs, Edgar Cayce, the Ant Hill Kids and more.

Racial, radical, and social media cults—QAnon, Ku Klux Klan, Oath Keepers, Antifa, and others.

Sex, perversity, and submission—NXIVM, Sullivanians, Rajneesh, and many more.

American Cults looks at why America is such a fertile ground for cults, how some people got caught in their webs, and how some managed to escape! With more than 120 photos and graphics, this tome is richly illustrated. Its helpful bibliography provides sources for further exploration, and an extensive index adds to its usefulness.

Delve into the chillingly true world of murder and deceit. Explore the twisted paths of those driven by dark motives of control, money, social status, and revenge, and the unsuspecting victims who placed their trust in them.

Discover the dark secrets that lurk behind closed doors in Family, Friends and Neighbors: Stories of Murder and Betrayal. You will be left questioning just how well you truly know those around you in this gripping true-crime collection. Dive into infamous cases such as Richard “Alex” Murdaugh, the Menendez Brothers, and Lizzie Borden, and also examine lesser-known crimes that will send shivers down your spine. You'll investigate thirty-four shocking tales of mind-boggling acts of violence, such as …

The captivating downfall of prestigious attorney and community figure Alex Murdaugh, whose addiction spiraled into a web of deceit, fraud, and murder.

The heartbreaking story of Michael and Robert Bever, brothers driven to commit unspeakable acts due to a lifetime of torment inflicted by their own parents.

The macabre case of Heather Mack and her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, who were entangled in a web of greed and trust funds leading to a gruesome discovery inside a suitcase.

The shocking crimes committed by Lyle and Erik Menendez, whose privileged lives culminated in the massacre of their own parents, forever shocking the nation.

The accused Victorian-era serial poisoner, Mary Ann Cotton, and the mysterious deaths of her husbands and children.

The troubled Florida teen Tyler Hadley and his wild house party that went on while his parents' bodies bled in the master bedroom.

The bank vice-president-turned-embezzler Steven Sueppel, whose mounting debts compelled him to commit a desperate act of murder.

And dozens of other intimate murders and webs of deceit!

Murders committed to escape a marriage, or out of dire desperation, or from an insane separation from reality, these and other less comprehensible motivations fill the pages of Family, Friends and Neighbors. It’s an unflinching look into humanity’s dark side! Read the stories, investigate the facts, and meet the vicious killers who murder the people who should have been nearest and dearest to them.

Pain, torment, and torture. Cruelty, brutality, and violence. The twisted psyches, murder. and yes, even the ability to charm people. Take a deep dive into the terrifyingly real serial murderers, spree killers, and true faces of evil!

They prey on the innocent with a malicious desire to inflict damage and harm. They hunt and stalk misfortunate victims in the dark, in broad daylight, in quiet neighborhoods, and in the local woods. Their bloodthirst isn't satisfied after their first kill. Or their second. Or third. Serial Killers: The Minds, Methods, and Mayhem of History's Most Notorious Murderers delves into the global phenomenon of serial and spree murderers.

This chilling book looks at the horrifying stories of forty malevolent killers and hundreds of innocent victims, including such notorious homicidal maniacs as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Jeffery Dahmer, but it also looks at lesser-known and overlooked murderers like Herbert Baumeister, America’s I-70 Strangler; Japan’s “Anime Killer,” Tsutomu Miyazaki; Russia’s “Rostov Ripper,” Andrei Chikatilo; the “Giggling Granny,” Nannie Doss; and many more. It journeys to 16th-century Scotland to meet a clan of cannibals whose existence is still debated by historians today, and to the fog-shrouded alleys of Whitechapel, London, where Jack the Ripper earned his grisly namesake. Along the way, we’ll meet the Dating Game Killer, the Milwaukee Cannibal, the Acid Bath Murderer, and other monsters.

Serial Killers also asks the questions …

What makes a seemingly ordinary person stalk, torture, and murder their fellow human beings?

Are serial killers born or made?

What is the difference between a serial killer and a spree killer?

What were the identities of Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer?

Was Albert DeSalvo really the Boston Strangler?

Is it possible that you could know a serial killer?

Caution is advised before entering the alarming world of twisted psychos and sociopaths! With more than 120 photos and graphics, this fright-filled tome is richly illustrated. Its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness.

A murder at the hands of a mother is a heartbreaking deviation and a crime against nature! How can a mother commit such an appalling crime? How can she end the lives of the innocents she so recently bore and nurtured?

A mother is supposed to be loving, protective, caring, and kind. She’s supposed to nurture and guide her children from infancy into childhood and adolescence. The very thought of murdering a child—much less their own child—is not only bizarre but perhaps the most disturbing thought a parent could have! Exploring the ultimate betrayal of a mother’s duty, Killer Moms: True Stories recounts 31 harrowing tales of motherhood gone wrong, including …

Rachel David, who believed she was married to God

Andrea Yates, who systemically executed each of her five children by drowning them

Magda Goebbels, one of the most powerful women in Nazi Germany, the propaganda minister’s wife and a Hitler favorite

The ambiguous Casey Anthony case, whose acquittal shocked the public

Melissa Drexler, aka “The Prom Mom,” who hid her pregnancy from everyone

Rosemary West, one of England’s most notorious serial killers

Lindsey Nicole Blansett, whose solution to ensuring her children wouldn’t suffer in the future was to make sure they did not have a future

Nannie Doss, the “Giggling Granny,” who managed to murder four generations of her family in a killing spree that lasted 30 years

Angela Camacho, who helped her husband murder her three young children because he believed they were possessed by witches.

An unflinching look into humanity’s dark side, Killer Moms is an unnerving read that delves into the twisted paths, the chilling motives, and the devastating consequences of maternal malice!

Power, Money, Sex: The Corrupt Trifecta! This captivating book uncovers the insidious web of deceit that infiltrates every facet of our nation's past and present. Immerse yourself in the stories of 50 of the most audacious frauds, cons, and lies!

Discover the dark underbelly of American history as you delve into the gripping pages of Grifters, Frauds, and Crooks: True Stories of American Corruption. From the heights of Wall Street to the heart of Main Street, from the hallowed halls of the Capitol to the battlefields of the military, and from the glitz and glamour of entertainment to the sanctity of science, no realm is immune to the clutches of corruption. Through meticulous research, this riveting account exposes both notorious figures and obscure swindles, including …

Bernie Madoff's infamous Ponzi schemes

Big Pharma scandals

the Black Sox

the dark secrets of the Catholic Church

Operation ABSCAM

the seedy underworld of the Mafia

Harvey Weinstein

Corruption in the White House

the Enron deceit

the shocking depths of NYPD corruption

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker

the Lehman Brothers collapse

the Watergate break-in and cover-up

the Clinton/Lewinsky affair

J. Edgar Hoover’s abuse of power

the Sackler family’s opioid empire

and many other dishonest and duplicitous people and organizations!!

With more than 120 photos and graphics, Grifters, Frauds, and Crooks is richly illustrated. Its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness. In the pursuit of money, influence, and fame, the line between right and wrong sometimes becomes blurred, leaving a trail of shattered trust and broken dreams. Take an illuminating journey into the cons, scams, and shady deals that have shaped our nation.

How well do you know your neighbors? Maybe you should get to know them better! Growing up, we are taught that monsters are easy to identify, but the truth is very different. Too often, the serial murderer does not stand out. Otherwise, he, or she, would get caught.

The contrast between the ordinary-seeming lives that provided cover for their cruel secrets is exposed in The Serial Killer Next Door: The Double Lives of Notorious Murderers. To their coworkers, neighbors, and others who knew them, they led unremarkable lives. They had careers as military pilots, police officers, landscapers, small business owners, farmers, realtors, reporters, authors, veterinary technicians, nurses, doctors, handymen, painters, and chefs, while they simultaneously stalked city suburbs, college campuses, trailer parks, and red-light districts. This chilling book looks at the horrifying stories of nearly 30 malevolent killers (and hundreds of innocent victims) who were mistakenly trusted, including …

• Genene Jones, a nurse responsible for the murder of 60 infants and children in her care. She’s said to be the inspiration for Stephen King’s iconic character of Annie Wilkes, in Misery – and her nephew broke into King’s home, threatening to blow up the writer and his family because of it!
• Robert Lee Yates, a helicopter pilot in the Army National Guard who, when caught, buried one body outside his bedroom window as his wife slept.
• Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, went undetected for 20 years, working for 30 years as a painter for a truck company and married for 17 years.
• Kathleen Folbigg, whose three children were at first thought to have died from natural causes. She only got caught when her husband found her personal diary.
• Joseph James DeAngelo, who worked various jobs, including as a police officer and a truck mechanic. He went on a decades-long crime spree and was finally caught with the help of DNA evidence. His case was instrumental in the establishment of California's DNA database.
• And dozens of other serial killers!

It’s chilling to realize that many serial killers have created second lives that are completely divorced from the brutality and evils they commit. It’s incomprehensible to think that they are able to flip a switch, transforming them from apparently loving, ordinary men and women into torturous, homicidal slaughterers. With more than 120 photos and graphics, The Serial Killer Next Door is richly illustrated. Its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness. We trust our neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances. Of course, we do. It's ominous to think that we can't!

How would you treat a murderer? If you’re from Hollywood and he’s notorious, you might turn him into a folk hero. Separate the facts from the many legends and revisions that have blossomed around these killers in this frightening look at the bloody real lives of movie’s infamous antiheroes.

You’ll find a blood-curdling assortment of the “criminal elite” in American Murder: Criminals, Crime and the Media, a rogue’s gallery of our most famous killings, killers and other scoundrels (and some that ought to be more famous than they are). A collection of high-profile murderers, gangsters, assassins, psychopaths, such as O.J., Amy Fisher, Robert Blake, Susan Smith, Claus Von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bugsy Siegel, Jesse James, John Dillinger, Charles Manson, Albert Fish, T. Cullen Davis, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., Edmund Kemper, Beulah Annan, Bonnie and Clyde, Billy the Kid, Charlie Starkweather, as well as an assortment of lesser known killers with some incredible tales!

With numerous photos and illustrations, this tome is richly illustrated, and its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness. American Murderexplores the legends as depicted in movies, stories, and songs. You’d not want to meet any of them in person – either the real or Hollywood versions!

In 2018, Michelle McNamara’s #1 New York Times bestseller I’ll Be Gone in the Dark chronicled her years-long obsession with finding the Golden State Killer, a serial killer and rapist who committed at least thirteen murders, fifty-one rapes, and 120 burglaries across California in the 1970s and 1980s. Tragically, McNamara, who died in 2016—her husband, Patton Oswalt, and two writers completed and published her book posthumously—didn’t live to see Joseph DeAngelo, a.k.a. the Golden State Killer, brought to justice. 

Thien Ho, the District Attorney of Sacramento, was the lead prosecutor of DeAngelo, “one of the most notorious serial predators in American history.” (Fresh Air/NPR). His book, The People vs. the Golden State Killer, is the first official account of how the Golden State Killer was apprehended and put behind bars for life. Ho led an elite team of law enforcement from six California prosecutor's offices in the hunt for DeAngelo. They used a newly developed tool known as Investigative Genetic Genealogy, pioneered by Paul Holes (Unmasked, Celadon, 2022), to connect DeAngelo to multiple cold cases stretching back nearly a half century. 

The People vs. the Golden State Killer also recounts Ho’s fascinating personal journey—escaping communist Vietnam on a fishing boat as a child, working his way up from an internship to an elite homicide division and eventually to Sacramento District Attorney. Ho also tells the authorized accounts of three of DeAngelo’s rape survivors, Kris, Gaye, and Phylis, who recount with Ho’s help the arc of their lives from the crime, to the effects on their lives in the subsequent years, to the discovery of DeAngelo and his capture.

Former police detective Lorimer Shenher's “inside account of the Pickton serial murders is both a horrifying and compelling read. "—Peter Vronsky, author of Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters

In this searing personal account, ex-police detective Lori Shenher (who transitioned to in 2015, and is now known as Lorimer) describes his role in Vancouver's infamous Missing Women Investigation and unflinchingly reveals his years-long struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of working on the case.

From his first assignment, in 1998, to investigate an increase in the number of missing women to the harrowing 2002 interrogation of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton, Shenher tells a story of massive police failure—failure of the police to use the information about Pickton available to them, failure to understand the dark world of drug addiction and sex work, and failure to save more women from their killer.

That Lonely Section of Hell passionately pursues the deeper truths behind the causes of this tragedy and the myriad ways the system failed to protect vulnerable people.

A murder at the nexus of Silicon Valley, California surf culture, and the cannabis gold rush reveals the dark side of the legal weed business in this revelatory and page-turning work of investigative journalism.

The grisly abduction and murder of a tech entrepreneur at his multimillion-dollar Santa Cruz home sets off a police investigation for the killers and their motive, and the “persons of interest” list balloons even before the body is found.

Santa Cruz is one of the country’s surf meccas and a favored getaway of the Silicon Valley elite, nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Illegal marijuana has been cultivated for decades here, one of the most significant regions in the country for the crop. It’s where Ken Kesey threw his wild parties and where Alfred Hitchcock spent his later, haunted years. And it’s where Tushar Atre, Silicon Valley founder and serial entrepreneur, was brutally murdered.

Charismatic, ambitious, arrogant, and rich, Atre was the leader among a clutch of tech execs with a voracious appetite for work and danger, who strove to maximize their personal and professional potential through exhilarating, adrenaline-charged pursuits, riding waves at dawn and going on to work fourteen-hour days. Atre had a vision of “disrupting” the newly legal cannabis business through a series of start-ups, and his brash Silicon Valley approach made him contemptuous of the rules. His plan was to fund the legal start-ups by laundering proceeds from the massive black-market cannabis industry. This risky and illegal pursuit would put him in business with an array of colorful and dangerous characters, many of whom, it turns out, had compelling reason to want him dead.

Journalist Scott Eden’s fearless, page-turning investigation keeps pace with—and at times outstrips—the expansive eight-month police investigation into the murder, the largest in decades for the Santa Cruz sheriff’s department, and leads to a shocking, unexpected conclusion. Along the way, Eden presents a panoramic and unprecedented exposé of the legal weed world and its entangled, symbiotic relationship to its vast, deadly, illegal counterpart.

Inside a drug war so screwy that people don’t know what’s illegal—until it’s too late.
 
Bizarro is a page-turning tale of the unprecedented prosecution of Burton Ritchie and Ben Galecki, the Florida-based founders of a sprawling “spice” (synthetic cannabinoid) operation. With this book, journalist and former New York City narcotics prosecutor Jordan S. Rubin exposes a Reagan-era law called the Analogue Act, which targets dealers selling drugs that are “substantially similar” to controlled substances—an unwieldy law that produces erratic results in court.
 
Rubin brings readers deep inside the synthetic war, exploring how Ritchie and Galecki landed in its crosshairs and why one of the DEA’s own chemists may have been their best chance at freedom, until he was arrested too. This stranger-than-fiction narrative is backed by thousands of pages of court records and exclusive interviews with defendants, lawyers, law enforcement, celebrities, and more. Bizarro reveals the world of underground chemists making drugs faster than the government can ban them, dealers making millions in a gray market, and a justice system run amok.

Investigating the unsolved murder of a female law student and the pervasive violence against Guatemalan women that drives migration.

Part memoir and part forensic investigation, Textures of Terror is a gripping first-person story of women, violence, and migration out of Guatemala—and how the United States is implicated. Accompanying Jorge Velásquez in a years-long search for answers after the brutal murder of his daughter Claudina Isabel, Victoria Sanford explores what it means to seek justice in "postconflict" countries where violence never ended.

Through this father's determined struggle and other stories of justice denied, Textures of Terror offers a deeper understanding of US policies in Latin America and their ripple effect on migration. Sanford offers an up-close appraisal of the inner workings of the Guatemalan criminal justice system and how it maintains inequality, patriarchy, and impunity. Presenting the stories of other women who have suffered at the hands of strangers, intimate partners, and the security forces, this work reveals the deeply gendered nature of power and violence in Guatemala.

Up the close and down the stair,
Up and down with Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox the man who buys the beef.
—anonymous children's song

On Halloween night 1828, in the West Port district of Edinburgh, Scotland, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century, outflanking even Jack the Ripper's. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare would be accused of killing sixteen people over the course of twelve months in order to sell the corpses as "subjects" for dissection. The ensuing criminal investigation into the "Anatomy Murders" raised troubling questions about the common practices by which medical men obtained cadavers, the lives of the poor in Edinburgh's back alleys, and the ability of the police to protect the public from cold-blooded murder.

Famous among true crime aficionados, Burke and Hare were the first serial killers to capture media attention, yet The Anatomy Murders is the first book to situate their story against the social and cultural forces that were bringing early nineteenth-century Britain into modernity. In Lisa Rosner's deft treatment, each of the murder victims, from the beautiful, doomed Mary Paterson to the unfortunate "Daft Jamie," opens a window on a different aspect of this world in transition. Tapping into a wealth of unpublished materials, Rosner meticulously portrays the aspirations of doctors and anatomists, the makeshift existence of the so-called dangerous classes, the rudimentary police apparatus, and the half-fiction, half-journalism of the popular press.

The Anatomy Murders resurrects a tale of murder and medicine in a city whose grand Georgian squares and crescents stood beside a maze of slums, a place in which a dead body was far more valuable than a living laborer.