"The unknown is scary. It’s unknown for a reason. That's why normal people don't go there."
Geoff Green, Paying for the Past
*Top 10 Tuesday was created by the blog Broke and Bookish, if you want to see all the topics, past and future, you can go here.
I really enjoy bad "True Crime" tv shows, so of course I want to try the same thing in book form!
I keep adding this kind of read to my tbr list and I keep not buying those damn books for some reason, even though I'm dying to immerse myself in these worlds. Oh well!
Do you read True Crime books? Do you have some suggestions for me? Tell me in the comments below!
1. Cold Cases: Famous Unsolved Mysteries, Crimes, and Disappearances in America by Helena Katz
Synopsis
And popular TV shows like "Law and Order," "CSI," and "Cold Case" document our fascination with police investigations, heinous criminals, and the complicated aftermath of their actions.
This book examines 40 well-known cases of unsolved murders and suspected abductions over a period of over 160 years. Cases are organized chronologically to give readers insight into the evolution of criminal investigation techniques and forensics in the last century and a half. Later chapters detail how modern forensics were used in attempts to solve old cold cases or helped generate new leads.
This book examines 40 well-known cases of unsolved murders and suspected abductions over a period of over 160 years. Cases are organized chronologically to give readers insight into the evolution of criminal investigation techniques and forensics in the last century and a half. Later chapters detail how modern forensics were used in attempts to solve old cold cases or helped generate new leads.
2. The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers by Harold Schechter
Synopsis
THE DEFINITIVE DOSSIER ON HISTORY’S MOST HEINOUS!
Hollywood’s make-believe maniacs like Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal Lecter can’t hold a candle to real life monsters like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and scores of others who have terrorized, tortured, and terminated their way across civilization throughout the ages. Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon.
Rigorously researched and packed with the most terrifying, up-to-date information, this innovative and highly compelling compendium covers every aspect of multiple murderers—from psychology to cinema, fetishism to fan clubs, “trophies” to trading cards. Discover:
WHO THEY ARE: Those featured include Ed Gein, the homicidal mama’s boy who inspired fiction’s most famous Psycho, Norman Bates; Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, sex-crazed killer cousins better known as the Hillside Stranglers; and the Beanes, a fifteenth-century cave-dwelling clan with an insatiable appetite for human flesh
HOW THEY KILL: They shoot, stab, and strangle. Butcher, bludgeon, and burn. Drown, dismember, and devour . . . and other methods of massacre too many and monstrous to mention here.
WHY THEY DO IT: For pleasure and for profit. For celebrity and for “companionship.” For the devil and for dinner. For the thrill of it, for the hell of it, and because “such men are monsters, who live . . .
beyond the frontiers of madness.”
PLUS: in-depth case studies, classic killers’ nicknames, definitions of every kind of deviance and derangement, and much, much more.
For more than one hundred profiles of lethal loners and killer couples, Bluebeards and black widows, cannibals and copycats— this is an indispensable, spine-tingling, eye-popping investigation into the dark hearts and mad minds of that twisted breed of human whose crimes are the most frightening . . . and fascinating.
3. The True Crime Files of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Arthur Conan Doyle
Synopsis
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the legendary author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, didn't just dwell in the imaginary world of fictional crimes. He also got involved with two real-life criminal cases-and wrote about them.
Now, "The Case of George Ernest Thompson Edalji" and "The Case of Oscar Slater" are presented in their entirety as originally written, and collected here for the first time in one volume, for true crime readers, legal-thriller fans, history buffs-and all the Sherlock Holmes fans who want to know more about the mind behind their favorite literary detective.
4. Murders Unsolved: Cases That Have Baffled The Authorities For Years, Famous True Crimes, Unsolved Mysteries and Murders (Murder, Scandals and Mayhem, #3) by Mike Riley
Synopsis
Murders Unsolved is a collection of the most baffling cases of unsolved crimes from around the world during the last century. From the famous murder of Marilyn Reese Sheppard, the possible basis for the TV show and movie The Fugitive to the sad and lonely Boy in The Box and from the unsolved murder of Dian Fossey to the still open case of young Amber Hagerman that brought about today’s Amber Alert system, these unsolved mysteries are confusing and frustrating!
Learn more about these unsolved murders:
Helen Brach, the candy heiress Raymond Washington, founder of the Crips Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador Anne Barber Dunlap, found in the trunk of her car And many others.
Read the backstories of these famous true crimes, the possible suspects, the fumbled investigations and other incredible facts and theories surrounding them. Also included are any updates on the cases and where they stand today.
5. Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (Justice Knot #1) by Mara Leveritt
Synopsis
In 2011, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in American legal history was set right when Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley were released after eighteen years in prison. Award-winning journalist Mara Leveritt's The Devil's Knot remains the most comprehensive, insightful reporting ever done on the investigation, trials, and convictions of three teenage boys who became known as the West Memphis Three.
For weeks in 1993, after the murders of three eight-year-old boys, police in West Memphis, Arkansas seemed stymied. Then suddenly, detectives charged three teenagers, alleged members of a satanic cult, with the killings. Despite the witch-hunt atmosphere of the trials, and a case which included stunning investigative blunders, a confession riddled with errors, and an absence of physical evidence linking any of the accused to the crime, the teenagers were convicted. Jurors sentenced Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley to life in prison and Damien Echols, the accused ringleader, to death. The guilty verdicts were popular in their home state, even upheld on appeal, and all three remained in prison until their unprecedented release in August 2011.
With close-up views of its key participants, this award-winning account unravels the many tangled knots of this endlessly shocking case, one which will shape the American legal landscape for years to come.
6. Serial Killer Case Files by R.J. Parker
Synopsis
AN IN-DEPTH examination of serial murderers and their victims, that include the profiles of some of the most prominent murderers of our time. The author addresses various serial killer types: Organized and unorganized, men, women, doctors, and unsolved murder cases.
BESTSELLING AUTHOR RJ Parker delves into the gritty, gruesome details of the most notorious serial killers to strike the United States, Canada and the UK, including the unidentified killers who may still be on the loose.
7. Columbine by Dave Cullen
Synopsis
"The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . . " So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers. In the wake of Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this plague grows more urgent every year.
What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.
8. Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters by Peter Vronsky
Synopsis
The first book of its kind-photographs included.
Mothers, daughters, sisters and grandmothers-fiendish killers all.
Society is conditioned to think of murderers and predators as men, but in this fascinating book, Peter Vronsky exposes and investigates the phenomenon of women who kill-and the political, economic, social, and sexual implications.
From history's earliest recorded cases of homicidal females to Irma Grese, the Nazi Beast of Belsen, from Britain's notorious child-slayer Myra Hindley to 'Honeymoon Killer' Martha Beck, from the sensational murder-spree of Aileen Wournos, to cult killers, homicidal missionaries, and the sexy femme fatale, Vronsky challenges the ordinary standards of good and evil and defies the accepted perceptions of gender role and identity.
9. The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy The Shocking Inside Story by Ann Rule
Synopsis
Utterly unique in its astonishing intimacy, as jarringly frightening as when it first appeared, Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me defies our expectation that we would surely know if a monster lived among us, worked alongside of us, appeared as one of us.
With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually executed for three of those cases.
Drawing from their correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.
10. Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters by Peter Vronsky
Synopsis
The comprehensive examination into the frightening history of serial homicide.
In this unique book, Peter Vronsky documents the psychological, investigative, and cultural aspects of serial murder, beginning with its first recorded instance in Ancient Rome, through fifteenth-century France, up to such notorious contemporary cases as cannibal/necrophile Ed Kemper, Henry Lee Lucas, Ted Bundy, and the emergence of what he classifies as the "serial rampage killer" such as Andrew Cunanan.
Vronsky not only offers sound theories on what makes a serial killer, but also provides concrete suggestions on how to survive an encounter with one-from recognizing verbal warning signs to physical confrontational resistance. Exhaustively researched with transcripts of interviews with killers, and featuring up-to-date information on the apprehension and conviction of the Green River Killer and the Beltway Snipers, Vronsky's one-of-a-kind book covers every conceivable aspect of an endlessly riveting true-crime phenomenon.
11. The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century by Sarah Miller
Synopsis
Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.
In linear narrative, Miller takes readers along as she investigates a brutal crime: the August 4, 1892, murders of wealthy and prominent Andrew and Abby Borden. The accused? Mild-mannered and highly respected Lizzie Borden, daughter of Andrew and stepdaughter of Abby. Most of what is known about Lizzie’s arrest and subsequent trial (and acquittal) comes from sensationalized newspaper reports; as Miller sorts fact from fiction, and as a legal battle gets under way, a portrait of a woman and a town emerges.
With inserts featuring period photos and newspaper clippings.
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