-
Gruesome Iowa
- Murder, Madness, and the Macabre in the Hawkeye State
- Narrated by: Peter Kenyon
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
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Publisher's summary
Murder, madness, and the macabre in Iowa? You've got to be kidding!
When most people think of Iowa, their minds conjure up pigs, cornfields, and crotchety old farmers. But ax murders, mass killings, and ghostly sightings - those atrocities are reserved for big cities like Chicago or LA, not a little burg like Villisca, Iowa - population 2,000.
People refuse to believe that a hundred years ago, every eye in the nation turned to Villisca, Iowa where eight people were butchered in their sleep by a madman using only an ax. Attention quickly turned to the Reverend Lyn Kelley, "a queer, strange, little preacher man", often accused of window peeping.
The police forced a confession from him.
Kelley said he was walking by the Moore house when a voice commanded him to, "Go in. Slay utterly". What could he do? He climbed the stairs and slaughtered the children. "Slay utterly. Suffer the little children".
Back downstairs, he went into the parent's bedroom. "More work yet. There must be sacrifices of blood". Again, the ax did its work.
In another downstairs bedroom, he discovered the Stillinger girls, asleep in their beds. "More work still". The ax resumed its work.
Eight people were dead. The ax was satisfied.
When Kelley recanted his confession, investigators turned their attention to Senator Frank Jones. Old-timers hinted there had been bad blood between Jones and Joe Moore (the deceased) ever since Moore left his position at Jones’ farm implement store and opened the local John Deere dealership.
Another rumor had it; Joe Moore was sleeping with Albert Jones’ wife. But that theory didn’t hold water, either. Reports linked Dona Jones to half the men in Villisca.
Detectives developed dozens of others suspects over the years, but none of them panned out. The Villisca Ax Murders remain Iowa’s most famous cold-case file.
Gruesome Iowa is a collection of true-life stories - most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this audiobook - such as the Villisca Ax Murders have ever made it into print. Except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph.
Listen to them now, if you dare!
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- Length: 17 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of the murderer who has become one of America's great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century.
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The truth
- By Anna Fluellen on 09-08-17
By: Adam Selzer
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The Dillinger Days
- By: John Toland
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For 13 violent months in the 1930s, John Dillinger and his gang swept through the Midwest. The criminals of the Depression robbed almost at will, as the Indiana State Police had only 41 members, including clerks and typists. Dillinger's daring escapes at Crown Point jail or through the withering machine gun fire of FBI agents at Little Bohemia Lodge, along with his countless bank robberies, excited the imagination of a despondent country.
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Must have been written by Hoover
- By Jimmy Oneal on 09-03-20
By: John Toland
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Lust Killer
- By: Ann Rule, Andy Stack
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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When young women begin mysteriously disappearing in Oregon, Police Lieutenant James Stovall leads a relentless search for a killer. With little evidence available, and the public screaming for answers, he must find a remorseless, brutal killer whose identity will shock them all....
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Great book on Brudos!
- By Ms.Bliss on 01-06-18
By: Ann Rule, and others
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A Brotherhood Betrayed
- The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc.
- By: Michael Cannell
- Narrated by: Gary Galone
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was set to begin that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Syndicate. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel....
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History from the bottom up
- By Mark on 12-12-21
By: Michael Cannell
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Love Me to Death
- The Chilling True Story of WIlliam “Wild Bill Cody” Neal—The Vicious Denver Lady-Killer
- By: Steve Jackson
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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William Neal, who called himself "Wild Bill Cody," was seductive and skillful at separating love-struck women from their money, and ultimately, their lives. Apprehended by police, Neal, who proclaimed himself “better than Ted Bundy,” pleaded guilty to three murders then insisted on representing himself at his death penalty trial. But the psychopathic killer found himself up against the incredible courage of his one surviving victim.
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Disappointed
- By donald on 02-09-23
By: Steve Jackson
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The Wrong Man
- The Final Verdict on the Dr. Sam Sheppard Murder Case
- By: James Neff
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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At 5:40 a.m. on July 4, 1954, the mayor of Bay Village, a small suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, received a frantic phone call from his neighbor Dr. Sam Sheppard. The news was too terrible to comprehend: Marilyn, Sam's lovely wife, was dead, her face and torso beaten beyond recognition by an unknown assailant who had knocked Sam unconscious and escaped just before dawn. In the adjacent bedroom, Chip, the Sheppards' seven-year-old son, had slept through the entire ordeal. Almost immediately, the police began to suspect Sam Sheppard.
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Outstanding! But troubling
- By Tyree on 09-26-22
By: James Neff
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The Feud
- The Hatfields and McCoys: The True Story
- By: Dean King
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Filled with bitter quarrels, reckless affairs, treacherous betrayals, relentless mercenaries, and courageous detectives, The Feud is the riveting story of two frontier families struggling for survival within the narrow confines of an unforgiving land. It is a formative American tale, and in it, we see the reflection of our own family bonds and the lengths to which we might go in order to defend our honor, our loyalties, and our livelihood.
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Get out the pad and pencil .....
- By Alan on 10-15-13
By: Dean King
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Killers of the Flower Moon
- The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee, Danny Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
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An outstanding story, highly recommended
- By S. Blakely on 06-22-17
By: David Grann
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The Want Ad Killer
- By: Ann Rule
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death - using want ads to lure his young female victims. And time after time, justice was thwarted by a killer whose twisted legal genius was matched only by his sick savagery. Here, complete with the testimony of women who suffered his unspeakable sexual abuses and barely escaped with their lives and of the police who at last put him behind bars, is one of the most shattering and thought-provoking true-crime stories of our time.
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Paul Booooomer
- By Murder Fancier on 04-08-17
By: Ann Rule
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Alice & Gerald
- A Homicidal Love Story
- By: Ron Franscell
- Narrated by: Chris Lutkin
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1974, Alice, a desperate young mother in a gritty Wyoming boomtown, kills her husband and dumps his body where it will never be found, then slips away and starts a new life. But when her new man's ex-wife and two kids start demanding more of him, Alice delivers an ultimatum: fix the problem or lose her forever. With Alice's help, Gerald fixes the problem in an extraordinarily ghastly way...and they live happily ever after...that is, until 2013, almost 40 years later, when somebody finds a dead man's skeleton in a place where Alice thought he'd never be found.
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HORRIBLE narration!
- By gauzy on 09-25-19
By: Ron Franscell
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The Burning
- Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
- By: Tim Madigan
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.
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Hard to listen to, but a must read.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-17-20
By: Tim Madigan