Showing titles in Serial Killers

On January 7, 1994, residents of the Berkshire Hills woke up to a typical snowy winter day in the majestic woods of Western Massachusetts. The quaint New England towns, the idyllic scenery and the people who lived there could have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

The year 1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Long-haired teenagers roam the streets, strumming guitars and preaching about peace and love...and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire—the leader of their counterculture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands out hallucinogenic drugs like candy. But beneath his benign persona lies a twisted and uncontrollable rage that threatens to break loose at any moment. Tony Costa is the most dangerous man on Cape Cod.

Lurking beneath the progressive activism and sex positivity in the 1970 to '80s, a dark undercurrent of violence rippled across the American landscape. With reported cases of sexual assault and homicide on the rise, the FBI created a specialized team - the “Mindhunters”, better known as the Behavioral Science Unit - to track down the country's most dangerous criminals. And yet narrowing down a seemingly infinite list of potential suspects seemed daunting at best and impossible at worst - until Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess stepped on the scene.

American Ripper is the true story of Gerard John Schaefer, a Florida law enforcement officer who was a prolific serial killer in the late 1960s early 1970s. The decade that was thought to be filled with love, peace, and happiness became a new dark age, breeding more serial killers than any other time in US history including Charles Manson, the Zodiac Killer, the Son of Sam, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy, who was held in the same prison as Schaefer and whom he both idolized and resented for the recognition his crimes brought him, a recognition Schaefer never received.

The definitive book on the hunt to find the most ruthless serial killer in Los Angeles' history, told by the fearless reporter who broke the story. In 2008, Christine Pelisek broke the story of a terrifying serial killer who went unchecked in Los Angeles for decades, killing the most vulnerable women in one South Central neighborhood.

A small town, East Texas love triangle ends in a brutal execution. A teenage girl guns down her loving mother. A drag queen falls in love with a beautiful young woman, resulting in a horrific murder. A woman left for dead by a serial killer refuses to be a victim. These are just four of the cases explored in Murder, I Write, an exciting new anthology by critically acclaimed true crime author Kathryn Casey.

There’s a California that everyone imagines, a world of Hollywood glitz and Silicon Valley, and then there’s the real California. The one where everything is the color of dirt. Where the speed freaks gangbang on Haight Street, where evil is lurking, where violence erupts like cystic acne. The place was never crazier than the ’60s and the ’70s, a time when Dad transformed from a hippie-hating Reagan voter into a weed-addled swinger with a crash pad in the Valley. And right in that moment? There’s this guy who calls himself Zodiac.

In 1967, during the time of peace, free love, and hitchhiking, 19-year-old Mary Terese Fleszar was last seen walking home to her apartment in Ypsilanti, Michigan. One month later, her naked body stabbed over 30 times and missing both feet and a forearm was discovered on an abandoned farm. A year later, the body of 20-year-old Joan Schell was found, similarly violated. Over the next two years, five more bodies of female students were uncovered around the area.

In this audiobook is a unique, never-before-published look at the investigations undertaken to stop the depredations of America's most infamous serial killer, Ted Bundy. Presented here in an easy-to-follow chronology are the raw, unedited and most fascinating official case files as they appeared to the detectives from the Pacific Northwest to the Rocky Mountains to Florida.

Ice and Bone is the chilling true account of how a demented murderer initially evaded police and avoided conviction only to slip back into the shadows and kill again. Journalist and writer Monte Francis tells the harrowing story of what eventually led to Wade's capture and reveals why the true scope of his murderous rampage is only now, more than a decade later, coming into view.

Nashville - a haven for aspiring musicians and a magnet for country-music fans. By the time Pat Postiglione arrived there in 1980, it was also the scene of an unsolved series of vicious sex slayings that served as a harbinger of worse to come. As Postiglione was promoted from street-beat Metro cop to detective sergeant heading Music City’s elite cold-case Murder Squad, some of America’s most bizarre, elusive, and savage serial killers were calling Nashville home. And during the next two decades, the body count climbed.

In the early evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For 13 years, no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders", though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward.

The science of personality theory has advanced dramatically in recent years clearing the way for this useful and edifying speculation about the inner workings of horrific serial killers. Applying personality theory to more than a dozen of the most notorious serial killers in modern history, the mystery surrounding their crimes begins to unravel. What drives them to commit horrific crimes? How does sexual desire fit into their motivation? Why do some stop killing while others escalate? What are the different types of serial killers based on personality theory?

The Baby Farm Murders is a chilling account of Amelia Dyer, who was responsible for the deaths of up to 400 children, making her one of the most prolific serial killers in True Crime history. Ryan Green provides a suspenseful narrative that draws the listener into the real-life horror experienced by the victims with all the elements of a captivating thriller.

On June 14, 1962, twenty-five-year-old Juris Slesers arrived at his mother's apartment to drive her to church. But there was no answer at the door. When he pushed his way inside, Juris found Anna Slesers dead on the kitchen floor, the cord of her housecoat knotted tightly around her neck. Drawn from hundreds of hours of personal interviews, as well as police, medical, and court documentation, this is a grisly, horrifying, and meticulously researched account of Albert DeSalvo - an American serial killer on par with Jack the Ripper.

In his 26 years in the field, Richard Taylor has worked on well over a hundred murder cases, with victims and perpetrators from all walks of life. In this fascinating memoir, Taylor draws on some of the most tragic, horrific and illuminating of these cases - as well as dark secrets from his own family's past - to explore some of the questions he grapples with every day: why do people kill? Does committing a monstrous act make someone a monster? Could any of us, in the wrong circumstances, become a killer?

Professor Patricia Wiltshire is a forensic ecologist, her days spent at crime scenes collecting samples, standing over dead bodies in a mortuary, or looking down her microscope for evidence. Working at the interface of where the criminal and natural world interact, Patricia has been involved in some of the most high-profile murder cases. Now, through a study of her most infamous, and fascinating cases—including the murder of Sarah Payne, and the Soham murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman—Patricia will show us how she finds the answers to some of the worst crimes imaginable.

In May 1996, two skilled backcountry leaders, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, entered Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a week-long backcountry camping trip. The free-spirited and remarkable young couple had met and fallen in love the previous summer while working at a world-renowned outdoor program for women. During their final days in the park, they descended the narrow remnants of a trail and pitched their tent in a hidden spot. After the pair didn’t return home as planned, park rangers found a scene of horror at their campsite.

Understand history's most enigmatic serial killer. In December of 1968, a serial killer began orchestrating a campaign of terror in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not satisfied with the simple act of murder, he taunted law enforcement and the public by writing letters to local newspapers. Through often cryptic and bizarre content - including four ciphers, three of which have never been solved - the psychopath played a twisted game. Reporters dubbed the man the "Cipher Killer", but the murderer chose a different name for himself: The Zodiac. Eventually, he would claim to have murdered 37.

Chicago during the Gaslight Era was a place that embodied both the elegance of America’s Gilded Age and the vice, crime, and sin of the most corrupt city in the country. During the 1880s and early 1890s, Chicago was home to killers, thieves, gamblers, con artists, and whores–and hosted perhaps the greatest World’s Fair in our nation’s history. It was to this place that a man named H.H. Holmes was drawn like a moth to the flame, and Chicago embraced him as one of its own.