Showing results by author "Kathleen McKenna Hewtson" in All Categories

As the ‘Funeral Bride,’ Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt marries Tsar Nicholas II only a week after the premature death of his father, Tsar Alexander III. Already dismissed out of hand by the court, Alexandra has to further contend with the continuing ambition of her mother-in-law, the Dowager-Empress Minnie, who has no intention of ceding imperial precedence to the new Empress or of giving up one inch of her power and influence over her emotionally-dependent son, the new Tsar. Nevertheless, Empress Alexandra is determined to stamp her authority on Russia as a whole and on Nicholas in ...

From the author of 'Murdaugh, She Wrote' and 'The Night My Husband Killed Me' ... In August of 2018, in a wealthy Denver suburb, a shocked and horrified nation learned that Christopher Lee Watts had murdered his pregnant wife, their two little girls and their unborn son. But shock was soon replaced by puzzlement. Why? And the surprising answer is that a standard Anadarko Petroleum employee policy led, unintentionally of course, to the murders. By early 2018, the Watts family finances were beyond dire again after a recent shattering bankruptcy, then Chris Watts’ employer, Anardarko ...

The love story of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia has long been considered a fairytale romance with a startlingly tragic ending, when the entire Imperial Romanov Family was shot and bayoneted to death by a Bolshevik firing squad in a cellar in Ekaterinburg on July 17, 1918. Nicholas and Alexandra were famously devoted to each other, writing each other cooing notes daily, but successive tides of political, military, and then revolutionary, history swept them away. At least that is the received wisdom, but the truth is somewhat more complicated. Tsar Nicholas never wanted to ...

From the best-selling author of ‘Murdaugh, She Wrote: High Crimes in the Lowcountry’ and ‘Blood & Marriage’ … Volume 2: ‘Murdaugh, She Wrote: After the Trial.’ The original book, now Volume 1, was published before the trial of Alex Murdaugh for the murder of his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul, that started on January 23, 2023, because the author was not expecting that there would be a trial at all. Well, we all get some things wrong … and this second volume is about how Alex Murdaugh’s story got told during his police interviews and the trial itself. The climax of the ...

1914, and the intense shadows of an unexpectedly fiery summer that is burning up the whole of Europe are hiding beneath them the darker shadows of the “war to end all wars.” And these shadows, in turn, are concealing the darkest shadows of them all – those predicting a violent revolution that will draw to a shocking close the Romanov dynasty in Russia that will devour its children. Meanwhile, Empress Alexandra, always more focused on what is happening right there in her boudoir, is more concerned about the possibility of a palace coup, as she suspects that her disconcertingly uppity ...

The plan was simple: to kill Diana – as Diana herself had predicted six months before – in a car crash. Should she merely end up being injured, then it was imperative that she should die in the immediate aftermath of the accident, whatever it took. And, as it turned out, it took some of the most bizarre medical treatment ever handed out to a crash victim, but only a few people ever noticed that. … And yet Diana survived, and what she has to tell the world will surely blow the British Royal Family apart. Still beautiful, still funny, still angry, she’d like to talk about her supposed...

From the best selling author of 'Blood & Marriage' and 'Murdaugh, She Wrote' ... A movie heart-throb A sports superstar An aristocrat A brilliant surgeon Killers all. These are the stories of those they killed.Their wives. 'The Night my Husband Killed Me', is the story of four women who were murdered by their husbands. All of the women were beautiful, and were either famous at the time of their deaths, or became famous for being the victims of the charismatic, disturbed men who ended their lives. Being dead doesn’t end a woman’s feelings, or her anger. There is Natalie, the ...

Jonestown. Maybe there will be a time when the future forgets the narcissistic money-making machine that was the ‘Peoples Temple,’ founded in Indiana by the Reverend Jim Jones, nurtured in Ukiah, triumphant in San Francisco, and finally destroyed in the violent, poisonous bloodbath of nearly a thousand people – over a third of them children – on November 18th, 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana, after it had long begun to resemble systematized slavery overseen by the drug-bathed megalomania of the same Reverend Jim Jones and his brutal inner circle. But that time has not yet come. The ...

After the near-catastrophic events of the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution, the years 1907-13 passed relatively peacefully in Russia as Chief Minister Stolypin steered the country away from war and civil disruption, and toward industrialization and economic prosperity. However, in Tsarskoe Selo, the closeted domestic life of the Imperial Family was far from calm. While Emperor Nicholas II cloistered himself away in his study, Empress Alexandra struggled with her own chronic ill-health and that of the light of her life, the Tsarevich Alexei, whose hemophilia threatened the future ...

This is the story of the strange death and sad marriage of Eric Richins. On the night of March 3-4, 2022, a young woman in Utah, Kouri Richins, called 911 saying, “my husband is cold.” So began the mystery of Eric Richins. The autopsy showed he died from a massive overdose of Fentanyl. His family and friends say he did not use drugs, and his beautiful young widow at first agreed. Then she was arrested for his murder, and her story changed. Eric and Kouri were a young, healthy, wealthy couple, who had it all: beautiful children, a big house, plenty of money, and an “almost perfect ...

Empress Alexandra is triumphant. After producing four daughters, who are regarded as of no consequence by her mother-in-law, Dowager-Empress Minnie, and the court, she has at last given birth to a son and heir, the Tsarevich Alexei. This success, after so many years of praying, hoping and despairing, will not ensure her popularity in Russia, but it will at least convince everyone that Alix has fulfilled her primary duty as an Empress, which should in turn gain her more freedom to live as she wishes amid her cozy little family and away from the burdens and responsibilities imposed upon her ...

Can the living haunt the living? When Izzy Stanley, an ambitious TV broadcaster, hears that Susan Atkins has petitioned to be released from prison to be allowed to die peacefully at home, she cannot resist making the wise-crack on air that Susan Atkins' petition is only fair as she herself helped Sharon Tate to die peacefully at home in her turn. Her impromptu remark inevitably provokes a tumultuous response, and prompts Susan Atkins herself to demand to see her to explain her perspective now that she has found God, which seems like the journalistic coup of the century. Even better, Izzy ...

When Jessie Sands’ partner, Mark, points her toward a newspaper article about two men seemingly having died in the former home of an international movie star and Hollywood sex symbol, Jessie gets into her Ford truck and breaks into the grounds, to find a house constructed entirely in pink, right down to the deserted heart-shaped swimming pool. She is intrigued. There has to be something she can do with this house, something spectacular, a project she can really devote body and soul to. But has the former occupant really left and what about all those beautiful girls who are about to die?

From the best selling author of 'Blood & Marriage,' 'Murdaugh, She Wrote' and 'The Night My Husband Killed Me,' and inspired by the Casey Anthony case ... Denise Brown grows up with a burning desire to live large and party long by flaunting the hottest body and the tightest booty in town. Unfortunately, the fun-loving boy of her dreams isn’t about to hang around with her two year old daughter, Deeley, so for a few weeks Denise decides to ask a child minder to look after her while she spends time with Aaron, who is planning to return to New York shortly. Then the nanny takes off with ...

Based on conversations with Lady Lucan ... A British aristocrat murders his children’s nanny, mistaking her in the dark for his wife, and disappears, never to be seen again. For forty years the British press will look for him. There will be ‘sightings’, there will be leads, but the police will eventually close the case when he is officially declared dead. For many, the whole affair was the best and most addictive of mysteries, based on a tragedy, and before that on a turbulent marriage between a breathtakingly handsome, elegant and noble gambler and an inept, and possibly insane, ...

April 1917 finds the Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia under house arrest at Tsarskoe Selo after the tsar’s abdication in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Michael. What was once Empress Alexandra’s cozy retreat, the Alexander Palace, is now cold, forbidding, servantless, overrun by revolutionary soldiers, and without lighting or heating. And several of her children, Maria in particular, are still at death’s door suffering from the measles and pneumonia that has prevented the family from escaping its fate. Rasputin’s prophecy/curse that, if he were to be killed by a ...

When Leeann Worthier agreed to marry the wealthy George Willets, she never dreamed that she would end up living in a house she had feared her whole life, the horror mansion where her brother had died. And as she would soon discover, her worst fears were about to be realized.