Showing titles in True Crime

An “extraordinary” (Nylon) firsthand account of the creation of a modern cult and the costs paid by its young victims: a group of college roommates “Intense . . . [a tale] of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable.”—Salon The inspiration for the Hulu...

TrafficKing uncovers a child sex trafficking case of epic proportions and the longest-running human trafficking case in US legal history - more poignant than the Lewinsky case, Watergate scandal, and Profumo affair combined. Eleven years after the registered level-3 sex offender was arrested, four cases associated with his 2005 criminal investigation remain open. The pedophile was not prosecuted under The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), a law enacted in Florida in 2000. In this gripping exposé, Sarnoff finds out why.

On May 5, 1981, three rebellious members of New York's Bonanno crime family were gunned down in a Brooklyn social club. One of the gunmen was Vito Rizzuto, a man who would rise to the top of the underworld in Canada and then expand his reign across continents to become a global superboss. The Sixth Family, now revised and updated, reveals the hidden history of the rise of the Rizzuto clan, the alliances it forged around the world, and the bloody events that led to charges against Vito Rizzuto in the United States and Italy for racketeering and corruption.

A Lie Too Big to Fail asserts the idea that a government can never investigate itself in a crime of this magnitude. Was the convicted Sirhan Sirhan a willing participant? Or was he a mind-controlled assassin? It has fallen to independent researchers like Pease to lay out the evidence in a clear and concise manner, allowing listeners to form their theories about this event. Pease places the history of this event in the context of the era and provides shocking overlaps between other high-profile murders and attempted murders of the time. 

One of the most feared Chicago mobsters, Sam Giancana, clawed his way to the top of the Mafia hierarchy by starting as a hit man for Al Capone. He was known as one of the best vehicle escape artists, a tenacious business man, and a ruthless killer. He partied with major stars such as Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe and did business with agents ranging from the CIA to the Vatican to the shah of Iran. When politician Joe Kennedy gave Giancana the chance to use mob muscle to get his son John elected, Giancana jumped at the task.

Esteemed Pennsylvania State University professor Robert C. Shaler continues his in-depth look at all aspects of crime scene investigation in part two of this compelling lecture series. Popularized in the media by highly rated police procedurals, crime scene investigation is an often misunderstood field of endeavor. Here, Professor Shaler breaks down the intricacies of how investigations are conducted in the real world, examining such aspects as bloodstain analysis, shooting scenes, and “forensic bugs”.

On October 20, 1973, in San Francisco, a White couple strolling down Telegraph Hill was set upon and butchered by four young Black men. Thus began a reign of terror that lasted six months and left 15 Whites dead and the entire city in a state of panic. The perpetrators wanted nothing less than a race war.

There is a saying in Russian jails. Ne ver ne boysya ne prosi: don't trust, don't fear, don't beg. Don't trust because life here will always disappoint you. Don't fear because whatever you're scared of, you are powerless to prevent it. And don't beg because nobody ever begged their way out of a Russian prison cell. The plan was to attach a Greenpeace pod to Gazprom's platform and launch a peaceful protest against oil being pumped from the icy waters of the Arctic.

For the first time, the full story of a crime that has haunted New England since 1873. The cold-blooded ax murder of two innocent Norwegian women at their island home off the coast of New Hampshire has gripped the region since 1873, beguiling tourists, inspiring artists, and fueling conspiracy theorists. The killer, a handsome Prussian fisherman down on his luck, was quickly captured, convicted in a widely publicized trial, and hanged in an unforgettable gallows spectacle.

Conducted under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, intended to stem the flow of firearms to Mexico, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gun walking” sting operations, including Operations Wide Receiver and Operation Fast & Furious. The government allowed licensed gun dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers so that they could continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels.

Early in the morning of Monday, 8 July 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes and his 12-year-old brother, Nattie, set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbours, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next 10 days, Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside.

Kim Philby, the so-called Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring, was the Cold War's most infamous traitor, a Soviet spy at the heart of British intelligence. Philby joined Britain's secret service MI6 during the war and went on to head the section tasked with rooting out Russian spies before becoming the service's chief liaison officer with the CIA. He betrayed hundreds of British and US agents to the Russians and compromised numerous operations inside the Soviet Union.

In 1954, in a remote South American village, a four-year-old girl was abducted and then abandoned deep in the Colombian rainforest. So begins the incredible true story of Marina Chapman, who went on to spend several years alone in the jungle, her only family a troop of capuchin monkeys. Using instinct to guide her, she copied everything they did and soon learned to fend for herself. At around 10 years old, a completely feral Marina was returned to civilisation by hunters, who sold her as a slave to a brothel. Beaten daily and groomed to be a prostitute, she escaped - to live the perilous existence of a Colombian city street kid.

One Marine's Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures. A blend of treasure hunt, police procedural, war-time thriller, and exposé of the international black-market in stolen art, told in the voice of a truly remarkable man: a soldier, a...

A Prayer Before Dawn is the true story of one man's fight to survive inside Klong Prem prison, the notorious Bangkok Hilton. Billy Moore traveled to Thailand to escape a life of drug addiction and alcoholism. He managed to overcome his inner demons for a time but relapsed after trying ya ba, a highly addictive form of methamphetamine.

A flicker of light almost appears at the end of the tunnel for prisoner FF8282, as he is transferred to North Sea Camp near Boston, Lincolnshire, a D-category prison. Under a less strict regime, the prisoners can enjoy a more relaxed set of rules, while slowly preparing to someday rejoin the world outside the walls. However, a minor breach of conditions gets him sent off to the notorious HMP Lincoln facility for twenty-two days, where more traumatic experiences await. "Heaven" is the third book in Jeffrey Archer’s bestselling series The Prison Diaries.

On January 14, 2018, a 17-year-old girl climbed out of the window of her Perris, California home and dialed 911 with shaking fingers. Struggling to stay calm, she told the operator that she and her 12 siblings - ranging in age from two to 29 - were being abused by their parents. When the dispatcher asked for her address, the girl hesitated. "I've never been out," she stammered. 

The gritty prison memoir of Michaella McCollum, one half of the infamous 'Peru Two', imprisoned in a Peruvian jail for attempting to smuggle 11kg of cocaine from Peru to Madrid in August 2013. She was just a regular girl, spending the summer working at a bar in Ibiza, until she was approached by a man who asked her if she'd like to make some quick, easy money...and it would change her life forever. This is the truth of her time in prison, told through her own diaries and letters to her mother, family and friends.

In 2006, Mary Turner Thomson’s world shattered when she discovered her husband Will was a bigamist, con man and convicted sex offender. Unbeknownst to her, this would be the start of a bold new chapter in her life, fighting to protect other women from his heartless gaslighting campaigns—and putting a stop to his endless deception. Mary thought her story would end with the revelation that Will in fact had several families—and numerous children. But when she discovered that he had continued to prey on new victims, she vowed to turn his betrayal into a force for good.

The author describes the experience of being in bombed-out, dangerous, post-war Nuremberg, where she lived for two years while working on the trial. This landmark trial resulted in the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, which sets the guidelines for medical research involving human beings. Doctors from Hell is a significant addition to the literature on World War II and the Holocaust, medical ethics, human rights, and the barbaric depths to which human beings can descend.