Showing results for "unabridged" in Abductions, Kidnapping & Missing Persons

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now. For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined.

Journalist and podcaster Andrew Rule brings us eighteen Australian crime stories that have fuelled fears, fired outrage and broken hearts and dreams. Among them are events so infamous that a word or phrase propels us back to a time and place. The author has covered crime for decades with a novelist's eye and forensic attention to truth, and lived to tell the tales. These are the best of them.

Their names echo through true crime history like dark legends: John Wayne Gacy, the Zodiac Killer, Richard Ramirez, Aileen Wuornos, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and the Golden State Killer. Their infamous deeds have been exhaustively chronicled across every medium imaginable. But beyond these household names lies a shadow world of equally chilling cases that rarely make headlines or streaming television documentaries.

In the early hours of 27th January 1996, after an evening spent celebrating at Club Bayview in the Perth suburb of Claremont, 18-year-old Sarah Spiers called a taxi to nearby Mosman Park. But when the cab arrived, she’d already gone. She was never seen again. Four months later, on 9th June 1996, 23-year-old Jane Rimmer disappeared from the same area, her body later found in bushland south of Perth. When the body of a third young woman, 27-year-old Ciara Glennon, was found north of the city, having vanished from Claremont in August 1997, it was clear a serial killer was on the loose.

As a park ranger with the National Park Service's law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service's bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, and left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbles across a mystery that pulls her right back where she left off: three young men have vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail.

Revelatory investigation into the police handling of the Yorkshire Ripper Case which spanned over 14 years. For the first time, the files have been opened, the detectives are talking and the victims are reliving the nightmare. For almost 20 years the dark secrets of the biggest criminal manhunt in British history have remained a closed book.

From murder and robberies to arson and blackmail, the 20 stories in this book are some of the most fascinating true crime stories ever recorded. Each of these cases is so bizarre that they confounded the police, baffled investigators and captured the attention of the press all over the world. These short and accessible stories include encyclopaedic information on when and how the crimes were committed, the background of each criminal, and their trials and punishments - for those that were caught.

Kidnapped tells the astounding true story of how this crime was planned and committed, and describes the extraordinary police investigation that was launched to track the criminal down. Mark Tedeschi explores the mind of the intriguing and seriously flawed Stephen Bradley, and also the points of view of the victim, his family - and the police, whose work pioneered the use of many techniques that are now considered commonplace, marking the beginning of modern-day forensic science in Australia.

Fred and Rose West are virtually unique in British criminal history: a husband and wife who loved and killed together. During their long relationship, the Wests murdered a series of young women, burying the remains of nine victims under their home at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, including those of their daughter. What was left of Fred West's eight-year-old stepdaughter was dug up from under the Wests' previous Gloucester home; his first wife and nanny were buried in open country.

The Lady Vanishes is an engrossing story of how a small team of seasoned investigative journalists and storytellers, a daughter's intuition, and a team of listener super-sleuths uncovered a web of intrigue spanning nine decades and three continents, and how—after 57 episodes, 20 million downloads, and sparking a coronial inquiry—they discovered at the heart of the mystery a stranger-than-fiction international man of mystery who could hold the key to what really happened to Marion.

Gaia Cooper is just 14 years old when she is groomed by a criminal gang and forced to commit organised credit card fraud. Despite being placed in care – somewhere Gaia should feel safe – she is left even more vulnerable, and is horrifically abused and exploited by the men manipulating her. Will the authorities save Gaia – or will she have to save herself?

This compilation of 36 stories across three True Crime books contains deeply disturbing content. Unlike typical news reports or TV shows that often sanitize the details of heinous acts, these accounts present an unflinching look at the darkest corners of human behavior. In this collection, you'll find 36 True Crime stories from the last several decades. Many of which you may never have heard of.

Lindsey always knew she wanted to be a detective. Her inspiration came after reading about the murders committed by Ted Bundy, who grew up in her hometown of Tacoma, Washington. Also seared into her memory was the 1986 murder of a young girl who'd been out for a bike ride when she went missing. The teen was later found murdered, but the case was never solved. The senseless killing of an innocent young girl would leave a black cloud over Tacoma for three decades.

Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff’s edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it’s this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it’s that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick.

Josef Fritzl was a 73-year-old retired engineer in Austria. He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family - though one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been "lost" to a religious cult. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth's children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls' doorstep; Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth's disappearance.... For 27 years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon.

From the 1940s through the 1960s, young pregnant women entered the front door of a clinic in a small North Georgia town. Sometimes their babies exited out the back, sold to Northern couples who were desperate to hold a newborn in their arms. But these weren't adoptions - they were transactions. And one unethical doctor was exploiting other people's tragedies. Jane Blasio was one of those babies.

Journey into the darkest corners of the human psyche with twelve meticulously researched accounts of unspeakable crimes that shocked communities and challenged our understanding of evil. From sprawling estates to quiet small towns, these cases reveal how murderous intent can hide behind the most ordinary facades—sometimes in places we least expect.

Not everyone can stomach the grim details of True Crime. Yet, for some, an unshakable allure draws them closer - be it a quest for justice, a desire to understand the mind of a killer, or curiosity about how the cases were solved. True Crime Case Histories Volume 14 brings to light twelve new stories spanning the past fifty years, exposing the depths of human depravity.

With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators, and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Best-selling true-crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.

For decades, when criminal cases of the most unprecedented nature went to trial, one woman took the stand to separate truth from fiction. Expert Witness is the extraordinary story of forensic and psychiatric pioneer Dr. Ann Burgess—inspiration for Hulu’s forthcoming docuseries Mastermind—and how she revolutionized what it means to be an expert witness in the American court system. Written through Burgess’ singular lens of compassion and lived experience, Expert Witness pulls back the curtain on some of the biggest cases in the last thirty years.