Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in True Crime

Rob Sand, the youngest attorney in his office, was assigned a new case by his boss, who was days away from retirement. Inside the thin accordion binder that Sand received was meager evidence that had been gathered over the course of two years by Iowa authorities regarding a suspicious lottery ticket. No one expected the case to go anywhere. No dead body, no shots fired, and no money paid out. Why should they care?

Growing up in South Boston, Sean Scott Hicks was running jobs for the Irish mob before his voice changed. Mistreated by his drug-addled mother, Hicks found sanctuary with his adoptive family of felonious uncles—known to law enforcement officials as the Winter Hill Gang. These crooks knew where all the bodies were buried—because they’d done the burying—but they also looked out for young Sean. Even the notorious gangster known worldwide as Whitey Bulger was simply “Uncle Jim” to him.

Renee Fehr knew that Gregory Houser killed her sister Sheryl. There was not a single doubt in her mind. Yet for 27 years, Houser walked free. But Renee wouldn’t rest until he was convicted for murder. The Wheels of Justice is equal parts the story of a monstrous killer, a harrowing look at domestic violence, and an inspirational story of a family that wouldn’t quit until justice prevailed.

In the winter of 1913, high in the Canadian Arctic, two Catholic priests set out on a dangerous mission to do what no white men had ever attempted: Reach a group of utterly isolated Eskimos and convert them. Farther and farther north the priests trudged, through a frigid and bleak country known as the Barren Lands, until they reached the place where the Coppermine River dumps into the Arctic Ocean.

The killing of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey—found in the basement of her family home in Boulder, Colorado, with a smashed skull and a garrote placed around her neck—remains one of America’s most shameful unsolved crimes. A flawed investigation, fraught with police, prosecutorial misconduct, and widespread evidence tampering, means that the little girl’s killer remains at large after more than two decades.

In January 1923, 20-year-old Fritzie Mann left home for a remote cottage by the sea to meet a man whose identity she had revealed to no one. The next morning, the barely clad body of the beautiful and bewitching dancer washed up on lonely Torrey Pines beach, her party dress and possessions strewn about on the sand.

The public knows him as the character Tony Darvo in the movie Midnight Run, but Richie Salerno was born into the world of the Brooklyn Mafia during the heyday of the New York mob, and for a time it looked like he’d get caught up in a life of crime. After all, some of the most notorious figures in the gangster world he knew as uncles, aunts, cousins, and family friends. During a stint in prison for theft, Richie turned his life around using the tailoring skills he learned from his father and butchering abilities he picked up from his father-in-law....

In 2016, Pakistan’s first social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch, was murdered in a suspected honor killing. Her death quickly became a media sensation. It was both devastatingly routine and breathtakingly brutal, and in a new media landscape, it couldn’t be ignored. Qandeel had courted attention and outrage with a talent for self-promotion that earned her comparisons to Kim Kardashian - and made her the constant victim of harassment and death threats.

When he retired as the chief security officer of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Barelli had spent the better part of 40 years responsible not only for one of the richest treasure troves on the planet, but the museum's staff, the millions of visitors, as well as American presidents, royalty, and heads of state from around the world. For the first time, John Barelli shares his experiences of the crimes that occurred on his watch, the investigations that captured thieves and recovered artwork....

Due to Sullivan’s extensive writing about Ted Bundy, he’s become a sort of magnet over the years, drawing out many people who were part of the Bundy story but have otherwise kept a low profile over the decades. These first-person contacts continue to this day. As such, this is the first book in a new series of books whose aim is to bring new revelations to the public about Bundy, the victims, the murders, and the almost murders that failed Bundy for one reason or another.

One frosty winter morning in 1995, Jennifer Vogel opened the newspaper and read that her father had gone on the run. John Vogel, 52, had been arrested for single-handedly counterfeiting nearly $20 million in US currency - the fourth-largest sum ever seized by federal agents - and then had been released pending trial. Though Jennifer hadn’t spoken to her father in more than four years, the police suspected he might turn up at her Minneapolis apartment. She examined the shadows outside her building, and thought she spotted him at the grocery store and the bus stop.

The biggest crime story in American history began on the night of March 1, 1932, when the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was snatched from his crib in Hopewell, New Jersey. The news shocked a nation enthralled with the aviator, the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. American law enforcement marshalled all its resources to return “Little Lindy” to the arms of his parents - and perhaps even more energized were the legions of journalists catering to a public whose appetite for Lindbergh news was insatiable.

When reclusive millionaire artist Robert Indiana died in 2018, he left behind dark rumors and scandal, as well as an estate embroiled in lawsuits and facing accusations of fraud. Here is the true story of the artist’s final days, the aftermath, the deceptive world that surrounded him, and the inner workings of art as very big business.

The Allied invasion of Europe during summer 1944 was widely expected, and it fell to the Axis intelligence services to provide High Command with advance warning of the precise date and place of the landings. Using cryptanalysis of Allied signals, undercover agents and ships, and photographic evidence, Axis intelligence was pitted directly against their Allied counterparts, who actively tried to create a decoy and aim their enemies at the wrong location.

Los desencadenantes más comunes del homicidio son el miedo, la rabia, la venganza, el dinero, la lujuria y, en menor medida, la mera locura. Claro está que no se trata de una ciencia exacta y que los asesinatos pueden surgir de múltiples desencadenantes. El sexo y la venganza parecen ir de la mano en el crimen. La rabia, el dinero y la venganza también son una tríada explosiva de desencadenantes. Este libro presenta mis recuerdos sobre los casos de homicidio que investigué o supervisé. En cada caso, examino el desencadenante que condujo a la muerte.

Die häufigsten Auslöser für Mord sind Angst, Wut, Rache, Geld, Lust und, wesentlich seltener, blanker Wahnsinn. Natürlich ist das keine exakte Wissenschaft. Jedem beliebigen Mord können mehrere Trigger zugrunde liegen. Sex und Rache scheinen als Auslöser für Verbrechen oft Hand in Hand zu gehen. Wut, Geld und Rache sind ein weiteres gefährliches Dreiergespann. In diesem Buch habe ich meine Erinnerungen an Mordfälle, in denen ich ermittelt oder die Ermittlungen beaufsichtigt habe, gesammelt. In jedem dieser Fälle beleuchte ich die Trigger, die zum Mord geführt haben.

The disappearance of a twenty-one-year-old woman from a Massachusetts suburb became one of the most discussed crimes of the twentieth century.

When Lt. Commander Bobby Thompson surfaced in Tampa in 1998, it was as if he had fallen from the sky, providing no hint of his past life. Eleven years later, St. Petersburg Times investigative reporter Jeff Testerman visited the rundown duplex Thompson used as his home and the epicenter of his sixty-thousand-member charity, the US Navy Veterans Association. But something was amiss. Thompson’s charity’s addresses were just maildrops, his members nonexistent, and his past a black hole.

Jerry Marcus fooled them all. He was “a nice guy,” always helped at home, did well in school, an athlete, and always employed. When things went wrong, he was the first to help clean up the mess. He was the last person anyone suspected of being a serial killer. After Marcus was caught and sentenced to life in prison in the late 1970s, author Linda Lou Long spent years corresponding with him. The Tuskegee Strangler gives an inside look into the workings of a man who is not your typical serial killer.

Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Earle maintained that the biggest case of his career was the one involving Frank Hughey Smith, the ex-convict millionaire, alleged criminal mastermind, and Dixie Mafia figure. With the help of corrupt local authorities, Smith spent the 1970s building a criminal empire in auto salvage and bail bonds.