Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in True Crime

The affluent suburb of Cheshire, Connecticut, seemed like the perfect place for Dr. William Petit and his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, to raise their two lovely daughters.... Until July 23, 2007, when, according to police, two ex-cons invaded the Petit home hoping to embark on a routine robbery - one that would ultimately prove deadly.

Absolute Madness tells the disturbing true story of Joseph Christopher, a white serial killer who targeted black males and struck fear into the residents of Buffalo and New York City in the 1980s. Dubbed both the .22-Caliber Killer and the Midtown Slasher, Christopher allegedly claimed eighteen victims during a savage four-month spree across the state.

In Breaking van Gogh, James Grundvig investigates the history and authenticity of van Gogh's iconic Wheat Field with Cypresses. Relying on a vast array of techniques from the study of the painter's biography and personal correspondence to the examination of the painting's style and technical characteristics, Grundvig proves that the "most expensive purchase" housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a fake.

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutally beaten and murdered in the street near her apartment, in full view of more than three dozen friends and neighbors - and no one did a thing to stop it. More than thirty-five years after its first publication, Thirty-Eight Witnesses, the true account of what transpired that night in Queens, New York, continues to disturb us. We would like to think that we would step in and do what we could to stop the carnage.

Thanks to one reporter's skill, we can fix the exact moment on November 22, 1963 when the world stopped and held its breath: At 12:34 p.m. Central Time, UPI White House reporter Merriman Smith broke the news that shots had been fired at President Kennedy's motorcade. Most people think Walter Cronkite was the first to tell America about the assassination. But when Cronkite broke the news on TV, he read from one of Smith's dispatches.

Leland Faust unmasks Wall Street's unsavory tactics in powerful detail by giving listeners a high-level view of how the financial services industry misleads them, overcharges them, and exposes them to needless risk. He documents the financial industry's alluring come-ons, airbrushed risks, high-stakes gambling, half-truths, misleading statements, outlandish predictions, tricks to overcharge customers, bad deals, and outright fraud by the most prominent and renowned of Wall Street's players.

In 1935, the Spokane police regularly extorted sex, food, and money from the reluctant hobos (many of them displaced farmers who had fled the midwestern dust bowls), robbed dairies, and engaged in all manner of nefarious crimes, including murder. This history was suppressed until 1989, when former logger, Vietnam vet, and Spokane cop Tony Bamonte discovered a strange 1955 deathbed confession while researching a thesis on local law enforcement history.

He is both feared and admired, and for the past two decades he has been both lionized and demonized by the media. Outspoken, no-nonsense, and eminently fascinating, Joseph M. Arpaio captured the public's imagination from his first day as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona (a county larger than the state of New Jersey), in 1992.

In The Assassin’s Accomplice, historian Kate Clifford Larson tells the gripping story of Mary Surratt, a little-known conspirator in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and the first woman ever to be executed by the federal government. A Confederate sympathizer, Surratt ran the boarding house where the conspirators met to plan Lincoln’s assassination. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, The Assassin’s Accomplice tells the intricate story of the Lincoln conspiracy through the eyes of its only female participant, offering a fresh perspective on America’s most famous murder.

In the summer of 1913, under the cover of London’s perpetual smoggy dusk, two brilliant minds are pitted against each other - a celebrated gentleman thief and a talented Scotland Yard detective - in the greatest jewel heist of the new century. An exquisite strand of pale pink pearls, worth more than the Hope Diamond, has been bought by a Hatton Garden broker. Word of the “Mona Lisa of Pearls” spreads around the world, captivating jewelers as well as thieves.

Bob Rowe and his wife Mary worked hard to build their American dream. A suburban home, barbecues in the summer, and a fast track corporate job made their life look ideal to outsiders. Yet they faced one of the most difficult challenges for a couple: their son Christopher was born severely handicapped and disabled. As a family, they managed to navigate through the tough times by being hands-on parents. Their efforts were emboldened by a group of extraordinary women - all of whom also had disabled children.

It wasn’t surprising when the first abandoned bicycles were found along the dirt roads and farmland just across the border from Tijuana, but before long they were arriving in droves. The bikes went from curiosity, to nuisance, to phenomenon. But until they caught the eye of journalist Kimball Taylor, only a small cadre of human smugglers - coyotes - and migrants could say how or why they’d gotten there. This is the story of 7,000 bikes that made an incredible journey and one young man from Oaxaca who arrived at the border with nothing, built a small empire, and then vanished.

They were the golden boys of Huntington, Indiana: Jarrod Wall, a 17-year-old Sunday school teacher, track star, top student, and local heartthrob; and his friends Erick Esch, a high school football hero, and John Jesus Valasquez. They were well-liked, all-American teens. Until one night when Jarrod and Erick entered the house of a local car collector Eldon Anson and burglarized the bachelor’s home - and Jarrod murdered him with repeated hatchet blows to the skull….

Death seemed to be part of Garrett Wilson's life. Both of his parents had died by the time he was in his early twenties. So friends shrugged when sadly, an infant daughter, and then a son, succumbed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Six years later, after he divorced his wife, Missy, and married another woman, his former spouse became convinced that their child's passing was anything but natural. Was it cold-blooded murder by Garrett, or a quest for revenge by his ex-wife? Missy's own investigation that led to Garrett Wilson's arrest and eventual trial will keep the listener guessing until the final sentences. Havill takes us through each stage of this intricate and chilling story all the way to the courtroom, where the jury's stunning verdict is given.

Lance Herndon was at the top of his game in 1996. At age forty-one he was a self-made millionaire, the owner of Access, Inc., a successful information-systems consulting company. As a prominent member of Atlanta's young, wealthy, and powerful set, he was surrounded by black Atlanta's "beautiful people." But when he failed to show up for work one day, friends and family started to worry. Their worry soon turned to horror when he was found murdered in his own home, his head smashed in - in what appeared to be either an act of jealousy-fueled rage or a seedier sex crime.

Forced out of the work-hard, play-hard world of Wall Street following the Crash of ’87, financial analyst Cary Cimino was determined to maintain his lifestyle of luxury and ease. Under the guidance of dubious businessman Jeffrey Pokross, Cimino embarked on an illegitimate underground career as a “financial adviser” to naïve investors. Cimino’s small-time operation soon spiraled into a large-scale crime ring when he and Pokross were reunited and met with Mafia wiseguy Robert Lino.

The story of an Olympic wrestler allegedly murdered by the wealthy heir to the Du Pont fortune, Blood Money takes listeners inside the bizarre world of a multi-millionaire, and lays bare the brutal shooting and tense police siege that riveted the nation.

Bank robbers. Pimps. Wise guys. Murderers...Today's FBI street agents face a never-ending parade of violence and chaos perpetuated by society's most dangerous and sometimes most demented felons. In this action-packed confession of an FBI man, Phil Kerby takes us on a white-knuckle ride through a career that pitted him against militia bombers and black militants, against hardened, hardcore kidnappers, coed hookers, biker drug dealers, bank robbers on the lam, and much, much more. Here are hostage standoffs and cat-and-mouse games with the Mob.

For pretty Ohioan Joan Rogers and her two teenaged daughters, a Florida sunset cruise was a dream come true. They were so taken with friendly boat owner Oba Chandler that they gladly accepted a ride with him on beautiful Tampa Bay. Little did naive mom and two daughters know that behind Chandler's mask of a gracious host lurked a daring and ruthless ex-con, a thief and a liar, a seductive Don Juan who used and discarded wives and children. As the sun serenely sank below the Gulf of Mexico, Chandler suddenly shut down the engines, dropped anchor, and turned into a sadistic torturer.

He slipped like a sinister shadow in the night, stalking, then savagely attacking. Most of his unsuspecting targets were shot at close range, and one woman was stabbed over one hundred times. The taunting, bizarre letters alleged killer Heriberto Seda sent to the police and the New York Post were full of strange symbols and mysterious references to the Zodiac. For six terror-filled years, the Zodiac killer ruled the night, claiming nine victims in his homicidal rage. One of the biggest manhunts in New York City's history was unleashed.