Showing titles in Abductions, Kidnapping & Missing Persons

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.

On Friday, September 12, 2014, William Tyrrell—a playful three-year-old boy dressed in a fire-engine red Spider-Man suit—disappears from a quiet street in broad daylight. It's assumed he's lost in the nearby bushland, but despite an intensive search, he's not found, and police start to suspect he's been abducted. No trace of William—not a shoe, not a hair—has ever been found, but now is not the time to surrender. How can a little boy just vanish? We have to find him.

The Jan Broberg Story tells the winding tale of the Brobergs, a church-going, Idaho family that falls prey to a sociopathic neighbor who will stop at nothing to be with their young daughter. Robert Berchtold, furniture store owner and family man, coaxes his way into the Broberg’s life, meticulously building their trust and bonding with their young girls. One day, Robert offers to take their 12-year-old daughter, Jan, horseback riding, only he doesn’t return her home.

In 1981, PK326 was on a routine domestic flight from Karachi, Pakistan when it was hijacked and diverted to Afghanistan.

College student Lauren Spierer was pursuing her dreams, joining her boyfriend at a party school eight hundred miles from home. Social and gregarious, studying fashion and rooming with friends, Lauren embraced her new adventure with the zeal of a young woman who suddenly had everything she desired. But there was a dark side that she and her inner circle kept secret. And one warm June evening, after heading out with friends, she seemingly vanished.

These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks. These are the missing whose situations are the hardest on loved ones left behind. The cases that are an embarrassment for park superintendents, rangers, and law enforcement charged with Search & Rescue.

On September 13, 2016, in the small town of Ashland, Ohio, emergency dispatchers received a 911 call from a terrified woman who claimed to be kidnapped. The man holding her hostage was Shawn Grate, a serial killer whom the press later dubbed “The Ladykiller.” A key to his conviction and death sentence were Grate’s extensive recorded confessions—all extracted by one woman: Detective Kim Mager.

It was a cold and foggy February night in 1983 when a group of armed thieves crept onto Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland, to steal Shergar, one of the thoroughbred industry's most renowned stallions. The thieves demanded a hefty ransom for the safe return of one of the most valuable Thoroughbreds in the world, but the ransom was never paid and Shergar's remains have never been found.

In The Survivors, award-winning true-crime writer Steve Braunias retells twelve mysteries of human nature—unusual stories of how people choose to survive their own lives, and their decisions, desires, impulses... and failings.

Serial killer Gary Heidnik's name will live on in infamy, and his home, 3520 North Marshall Street in Philadelphia, is a house tainted with the memory of unbelievable horrors. What police found there was an incredible nightmare made real. Four young women had been held captive - some for four months - half-naked and chained. They had been tortured, starved, and repeatedly raped. But more grotesque discoveries lay in the kitchen: human limbs frozen, a torso burned to cinders, an empty pot suspiciously scorched....

In March 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn awoke from a sound sleep into a nightmare. Armed men bound and drugged them, then abducted Denise. Warned not to call the police or Denise would be killed, Aaron agonized about what to do. Finally he put his trust in law enforcement and dialed 911. But instead of searching for Denise, the police accused Aaron of her murder. His story, they told him, was just unbelievable. When Denise was released alive, the police turned their fire on her, dubbing her the “real-life ‘Gone Girl’” who had faked her own kidnapping.

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.

The close knit community in San Miguel de Allende Mexico was plagued by a string of sophisticated kidnappings for nearly a decade. When the police finally made an arrest the townspeople were shocked by who was accused of masterminding the criminal enterprise. It's everyone's favorite neighbor and a pillar of the community, Ramon Guerra. Except Ramon isn't who he says he is.

Dubai is feted internationally as a beacon of modernity: glittering skyscrapers, a cultural melting pot, even a new player in the space race. The city's ruled by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, an all-powerful multi-billionaire who counts the Queen and Donald Trump as friends. His kingdom's progressive propaganda defies a medieval underbelly. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the Sheikh's own palace, where numerous women have now risked their lives by sounding the alarm about what's really going on in the United Arab Emirates.

Houston, Texas, in the early 1970s was an exciting place—the home of NASA, the city of the future. But a string of more than two dozen missing teenage boys hinted at a dark undercurrent that would go ignored for too long. While their siblings and friends wondered where they had gone, the Houston police department dismissed them as runaways, fleeing the Vietnam draft or conservative parents, likely looking to get high and join the counterculture.

When police in Rexburg, Idaho perform a wellness check on seven-year-old J.J. Vallow and his sister, sixteen-year-old Tylee Ryan, both children are nowhere to be found. Their mother, Lori Vallow, gives a phony explanation, and when officers return the following day with a search warrant, she, too, is gone. As the police begin to close in, a larger web of mystery, murder, fanaticism and deceit begins to unravel. Vallow’s case is sinuously complex. As investigators prod further, they find the accused Black Widow has an unusual number of bodies piling up around her.

When Nathan Carman, a young man with a complicated past, is miraculously rescued from a lifeboat bobbing in the unforgiving North Atlantic, questions swirl about the fate of his mother, who is presumed to have drowned when their fishing boat sank. Nathan is in remarkably good shape for being lost at sea for a week, and his account of what exactly happened out there on the waves raises questions from family members and law enforcement.

They’re known as the bebés robados, or “stolen babies”–children stolen at birth from their mothers and sold to wealthy families around Spain. For decades, European reporters and activists have tried to penetrate the secretive networks responsible for the crimes, typically with little success. Until now. In The Lost, veteran journalists Matteo Fagotto and Matilde Gattoni investigate the story of a woman named Ana Belén Pintado, a middle-aged woman from a small village in Central Spain.

John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Conti was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news. Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, difficult, and haunting client.

"Beneath the Dunes: The Long Island Serial Killer Case" is a chilling, gripping exploration of one of the most haunting unsolved mysteries in American history. For over a decade, the bodies of multiple victims were discovered along the desolate stretch of beach known as Gilgo Beach on Long Island, New York. What began as a single, isolated murder quickly spiraled into a case of national interest—a case plagued with confusion, botched investigations, and devastating false leads.