Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Murder

There is little more terrifying than those who hunt, stalk, and snatch their prey under the cloak of darkness. These hunters search not for animals, but for the touch, taste, and empowerment of human flesh. They are cannibals, vampires, and monsters, and they walk among us. These serial killers are not mythical beasts with horns and shaggy hair. They are people living among society, going about their day-to-day activities until nightfall. They are the Dennis Rader's, the fathers, husbands, church-going members of the community.

Brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty insist they were commanded to kill by God. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer's investigation is a meticulously researched, bone-chilling narrative of polygamy, savage violence and unyielding faith: an incisive look inside isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities in America, this gripping work of non-fiction illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behaviour.

American ISIS tells the story of Russell Dennison, an American who converted to Islam and traveled to Syria to fight for the Islamic State.

Sharon Marshall was a brilliant and beautiful student whose future was filled with promise—until her murderous, fugitive father drew her into a lifetime of deception that became one of the most baffling cases in the annals of American true crime.

Today, Tipperary-born priest Patrick Ryan cuts a modest but strong figure, to the layperson. A man of God who has been entrusted with the confessions of hundreds of earnest parishioners. But in fact his story is dark, dramatic, and pivotal to Irish history, on both sides of the border. In The Padre, award-winning investigative journalist Jennifer O'Leary exposes the paramilitary exploits of notorious former Catholic priest and active IRA supporter Patrick Ryan–exposing details which have, outside of his very guarded circles, been unknown until now.

What drives a person to commit seemingly inexplicable crimes? Dr Duncan Harding is the person the police and the courts turn to for answers. An expert witness, he must try to establish a defendant’s mental state and motivation. And their fitness to stand trial. Growing up in a broken, violent home, Harding became a doctor because he wanted to be good and kind. It led him on a journey that has brought him face to face with psychopaths and taken him to the limits. But he’s never turned away nor given up hope. Mesmerising, insightful and redemptive, The Criminal Mind is his unforgettable story.

We accompany him on the Journey Into Darkness that marks every case he examines; every instance in which he helps police identify the unknown perpetrator of a violent series of rapes, kidnappings, or murders through his remarkable criminal personality profiling.

Gloria Burtzlaff feared for her life one day back in April of 1991 when her abusive husband, Larry, drunk and violent, slapped her, hit her, and began pelting her with glasses. After he tried to drown her in a tub, she got the family shotgun and confronted him in his underwear. “Larry, I’m going to kill you,” she declared. Defense lawyers would later claim he lifted a glass as if to say, “Have at it, sister.” Have at It, Sister is a true-crime tale about Gloria, a South Dakota woman who shot her abusive husband and was put on trial in a precedent-setting case.

Thirty years since the death of Fred West and the conviction of his wife Rose, in 1995, the West murder case exerts a magnetic fascination for true crime listeners. The Wests claimed twelve victims, young women and girls including members of their own family. Nine mutilated bodies were found buried under their home at 25 Cromwell St, Gloucester, the so-called House of Horrors. The Fred West Tapes incorporates remarkable new evidence and primary source testimony, including the experiences of the West children and victim families.

In Bowraville, all three of the victims were Aboriginal. All three were killed within five months, between 1990 and 1991. The same white man was linked to each, but nobody was convicted. More than two decades later, homicide detective Gary Jubelin contacted Dan Box, asking him to pursue this serial killing. At that time, few others in the justice system seemed to know - or care - about the murders in Bowraville.

Christopher Berry-Dee is the man who talks to serial killers. A world-renowned investigative criminologist, he has gained the trust of murderers across the world, entered their high security prisons, and discussed in detail their shocking crimes. The killers' pursuit of horror and violence is described through the unique audiotape and videotape interviews which Berry-Dee conducted, deep inside the bowels of some of the world's toughest prisons.

Please note: this series contains mature content and listener discretion is advised.

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.

On 29 August 2016, devastating news hit the headlines that an entire family was found dead in a rural community. For Jacqueline Connolly, this was a deeply personal and life-shattering tragedy, as she discovered her sister Clodagh, along with her nephews Liam, Niall and Ryan, were killed by their husband and father Alan Hawe. Here, Jacqueline discloses the circumstances leading up to these tragic events, including Hawe's manipulation and coercive control of her unsuspecting sister.

In 1928, Eric and Mabel Smith arrived from India to take over the lonely parish of Borley on the northern border of Essex. When they moved into Borley Rectory, Mrs Smith made a gruesome discovery in a cupboard: a human skull. Soon the house was electric with ghosts. Within three months, the Smiths had abandoned it and the Rectory became notorious as the ‘most haunted house in England’.

Incarceration has a long and inglorious history, from dungeons in the bowels of castles to oppressive penal colonies in Australia. Karen Farrington brings this history up to the 21st century, exploring some of the world's worst prisons, from Alcatraz to Pollsmoor, and the unending battles that rage between convicts and warders. Inside the prison walls, gangs rule, guards devise sadistic punishments, and newcomers suffer abuse at the hands of experienced tormentors.

On Australia Day, 26 January 1966, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont were abducted from Colley Reserve, Glenelg, South Australia and never seen again, leading to one of Australia's most extensive police investigations and manhunts. Five decades later, no trace of the children has ever been found. Over the years, several individuals have been put forward and investigated as suspects, resulting in false leads and dead ends and with no real suspect until now: Harry Phipps.

For years he'd stalked elementary schools and playground looking for young girls from low-income neighborhoods to abduct, rape and murder. He thought of them as "throwaway kids" - hardly missed, and soon forgotten, except by those who loved them. He was ever parent's worst nightmare. The bogeyman they warned their children about ... the fiend who lurked outside bedroom windows.

In July 2011, the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso was drifting through the treacherous Gulf of Aden when a crew of pirates attacked and set her ablaze in a devastating explosion. But when David Mockett, a maritime surveyor working for Lloyd's of London, inspected the damaged vessel, he was left with more questions than answers. Soon after his inspection, he was murdered. Dead in the Water is a shocking expose of the criminal inner-workings of international shipping, an old-world industry at the backbone of our global economy.

During the Khmer Rouge's four-year rule of terror, two million people, or one in every four, Cambodians, died. In describing one family's decades-long quest to learn their husband's and father's fate and the war crimes trial of Comrade Duch (pronounced 'Doyk'), who ran the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, When the Clouds Fell from the Sky illuminates the tragedy of a nation.