True Crime
The less people know about us : a mystery of betrayal, family secrets, and stolen identity
Axton Betz-Hamilton
eBOOK
True Crime, Biographies
In this honest and engaging true-crime memoir, Betz-Hamilton revisits her small-town Indiana childhood and college years, and the identity fraud that rocked her family. Before it's an often-discussed crime, Betz-Hamilton's mother attributes the unpaid bills, fraudulent checks, and unknown property in her husband's name to stolen identity. Convinced that the perpetrator is someone close to them, the family of three learns not to trust anyone and becomes relatively isolated in the face of authorities' inability and unwillingness to help. The author is so affected by these events, especially after learning that a credit card was opened in her name when she was just 11, that she later studies consumer sciences with a focus on identity theft. It is only while going through her mother's belongings after her untimely death that Betz-Hamilton begins to unravel the truth. This memoir has all the suspense and twists of a thriller; even as readers begin to suspect the truth, it still shocks. This bloodless true-crime tale is highly recommended for fans of books about con artists and family secrets.
Say nothing : a true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland
Patrick Radden Keefe
941.60824 /Keefe
True Crime, History
"From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as the Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the IRA was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the garments--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children but also IRA members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war but simple murders. From radical and impetuous IRA terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious IRA mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his IRA past--[this book] conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish."--Dust jacket.
This is a true crime story about a mother of ten's disappearance during the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, almost three decades in of turmoil between Catholics and Protestants while the IRA recruited young people to plant bombs and carry out murders. While this mystery operates as a frame work, I would say it's more of a modern telling of the history of violence, albeit a chilling nonfiction narrative. There were almost too many characters to keep track of, but I found the story of Dolours Price and her sister Marian to be fascinating. Both were arrested for the car bombing of the Old Bailey in London in the 70's and spent years in prison on hunger strike until they were allowed to finish their prison sentence in Northern Ireland. This story makes you question if there is a difference between political violence and crime. -Mari
Furious hours : murder, fraud, and the last trial of Harper Lee
Casey N. Cep
364.15232 /Cep
True Crime, Biographies
"'A triumph on every level. One of the losses to literature is that Harper Lee never found a way to tell a gothic true-crime story she'd spent years researching. Casey Cep has excavated this mesmerizing story and tells it with grace and insight and a fierce fidelity to the truth.'--David Grann, best-selling author of Killers of the Flower Moon The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird. Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted--thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case. Now Casey Cep brings this nearly inconceivable story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity"--
"Furious Hours" is the story of a true crime in 1970s Alabama as well as the story of famous writer Harper Lee. Written in three parts, this book details the strange story of a "Voodoo Preacher" who claimed the insurance policies after several sketchy deaths of family members, the larger than life lawyer that defended him, and ironically his killer after he is publicly killed at a funeral, and Harper Lee, who followed the case, but never wrote about it. I most thoroughly enjoyed the section about Harper Lee, but found all of it to be both intriguing and well-documented! -Mari
The trial of Lizzie Borden : a true story
Cara Robertson
364.1523 /Robertson
History, True Crime
"The remarkable new account of an essential piece of American mythology--the trial of Lizzie Borden--based on twenty years of research and recently unearthed evidence. The Trial of Lizzie Borden tells the true story of one of the most sensational murder trials in American history. When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, the arrest of the couple's younger daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and her trial into a spectacle unparalleled in American history. Reporters flocked to the scene. Well-known columnists took up conspicuous seats in the courtroom. The defendant was relentlessly scrutinized for signs of guilt or innocence. Everyone--rich and poor, suffragists and social conservatives, legal scholars and laypeople--had an opinion about Lizzie Borden's guilt or innocence. Was she a cold-blooded murderess or an unjustly persecuted lady? Did she or didn't she? The popular fascination with the Borden murders and its central enigmatic character has endured for more than one hundred years. Immortalized in rhyme, told and retold in every conceivable genre, the murders have secured a place in the American pantheon of mythic horror, but one typically wrenched from its historical moment. In contrast, Cara Robertson explores the stories Lizzie Borden's culture wanted and expected to hear and how those stories influenced the debate inside and outside of the courtroom. Based on transcripts of the Borden legal proceedings, contemporary newspaper accounts, unpublished local accounts, and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie herself, The Trial of Lizzie Borden offers a window onto America in the Gilded Age, showcasing its most deeply held convictions and its most troubling social anxieties"--
Lizzie Borden was always condemned in my mind for the murder of her father and stepmother because there was a playground rhyme about it. And I've always wondered if there is a rhyme that seems so true, why was Lizzie Borden acquitted? Cara Robertson dives right into this very question by looking at what happened during her trial. What were the arguments from the prosecution and how did the defense answer to those charges? It is actually pretty fascinating and I came away with more questions than answers. **Please be advised that there are pictures of the crime scene. And it was done by an axe.** -Anne M
Roadmap to hell : sex, drugs and guns on the Mafia coast
Barbie Latza Nadeau
364.106 /Nadeau
Nonfiction, True Crime
From sex slaves to drug mules, The Daily Beast's Rome Bureau Chief uncovers a terrifying and intricate web of criminal activity right on Europe's doorstep. Caught between Camorra gunrunners selling to ISIS and Nigerian drug gangs along Italy's picturesque coast, each year thousands of refugees and migrants are lured into their criminal underworld, forced to become sex slaves, drug mules or weapon smugglers. In this powerful exposé, investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau follows the weapons trail, meets the Nigerian hair braiders trafficked and trapped by black magic, the brave nuns who try to save them and the Italian police who turn a blind eye as the most urgent issues facing Europe play out in broad daylight.
Holy moly! Imagine trying to migrate out of your gang lord-run country just to be picked up by a mafia and sex-trafficked in your new land. Harrowing and tragic, this is an under-the-radar humanitarian crisis that more people need to know is happening! -Melody
I'll be gone in the dark : one woman's obsessive search for the Golden State Killer
Michelle McNamara
364.1532 /McNamara
True Crime
"A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer-- the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade-- from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case. For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area. Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was. At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic-- capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim-- he favored suburban couples-- he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening."--Amazon.com.
After the arrest of the Golden State Killer suspect I immediately placed my name on the hold list for the Book on Disk copy of Michelle McNamara's comprehensive true crime book. Luckily enough, I was able to pick the item up just before going on a long road trip and I listened to the entire book over a long weekend. McNamara balanced the gruesome crime facts with information about the decades long search for the killer and how it played a role in her life as well as so many other lives. -Shawna
Columbine
David Cullen
371.782 /Cullen
True Crime
Ten years in the making and a masterpiece of reportage, "Columbine" is an award-winning journalist's definitive account of one of the most shocking massacres in American history.
Find the e-book and e-audiobook on OverDrive/Libby https://icpl.overdrive.com/media/205886 -Melody
Helter skelter : the true story of the Manson murders
Vincent Bugliosi
364.1523 /Bugliosi
True Crime
The prosecutor of the Tate-LaBianca trials presents a perceptive study of Charles Manson, his followers, and the murders of actress Sharon Tate and four others in 1969.
A long read but provides an in depth understanding of the Manson murders and the context surrounding them. -Shawna
The man from the train : the solving of a century-old serial killer mystery
Bill James
364.1523 /James
True Crime, History
"Between 1898 and 1912, families across the country were bludgeoned in their sleep with the blunt side of an axe. Jewelry and valuables were left in plain sight, bodies were piled together, faces covered with cloth. Some of these cases, like the infamous Villasca, Iowa murders, received national attention. But few people believed the crimes were related. And fewer still would realize that all of these families lived within walking distance to a train station. When celebrated baseball statistician and true crime expert Bill James first learned about these crimes, he began to investigate others that might fit the same pattern. Applying the analytical acumen he brings to baseball analysis, he empirically determined which crimes were committed by the same person. Then after sifting through thousands of local newspapers, court transcripts and public records, he and his daughter Rachel made an astonishing discovery. They learned the true identity of this monstrous criminal, and in turn, uncovered one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. Riveting and immersive, with writing as sharp as the cold side of an axe, The Man From the Train is a groundbreaking approach to true crime that will convince skeptics, delight aficionados, and change the way we view criminal history"--
Lots of people know about the axe-murders in Villisca, Iowa, but the crime has never been solved...until now? Bill James lays out all the evidence he's found for a serial killer operating at that time. -Candice
The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America
Erik Larson
364.1523 /Larson
Nonfiction, History, True Crime
"Larson's ambitious, engrossing tale of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 focuses primarily on two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect who was the driving force behind the fair, and Henry H. Holmes, a sadistic serial killer working under the cover of the busy fair. After the 1889 French Exposition Universel wowed the world with the Eiffel Tower and high attendance numbers, interest began to grow in the U.S. for a similar fair. Chicago and New York were the top contenders for the location, and in February 1890, Chicagoans were overjoyed to hear they had won the honor. Burnham and his partner, John Root, the leading architects in Chicago, were tapped for the job, and they in turn called on Frederick Law Olmstead, Louis Sullivan, and Richard M. Hunt to help them build the world's greatest fair. They faced overwhelming obstacles: inhospitable weather, bureaucracy, illness, and even death. Unbeknownst to any of them, Holmes, a charismatic, handsome doctor, had arrived in the city and built a complex with apartments, a drugstore, and a vault, which he used to trap his victims until they suffocated. When the White City opened for business in May 1893, hundreds of thousands of people flocked to it, although a plummeting economy and several accidents did nothing to help business. A shocking murder concludes the ultimately successful fair, and that's before Holmes claims his final victims in the cruelest act of his career. A magnificent book."--
Erik Larson does an absolutely amazing job of telling the story of H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who operated during the World's Fair in Chicago, 1896. Not only that, but this is a fantastic story of the city itself, particularly some of the early architects and their works. Will make you want to go visit some of the buildings. -Candice
Added by Candice