True Crime

On January 6, 1986, Barry and Louise Berman set out for a stroll and never returned. Despite extensive investigations by local and federal authorities, the double homicide of the Kahlua heir and his wife remains unsolved.

"A journalist's spellbinding account of the shocking murder of his muckraking mother and a quest for justice that has reverberated far beyond their tiny homeland"--

Jonathan Rosen investigates the forces that led his closest childhood friend, a paranoid schizophrenic with brilliant promise who defied the odds and graduated from Yale Law School, to kill the woman he loved, in this exploration of the ways in which we understand--and fail to understand--mental illness.

"Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life. In her mother's absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp-- from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin's drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding its way into her own fraught adolescence. In the process of both, she reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be--a self beyond the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim--what a "true" victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be"--

"An intimate, deeply moving investigation of an underreported phenomenon--the rising number of unclaimed dead in America today--and what it says about the state of our society. For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potters' fields-- a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies. Up to 150,000 Americans now go unclaimed each year. Who are they? Why are they being forgotten? And what is the meaning of life if your death doesn't matter to others? In this extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, eight years in the making, sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans uncover a hidden social world. They follow four individuals in Los Angeles, tracing the twisting, poignant paths that put each at risk of going unclaimed, and introducing us to the scene investigators, notification officers, and crematorium workers who care for them when no one else will. The Unclaimed lays bare the difficult truth that anyone can be abandoned. It forces us to confront a variety of social ills, from the fracturing of families and the loneliness of cities to the toll of rising inequality. But it is also filled with unexpected moments of tenderness. In Boyle Heights, a Mexican American neighborhood not far from the glitter of Hollywood, hundreds of strangers come together each year to mourn the deaths of people they never knew. These ceremonies, springing up across the country, reaffirm our shared humanity and help mend our frayed social fabric. Beautifully crafted and profoundly empathetic, The Unclaimed urges us to expand our circle of caring-- in death and in life"--

"In 1977, in an Ohio Amish community, pregnant wife and mother Ida Stutzman perished during a barn fire. The coroner's report: natural causes. Ida's husband, Eli, was never considered a suspect. But when he eventually rejected the faith and took his son, Danny, with him, murder followed. What really happened to Ida? The dubious circumstances of the tragic blaze were willfully ignored and Eli's shifting narratives disregarded. Could Eli's subsequent cross-country journey of death--including that of his own son--have been prevented if just one person came forward with what they knew about the real Eli Stutzman? The questions haunted Gregg Olsen and Ida's brother Daniel Gingerich for decades. At Daniel's urging, Olsen now returns to Amish Country and to Eli's crimes first exposed in Olsen's Abandoned Prayers, one of which has remained a mystery until now. With the help of aging witnesses and shocking long-buried letters, Olsen finally uncovers the disturbing truth-- about Ida's murder and the conspiracy of silence and secrets that kept it hidden for forty-five years"--

"For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly ten years-in museums and cathedrals all over Europe-Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser's strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them to his heart's content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to assess practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtakingly number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict's need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend's pleas to stop-until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down"--

The behind-the-scenes story of the quintessential film noir and cult classic, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity —its true crime origins and crucial impact on film history—is told for the first time in this riveting narrative published for the film's 80th anniversary.

From real crime to serial to novel to movie, the history of Double Indemnity is as complex and exciting as the plot of any to hit the screen during film noir’s classic period. Born of a true crime that inspired reporter and would-be crime writer James M. Cain’s novella, Hollywood quickly bid on the rights but throughout the 1930s a strict code of censorship made certain that no studio could green-light a murder melodrama based on real events. Then World War II loosened some strictures, and director-writer Billy Wilder—before his prime as director of sparkling comedies—could hire hardboiled novelist Raymond Chandler and revamp the story enough to pass the censors.

Overcoming strong resistance, Wilder then lined up a star cast led by the incomparable Barbara Stanwyck in her unforgettable turn as the ultimate femme fetale, alongside Fred MacMurray, cast against type as her partner in crime, and Edward G. Robinson as a bloodhound claims adjuster. With these skilled actors set against a low-key look, Wilder’s final film became one of the earliest studio noirs to gain critical and commercial success (nominated for 7 Oscars!), to influence the entire noir movement, and to impact filmmakers and audiences to this day.

"Nestled in the Golden Triangle of China, Burma, and Nepal, the Wa nation has existed and thrived for over five decades. Like mountain peoples from Chechnya to the Ozarks, the Wa like to do things their own way. A tribal authority called the United Wa State Army (or UWSA) controls their native terrain. The UWSA makes laws, defends the motherland, and builds roads and schools. It even issues driver's licenses. In every sense, it is a government. And as a nation, its armed forces command 30,000 troops and 20,000 reservists, more than the militaries of Sweden or Kenya. The Wa possess high-tech weaponry: cannons, drones, and missiles that can knock jets out of the sky. Yet the one difference from their nation and those that surround them is their preferred commodity: drugs. Illegal drugs are indeed one of the UWSA's top revenue sources. Over the years, tons of narcotics produced on Wa soil have hit the black market and traffickers have smuggled them onto American shores. Their ability to have a functioning government, economic system, and freedom from their neighbors derives from their sophisticated, profitable, and illegal trade. Yet, the origin story of this narco-army is smudged with American fingerprints. Not only did the CIA create the conditions for its inception, but one of its foremost leaders was a DEA asset. In Narcotopia, Patrick Winn investigates and uncovers the true story of Wa, untangling the relationship between the DEA, CIA, and Wa people. The result is a saga of an indigenous people who have tapped the power of narcotics to create a nation where there was none before and the covert operations of US intelligence to transform and undermine it for their own agenda. Every empire needs its barbarians"--

"Told with unflinching honesty and a touch of gallows humor, CLAY AND BONES is the personal memoir of the first female forensic sculptor in the FBI"--Front jacket flap.

From the FBI’s former assistant director, a shocking journey to the dark side of America’s highways, revealing the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings Initiative’s hunt for long-haul truckers who account for an astonishing 850 murders across the nation. In 2004, the FBI was tipped off to a gruesome pattern of murders along America’s highways and interstates. Today at least 850 homicides have been linked to a solitary breed of long-haul truck drivers. They have been given names like the “Truck Stop Killer,” who rigged a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his truck and is suspected to have killed fifty women, and “The Interstate Strangler,” who once answered a phone call from his mother while killing one of his dozen victims. The crisis was such that the FBI opened a special unit, the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. In each case, the victims—often at-risk women—are picked up at truck stops in one jurisdiction, sexually assaulted and murdered in another, and dumped along a highway in a third place. What’s worse, the transient nature of the offenders and multiple jurisdictions involved make these cases incredibly difficult to solve. Based on his own on-the-ground research and drawing on his twenty-five-year career as an FBI special agent, Frank Figliuzzi investigates the most terrifying cases. He also rides in a big-rig with a long-haul trucker for hundreds of miles, gaining an intimate understanding of the life and habits of drivers and their roadside culture. And he interviews the courageous trafficked victims of these crimes, and their inspiring efforts to now help others avoid similar fates. The Long Haul is a gripping exploration of a violent, disordered world hiding in plain sight, and the heroes racing to end the horror. It will forever unsettle how you travel on the road.

"It all started when journalist Jillian Lauren asked LAPD Homicide Detective Mitzi Roberts about which case Roberts was most proud of closing. "Samuel Little," Roberts answered. The now 79-year-old Little had murdered approximately 90 women over six decades and repeatedly got away with the murders due to lack of evidence (or jurisdiction); Roberts finally brought him to justice by tying him to the murders of three Los Angeles women. Surprised she had never heard of Little, Lauren started digging. She started exchanging letters with Little until she got a face-to-face meeting that led to hundreds of hours of interviews full of information Little had never shared with law enforcement. Lauren knew this journey to the truth was taking its toll on her, but she couldn't stop-- Little was giving her a powerful and harrowing window into the psyche of a serial killer. To balance out his darkness, Lauren decided to illuminate the lives of the women he killed. In her interviews, he confessed to 12 additional murders, supplying details that Lauren could share with families in need of closure. Harrowing, insightful, and extraordinarily adept at giving Little's victims a chance to have their stories heard for the first time, Behold the Monster is a true crime book as unforgettable as it is terrifying"--

'My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don't wait very long.' Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte. This book is Evangelista's chronicle of the Philippines' drug war and Duterte's assault on the country's struggling democracy. For six years, she had the distinctive beat of chronicling the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte's war on drugs--a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands--immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.--

A look at elite American fraternity life, tracing a multi-million-dollar drug ring that ended in a chain of betrayals and a murder. When Max Marshall arrived on the campus of the College of Charleston in 2018, he hoped to investigate a small-time fraternity Xanax trafficking ring. Instead, he found a murder, several student deaths, and millions of dollars circulating around the Deep South. He also opened up an elite world hidden to outsiders. Eighty percent of Fortune 500 executives, 85 percent of Supreme Court justices, and all but four presidents since 1825 have been fraternity members. This book takes readers inside that bubble. Marshall traces several "C of C" boys' journeys from fraternity pledges to interstate drug traffickers. The result is a true-life story of hubris, status, money, drugs, and murder--one that lifts a curtain on an ecstatic and disturbing way of life. He follows a never-ending party that continues after funerals and mass arrests.--

On January 21st, 1958, Charles Starkweather and his fourteen-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate changed the course of crime in the United States when they murdered her parents and sister in a house on the edge of Lincoln, Nebraska. They then drove to the nearby small town of Bennet, where they robbed and killed a farmer. When Starkweather's car broke down, the man and woman who stopped to help were murdered and jammed in a food cellar. By the time the dust settled, ten innocent people were dead, and the city of Lincoln was in a state of terror. Schools closed. Men with rifles perched on the roofs of their houses. National guardsmen patrolled the street. Every few hours, there would come a knock on the door, and a voice would ask: "Everyone all right inthere?" The town was suffering from PTSD. Starkweather and Fugate's killing spree and the resulting trials received world-wide coverage. It was the first mass killing of the modern age--a precursor of the awakening of the country from the slumber of the fifties to the rebellious, violent sixties. From Starkweather on, people in the Midwest locked their doors. Yet, in spite of this massive exposure, the story has dropped far from the national consciousness. With new material, new reporting, and new conclusions about the possible guilt or innocence of Fugate, the tale is an updated and definitive retelling.--