John George Haigh, the Acid-Bath Murderer

Author: Jonathan Oates
Publisher: Wharncliffe
ISBN: 1473841232
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
What motivated John George Haigh to murder at least six people, then dissolve their corpses in concentrated sulphuric acid? How did this intelligent, well-educated man from a loving, strongly religious family of Plymouth Brethren become a fraudster, a thief, then a serial killer? In the latest of his best-selling studies of criminal history, Jonathan Oates reinvestigates this sensational case of the late 1940s. He delves into Haigh's Yorkshire background, his reputation as a loner, a bully and a forger during his years at Wakefield Grammar School, and his growing appetite for the good life which his modest employment in insurance and advertising could not sustain. Then came his move to London and a rapid, apparently remorseless descent into the depths of crime, from deceit and theft to cold-blooded killing. As he follows the course of Haigh's crimes in graphic, forensic detail, Jonathan Oates gives a fascinating inside view of Haigh's attempt to carry through a series of perfect murders. For Haigh intended not only cut off his victims' lives but, by destroying their bodies with acid, literally to remove all traces that they had ever existed.

Portrait of a Monster

Author: Lisa Pulitzer
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9781250011855
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Book Description
From a pair of "New York Times"-bestselling authors comes an in-depth account of the manhunt for Joran van der Sloot, a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba and, five years later, the murder of a young woman in Peru.

Alfred Hitchcock

Author: Alfred Hitchcock
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780883657270
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 503

Book Description
47 tales of murder for profit, revenge, accident, or assassination are related with twists and turns, if necessary

Blood Relative

Author: Crocker Stephenson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780929387918
Category : Mass murder
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Tells the story of an unsolved mass murder of five family members in rural Wisconsin

Murder by the Book

Author: Claire Harman
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525520392
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
"From the prize-winning biographer--the fascinating, little-known story of a Victorian-era murder that rocked literary London, leading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Queen Victoria herself to wonder: can a novel kill? In May 1840, Lord William Russell, well known in London's highest social circles, was found with his throat cut. The brutal murder had the whole city talking. The police suspected Russell's valet, Courvoisier, but the evidence was weak. And the missing clue lay in the unlikeliest place: what Courvoisier had been reading. In the years just before the murder, new printing methods had made books cheap and abundant, the novel form was on the rise, and suddenly everyone was reading. The best-selling titles were the most sensational true-crime stories. Even Dickens and Thackeray, both at the beginning of their careers, fell under the spell of these tales--Dickens publicly admiring them, Thackeray rejecting them. One such phenomenon was William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard, the story of an unrepentant criminal who escaped the gallows time and again. When Courvoisier finally confessed his guilt, he would cite this novel in his defense. Murder By the Book combines the thrilling true-crime story with a illuminating account of the rise of the novel form and the battle for its early soul between the most famous writers of the time. It is a superbly researched, vividly written, fascinating read from first to last"--

Portrait of Murder

Author: Rob Riley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781937165109
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description

Susan Smith

Author: George Rekers
Publisher: Glenbridge Publishing Ltd.
ISBN: 9780944435380
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
This book is based upon the publicly available facts, primarily from the Susan Smith trial itself, which consisted of public sworn testimony, and by interviews with individuals whose comments are public knowledge. The key question I have addressed is the question, Why? Why did Susan V. Smith do what she did? Various views were expressed during the trial. The jury found Susan guilty of two counts of murder, finding her guilty of harboring malice against her two little boys. On the other hand, mental health experts, social workers, and school counselors testified as to Susan's history of depression, suicidal thoughts and actions, and adjustment problems in the context of her tragic loss of her father to suicide, her sexual abuse by her stepfather, and her growing up in a dysfunctional family with a family tree replete with multiple cases of depression and alcoholism. - Introduction.

Murder Casts a Shadow

Author: Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824863682
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
New Year’s Eve, 1934. While Honolulu celebrates with champagne and fireworks, someone is making away with the Bishop Museum’s portrait of King Kalakaua and its curator. A series of brutal murders follows, and an unlikely pair, newspaper reporter Mina Beckwith and visiting playwright Ned Manusia, find themselves investigating a twisted trail of clues in an attempt to recover the painting and uncover the killer. Honolulu in the 1930s is a unique (and volatile) mix of the provincial and the urban, East and West, islander and mainlander. Mina and Ned, both of Polynesian descent, confront the complexities and contradictions of Island life as their investigation takes them into the heart of Honolulu society and close-knit local families, whose intricate histories and relationships will have a direct impact on future lives and events. A lively cast of characters aids Mina and Ned in their search for answers: Cecily Chang, an antiques and explosives expert, steers them through Chinatown’s back alleys; Hinano Kahana, a hula chanter and dancer, brings Ned closer to solving an ancient riddle; Mina’s grandmother, Hannah, helps them unlock a secret from the past. Prewar Honolulu comes to life in this thoroughly entertaining mystery that evokes a colorful bygone era. The Mina Beckwith and Ned Manusia series continues with Murder Leaves Its Mark, available September 2011.

Perfume

Author: Patrick Süskind
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0241975328
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
An erotic masterpiece of twentieth century fiction - a tale of sensual obsession and bloodlust in eighteenth century Paris 'An astonishing tour de force both in concept and execution' Guardian In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name has been forgotten today. It is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immorality, or, more succinctly, wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent . . . 'A fantastic tale of murder and twisted eroticism controlled by a disgusted loathing of humanity . .. Clever, stylish, absorbing and well worth reading' Literary Review 'A meditation on the nature of death, desire and decay . . . A remarkable début' Peter Ackroyd, The New York Times Book Review 'Unlike anything else one has read. A phenomenon . . . [It] will remain unique in contemporary literature' Figaro 'An ingenious and totally absorbing fantasy' Daily Telegraph 'Witty, stylish and ferociously absorbing' Observer

The Journalist and the Murderer

Author: Janet Malcolm
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307797872
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
A seminal work and examination of the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit by a convicted murder againt the journalist who wrote a book about his crime, Malcolm delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung. Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case -- the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial -- Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative -- and always on the edge of the reader's consciousness -- is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.