Crime Memoir

In the very depths of the human soul there is a darkness. It is an entity which most of us may never get to know; for others, however, this darkness grows for years until it takes hold of them and permeates every inch of their body. This darkness is evil incarnate, and it is in the hearts and minds of some of the most dangerous and despicable human beings to have walked this same earth we live in today. In the following volumes, you shall discover the stories of six murderers so tainted by darkness that their horrific accounts still bring fear to men and women of our present day.

For 56 years, the Black Dahlia murder case remained one of the most notorious and high-profile unsolved crimes of the 20th century. Now, Steve Hodel, a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, believes he has finally solved the case. On January 15, 1947, 22-year-old Elizabeth Short - "The Black Dahlia" - was found dead in a vacant lot in Los Angeles, her body horribly mutilated, bisected at the waist, and posed in a bizarre manner.

Growing up, Joanne suffered at the hands of a violent boyfriend and controlling relatives, as her mother lapsed into a downward spiral following the break-up of her marriage. But the consequences of her mother's lifestyle turned out to be worse than Joanne could ever have imagined. She already knew about the baby buried in a shallow makeshift grave next to the family plot. But when Joanne came across a red plastic bin in her mother's wardrobe in 2009, she realised that the family home held an even more sinister secret.

In Creekstone, Texas, a small, quiet suburb of Houston, football was king and David Temple was a prince. A former high school and college gridiron-star-turned-coach, he had a fairy-tale marriage to bright, vivacious Belinda Lucas, a teacher at the local high school who was so warm and popular her colleagues called her "The Sunshine Girl". The fairy tale ended savagely on January 11, 1999, when Belinda's lifeless body was discovered in a closet. Her skull had been shattered by a shotgun blast at close range. She was eight months pregnant.

The murders of four innocent college students attending the University of Idaho left us all with so many questions. Now, after more than 300 interviews, James Patterson and prize-winning journalist Vicky Ward finally have the answers. We know what it was like to live in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022, the day of the cold-blooded killings. We know what the local police and FBI did right. And what they did wrong. We’ve learned so much about the four heartbroken families—the Mogens, Goncalveses, Kernodles, and Chapins. And we have the backstory for Bryan Kohberger.

William Flanagan’s Like Mother, Like Son recounts the sensational true case of handsome young playboy Jed Ardito, who strangled his beautiful Brooklyn girlfriend to death in an erotic frenzy. But this true crime story gets even stranger: Seventeen years earlier, Ardito’s mother Frances Victoria Ardito had her own illicit lover murdered.

When Scott Payne was growing up, he never envisioned a future that included what happened on Halloween night 2019. Out in the woods of Georgia, he tried desperately to save a goat from being sacrificed in a ritual by a group of neo-Nazis without revealing that he was actually an undercover agent. Now, this retired FBI agent reveals how and why he infiltrated the rapidly growing American Nazi group, The Base. Known as the “Hillbilly Donnie Brasco,” Payne was guided through some of the most terrifying assignments in the FBI’s history by his devotion to his family and his Christian faith.

For decades, Sandra Brown’s life has been intertwined with someone she has never met: an eleven year-old girl named Moira Anderson – who disappeared from their hometown of Coatbridge, Scotland, in 1957. It became one of the oldest cold cases in Scottish history. Sandra lived just around the corner from Moira. She grew up hearing about the missing girl, whose memory haunted the town. But she never imagined that, one day, she would be the one trying to uncover what happened. Or that her search for answers would reveal secrets and lies so close to home.

Once upon a time Rolling Stone contributing editor Erik Hedegaard became the last mainstream media journalist to interview Charles Manson. But the story he wrote for RS in 2013 didn’t begin to capture the strange and lingering effect Manson would have on his life. Now, in this Audible Original, you’ll hear about the making of that story, including audio of the phone calls Hedegaard received from Manson on a regular basis, interviews he conducted with Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi, as well as conversations he had with Manson Family members.

Paul Bernado and Karla Homolka were so perfectly iconic as a newlywed couple that they were dubbed "Ken and Barbie". But their marriage had a dark side involving sex, death, and videotape. The "perfect couple" first raped and murdered Karla's little sister then kidnapped teenage schoolgirls whom they enslaved, raped, tortured, and killed while gleefully recording themselves on video doing it.

If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6.

In 2014, American private contractor Alan Gross was rotting in a Cuban prison, convicted of undermining the Havana regime. At that same time, Cuban intelligence agent Gerardo Hernández was serving two life sentences in a US federal penitentiary on charges related to espionage. Then, it all changed. I Spy: The U.S., Cuba, and the Secret Deal That Ended the Cold War describes how secret negotiations to free the two men helped bring an end to half a century of hostilities between the United States and Cuba.

Investigative journalist Paul Palango’s 22 Murders examined in forensic detail the shooting spree committed in April 2020 by Gabriel Wortman that began in tiny Portapique Bay, Nova Scotia, and ended thirteen hours later when Wortman was shot dead by RCMP officers. The episode left numerous serious questions in its wake—most especially why was the killer able to evade police in such limited geography for an entire night and much of the following morning?

To this day, the LAPD, Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, mainstream media, and much of the world at large remain firmly convinced that O. J. Simpson literally got away with murder. According to private investigator William Dear, it is precisely this assuredness that has led both the police and public to overlook a far more likely suspect. Dear now compiles more than 16 years of investigation by his team of forensic experts and presents evidence that O. J. was not the killer.

Journey through my troubled childhood as I went from victim to victimizer. Explore my punishment and experience my distress as I tried to make sense of the incomprehensible.

In The Lost Girls, John Glatt tells the truly amazing story of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight - who were kidnapped, imprisoned, and repeatedly raped and beaten in a Cleveland house for over a decade by Ariel Castro - and their amazing escape in May 2013, which made headlines all over the world.

Dans ce sixième volume de sa série True Crime, Adrian Langenscheid, l'auteur allemand le plus vendu de True Crime, nous offre une nouvelle fois une lecture passionnante et addictive. Les descriptions factuelles, froides et neutres, dressent des portraits bouleversants et profondément dérangeants des abîmes de l’âme humaine et donnent des émotions puissantes.

Pain, torment, and torture. Cruelty, brutality, and violence. The twisted psyches, murder. and yes, even the ability to charm people. Take a deep dive into the terrifyingly real serial murderers, spree killers, and true faces of evil.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery.

In January 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short, completely drained of blood, was discovered in an undeveloped lot in Los Angeles. Its gruesome mutilations led to a firestorm of publicity, city-wide panic, and an unprecedented number of investigative paths led by the LAPD—all dead ends. The Black Dahlia murder remained an unsolved mystery for over seventy years.