English True Crime

Queen of the Con tells the true story of Cassie Chadwick, a successful swindler and “one of the top 10 imposters of all time”, according to TIME magazine. Born Betsy Bigley in 1857 in Canada, she first operated as Madame Devere, a European clairvoyant, and in 1890, was arrested for defrauding a Toledo bank of $20,000. In the mid-1890s, while working as a madam in Cleveland, Cassie met and married a widowed physician with a coveted Euclid Avenue address.

In 2006 at Belfast Crown Court, William James Fulton, a principal in the outlawed Loyalist Volunteer Force, was jailed for life and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years after the longest trial in Northern Ireland’s legal history for the Rosemary Nelson killing. This unique story is told by former undercover officer Mark Dickens who was part of an elite team of undercover detectives who took part in "Operation George", one of the most remarkable covert policing operations the world has ever known.

Unsolved Serial Killers, Volumes 3 & 4 is here with 20 cases for you to plunge into! If you’re a true crime junkie, you may think you know the world of serial killers inside and out. Prepare to be surprised by what you find within this book. Many of these criminals’ stories have been nearly lost to time, discarded amongst the drama and pace of the modern news cycle.

In this, the first book of its kind, Kate Kray, who married gangster Ronnie Kray, peers into the minds of the top 20 worst killers in criminal history and, sparing no detail, reveals the awful truth of their abominable acts. The extreme nature of their violence and their shocking lack of remorse makes for uncomfortable yet fascinating listening.

Listen as five criminals tell their stories. Jay Jay found trouble young, very young. Serving time at age 12 is not the beginning of Jay Jay’s descent into criminality. Cjay has been in nearly as many prisons as she has fingers, yet nothing in her upbringing predestined her for crime. Lawrence, a child raised in American ghetto circumstances, became the epitome of extreme violence while at the same time holding tight an inner secret of female identity. Brian was a young man with a twinkle in his eye and a propensity for getting caught.

Justice is blind, they say, but perhaps not to beauty. In supposedly dispassionate courts of law, attractive women have long avoided punishment, based largely on their looks, for cold-blooded crimes. The Beauty Defense: Femmes Fatales on Trial gathers the true stories of some of the most infamous femmes fatales in criminal history, collected by attorney and true crime historian Laura James.

Enter the riveting and volatile world of the Burger Bar Boys, Birmingham's infamous gang, in this relentless chronicle of power, violence, and redemption. Gangland Birmingham: The Rise and Fall of the Burger Bar Boys unravels the intricate narrative of one of the UK's most notorious gangs from their humble beginnings to their inevitable downfall.

Occupied Warsaw, Summer 1940: Witold Pilecki, a Polish underground operative, accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands interned at a new concentration camp, report on Nazi crimes, raise a secret army, and stage an uprising. The name of the camp - Auschwitz. Over the next two and half years, and under the cruelest of conditions, Pilecki's underground sabotaged facilities, assassinated Nazi officers, and gathered evidence of terrifying abuse and mass murder.

Smile is a chilling account of Rodney Alcala, one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. Ryan Green gives a suspenseful narrative that draws the listener into the real-life horror experienced by the victims with all the elements of a captivating thriller.

Jack the Ripper was probably the first serial killer to appear in a large metropolis at a time when the general populace was literate and the press was a force for social change. The press was also partly responsible for creating many myths surrounding the Ripper. Robin Odell's Ripperology is the first study to present a sequential history of literary investigations of Jack the Ripper's crimes and to address the seven principal phases of Ripper speculations....

The permanent solution to a wife’s chronic headache. As Ted Bundy was to the 20th century, so Carlyle Harris was to the 19th. Harris was a charismatic, handsome, young medical student with an insatiable appetite for sex. His trail of debauched women ended with Helen Potts, a beautiful young woman of wealth and privilege who was determined to keep herself pure for marriage. Unable to conquer her by other means, Harris talked her into a secret marriage under assumed names, and when threatened with exposure, he poisoned her.

In this riveting collection of true crime stories from the files of award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author of 32 books M. William Phelps, someone tries to pin a gruesome murder on a horse, infamous serial killer Son of Sam shows us his true evil nature in a series of lost letters this psychopath never wanted you to see, and Sesame Street's Big Bird comes home to find a dead woman on his estate. These join several other tales only a master storyteller like Phelps can bring to life for listeners.

Explore the chilling stories of humanity’s most sinister individuals in Unbelievable Crimes Volume Four. I’ll uncover hidden horrors of recent history, walking you through a haunting lineup of lesser-known crimes. I’ve scoured the dark and disturbing archives of true crime to present an anthology of cases that even the most informed crime followers may not have encountered before. I’ll cover the hard-to-hear but little-covered tales that have somehow evaded the headlines: from murder to kidnapping to senseless acts of violence, Volume Four covers some truly horrific tales.

Listener beware: This book contains disturbing stories of true-life murder. Viewer discretion is advised. Serial killers are known for their brutal disregard of human life. Their methods of murder often involve torture, sexual abuse, and cannibalism. Crime scene images reveal the horrific nature of their actions: stomachs disemboweled, limbs severed, and internal organs removed for later consumption.

From poverty to lucky in love, Belle found her happy ending with a man named Mads…or so everyone thought. But when the wealthy Mads died a mysterious death, Belle collected the life insurance policy and remarried…only for her new husband to drop dead. With things going from strange to sinister, more men mysteriously die or go missing around Belle.

Federal agents never know what to expect from day to day. During his 25-year career with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Special Agent Wayne M. Miller investigated dozens of remarkable and sometimes high-profile horrific gun, bombing, and arson cases. These accounts show true crime enthusiasts what federal investigators regularly face. All investigators could use this as a detailed textbook to see and feel the highs and lows, with the good and bad experienced by someone who has been through it.

In the gold mining town of Greymouth, where drunks fell asleep smoking and burned down their houses, the town was constantly inundated with floods, and 57 hotels had sprung up in a year to accommodate the hordes of miners and gold thieves, Inspector William Henry James was tasked with keeping the town safe with a small force of troopers. In 1888, forced into retirement by government cuts, James walks home beside the Whanganui River remembering his association with a series of murders by the notorious Burgess gang: back in 1866 he had forced the gang to leave Greymouth.

In the summer of 1885, ex-convict George Graham bigamously married Cora Lee, foster daughter of nationally known temperance revivalist Emma Molloy, and the three took up residence together on the Molloy farm near Springfield, MO. When the body of Graham’s first wife, Sarah, was found at the bottom of an abandoned well on the Molloy farm early the next year, Graham was charged with murder, and Cora and Emma were implicated as accessories. This sensational story made headlines across the country and threatened Mrs. Molloy’s career as a prominent evangelist and temperance revivalist.

Published in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, 1969, Indecent Advances investigates how queer men navigated a society that criminalized them and displayed little compassion for the violence they endured. Polchin shows, with masterful insight, how this discrimination was ultimately transformed by activists to help shape the burgeoning gay rights movement in the years leading up to Stonewall.

Nicholas Nicastro revisits a haunting mystery that still fascinates a nation a century later. His masterly re-imagining of these tragic events sees beyond the prejudices that destroys families and taints small communities but corrodes civilization itself. Nicastro’s simple storytelling style with its kaleidoscopic perspectives is moving, beautiful, and profound.