Serial Killers True Crime

A schoolteacher who killed multiple paramours with cyanide; a mother who trained her daughters to kill children; a thug from the 1800s who slaughtered more than 900 people, a manservant who killed girls and devoured their body parts. If you thought serial killers was a Western phenomenon, think again! These bone-chilling stories in The Deadly Dozen will take you into the hearts and heads of India's most devious murderers and schemers, exploring what made them kill and why.

When this killer was on the loose, citizens were vigilant, yet scared. Children were not allowed outside to play without adult supervision. But then he was captured, tried, convicted, and put away for life in prison. The community could finally breathe again. They were out of danger. Until the day the convicted killer escaped prison and reigned terror upon anyone and everyone in his way. The manhunt pursued, the killer killed, and earned the title of a serial killer. This is the story of Allan Legere - a monster.

Trophy wife Celeste Beard wasn't satisfied with a luxurious lifestyle and her rich Austin media mogul husband's devotion--so she took his life! The wife: She wanted everything, but her husband stood in the way. The lesbian lover: a lovestruck, middle-aged woman with a history of mental illness. She would do anything to set Celeste free. The beauty salon receptionist: Celeste hired her to tie up the loose ends...in a second conspiracy to commit murder.

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds.

From the start, Robert Hansen seemed destined for an unhappy life. Overworked by his strict parents and relentlessly bullied by his classmates, he spent his teenage years alone. His love of archery and hunting were the only comforts he had until he left his small town for Alaska, the last great frontier. Witness the depraved second life of a respected family man - the life of the worst serial killer in Alaska's history.

While some of these cases are sure to tickle the memory of any true crime enthusiast, some might just be new to you. One thing all these cold cases have in common is that they’ve finally been solved, some with incredibly shocking outcomes.

The year 1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Long-haired teenagers roam the streets, strumming guitars and preaching about peace and love...and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire—the leader of their counterculture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands out hallucinogenic drugs like candy. But beneath his benign persona lies a twisted and uncontrollable rage that threatens to break loose at any moment. Tony Costa is the most dangerous man on Cape Cod.

In 1994, an aspiring young cold-case investigator in California’s East Bay, Paul Holes, puts aside trying to solve the Golden State Killer case as he waits for science to catch up. Paul returns to an old file cabinet at the back of the forensic lab to look for another cold case he can work—something with DNA. He finds one. The 1978 murder of a married mother who went for a morning jog in a nearby park. The original investigators believed that a serial killer named Phillip Hughes was responsible; they just couldn’t prove it.

Women have committed some of the most disturbing serial killings ever seen in the United States. Yet scientific inquiry, criminal profiling, and public interest have focused more on their better-known male counterparts. As a result, female serial killers have been misunderstood, overlooked, and underestimated. In this riveting account, Dr. Marissa A. Harrison draws on original scientific research, various psychological perspectives, and richly detailed case studies to illuminate the stark differences between female and male serial killers’ backgrounds, motives, and crimes.

On September 13, 2016, in the small town of Ashland, Ohio, emergency dispatchers received a 911 call from a terrified woman who claimed to be kidnapped. The man holding her hostage was Shawn Grate, a serial killer whom the press later dubbed “The Ladykiller.” A key to his conviction and death sentence were Grate’s extensive recorded confessions—all extracted by one woman: Detective Kim Mager.

As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?

En Australie, environ 38 000 personnes - des jeunes pour la moitié - sont portées disparues chaque année. 64 %, soit les deux tiers de ces dossiers, sont résolus dans les 24 heures. Néanmoins, une proportion non négligeable de ces hommes, femmes et enfants ne sont jamais retrouvés. Sans preuve claire de vie ou de mort, nous sommes dans l'incapacité de savoir ce qui leur est arrivé. Par ailleurs, un certain nombre de faits divers choquants - meurtres, agressions, enlèvements etc. - ont émaillé l'actualité australienne de ces quarante dernières années.

In November 1987, a young couple on an overnight trip to Seattle vanished without a trace. A week later, the bodies of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook were found in rural Washington. It was a brutal crime, and it was the perfect crime: With few clues and no witnesses, an international manhunt turned up empty, and the sensational case that shocked the Pacific Northwest gradually slipped from the headlines.

Something unimaginable occurred from 1764 to 1767 in the remote highlands of south-central France. For three years, a real-life monster, or monsters, ravaged the region, slaughtering by some accounts more than 100 people, mostly women and children, and inflicting severe injuries upon many others.

The depraved crimes of both real and imagined serial killers and mass murderers have long transfixed us in newspapers and books, but perhaps nowhere more so than on the big screen. Best-selling author Christopher Berry-Dee talks to the serial killers whose wicked stories have most thrilled and fascinated us at the movies, and, through far-ranging and disturbing interviews, he tells the stories of the mass murderers who provided the inspiration for some of cinema’s most shocking films.

Ted Bundy is the most darkly fascinating and widely analyzed serial killer of the past century, possibly ever. No sex criminal, from Jack the Ripper to Zodiac to the Green River Killer, inhabits the popular mind as does Bundy. Now, the two men who know Bundy’s criminal nature best - Dr. Robert Keppel and author Stephen Michaud - have teamed to write the definitive narrative of Bundy’s bloody career, as well as the inside story of how Keppel tracked the elusive killer for 15 years.

The Story of Fred and Rosemary West examines the horrifying account of an incestuous butcher and his wife, a bisexual nymphomaniac, who kept their deadly secrets buried in their garden at 25 Cromwell Street.

John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Conti was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news. Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, difficult, and haunting client.

In July of 1991, the country was shocked by the unfathomable crimes of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. But no one was more shocked than his parents. In A Father's Story, the listener becomes witness to the incremental unraveling of a parent's image of their child, and the thousand different reactions that follow. In his attempt to understand the nature of his son's psychosis, Lionel Dahmer methodically scrutinizes every possible contributing factor to his son's madness. His desperation is palpable as he searches for clues in the emotional, psychological, and genetic landscape of his son's life.

Eleven women went missing over the spring and summer of 1988 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an old fishing port known as the Whaling City, where Moby Dick, Frederick Douglass, textile mills, and heroin-dealing represent just a few of the many threads in the community's diverse fabric. In Shallow Graves, investigative reporter Maureen Boyle tells the story of a case that has haunted New England for 30 years.