True Crime Serial Murders

On the night of October 10, 2008, Johnny Altinger was heading to his first date with a woman he had met online. He was never seen again. Two weeks earlier, aspiring filmmaker Mark Twitchell, a young father with a devotion to the television series Dexter, began a three-day shoot for his latest short film. His horror story featured a serial killer who impersonates women on an online dating site to lure unsuspecting men to his suburban kill room. But was his script actually the blueprint for a real-life murder?

When he was arrested in July 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer had a severed head in the refrigerator, two more in the freezer, two skulls and a skeleton in a filing cabinet. But if anything could be more disturbing than the brute horror of this scene, it was the evidence that Dahmer had been using these human remains not only for sexual gratification but as part of a dark ritual of his own devising - to furnish a shrine to himself.

From suicide attempts to claiming her mother cursed her, to miscarriages, and losing 10 of her 14 children, Leonarda’s life wasn’t easy. Protecting her four surviving children became something of an obsession for the woman. Perhaps tragedy loosened her grip on reality, or maybe the fear of losing her oldest to war caused a mental break. Whatever the cause, Leonarda’s chilling deeds will raise the hair on the back of your neck and leave you wondering if those around you are capable of the same evil.

Ann Rule, who shared her own nerve-jangling account of unknowingly befriending sadistic sociopath Ted Bundy in The Stranger Beside Me, chronicles other fateful encounters with the hidden predators among us in this riveting collection, fifteenth in the best-selling series drawn from her personal files. First in line is a stunning case that spanned thirty years and took a determined detective to four states - ending, finally, in Alaska - where he unraveled not one but two murders.

In the fall of 1978, teenager Theresa Allore went missing near Sherbrooke, Quebec. She wasn't seen again until the spring thaw revealed her body in a creek only a few kilometers away. Shrugging off her death as a result of 1970s drug culture, police didn't investigate. Patricia Pearson started dating Theresa's brother, John, during the aftermath of Theresa's death. Though the two teens would go their separate ways, the family's grief, obsession with justice, and desire for the truth never left Patricia.

Everyone thinks they know the story of Milly Dowler. Haunting headlines about the missing schoolgirl splashed across front pages. The family's worst fears realised when her body was found months later. The years of waiting for the truth, only to learn that the killer, known to the police, lived just yards from where Milly had vanished. The parents subjected to horrific psychological torture at a trial orchestrated by the murderer.

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert—after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life—went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old: she was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene—of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention—until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. But none of them Shannan’s.

H.H. Holmes was a doctor, real estate speculator, pharmacist, bigamist, swindler, and America's first media superstar serial killer. As he awaited trial, he put out a series of autobiographical documents, press releases, and interviews that revealed his sociopathic tendencies and lies about his crimes. The infamous killer of the Chicago World's Fair published a memoir and a confession, both of which conceal more than they reveal of the truth.

For twelve years the Golden State Killer terrorized California, stalking victims and killing without remorse. Then he simply disappeared, for the next forty-four years, until an amateur DNA sleuth opened her laptop. In I Know Who You Are, Barbara Rae-Venter reveals how she went from researching her family history as a retiree to hunting for a notorious serial killer—and how she became the nation’s leading authority on investigative genetic genealogy, the most dazzling new crime-fighting weapon to appear in decades.

In January 1978, I slept in my bed at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University as Ted Bundy stalked nearby. He grabbed an oak log from a stack of firewood, slipped through a back door with a broken padlock, and headed upstairs.He began twisting doorknobs. Room 9 was open, and he quietly and quickly killed one of my sleeping sorority sisters. Across the hall, he found another unlocked door and murdered again. Then, he turned the knob to my bedroom and found it was open. I remember the attack vividly. But Bundy wasn’t my first brush with death, and he wasn’t my last.

Jillian Lauren had no idea what she was getting into when she wrote her first letter to prolific serial killer Samuel Little. All she knew was her research had led her to believe he was good for far more murders than the three for which he had been convicted. While the two exchanged dozens of letters and embarked on hundreds of hours of interviews, Lauren gained the trust of a monster. After maintaining his innocence for decades, Little confessed to the murders of ninety-three women, often drawing his victims in haunting detail as he spoke.

In this unrelenting real-life drama of three wealthy families connected by marriage and murder, Bledsoe recounts the shocking events, obsessive love, and bitter custody battles that led toward the bloody climax that took nine lives.

In an area of Houston known as the Heights, boys had been going missing for years, but it was the peace-and-love 1970s, so police just called them runaways. When the truth was uncovered, and police - and the rest of Houston - realized the boys had become victims of notorious American serial killer Dean Corll, Houston recoiled in horrified shock. Residents realized that they had not only become the site of the most grisly mass murder in Texas history, but the worst mass murder in all of US history.

In 1990, a young woman was strangled on a jogging path near the home of Pat Brown and her family. Brown suspected the young man who was renting a room in her house, and quickly uncovered strong evidence that pointed to him - but the police dismissed her as merely a housewife with an overactive imagination. It would be six years before her former boarder would be brought in for questioning, but the night Brown took action to solve the murder was the beginning of her life's work.

In this collection of true crime murder stories, discover three books containing a full graphic account of the exploits of monstrous individuals.

The Whitechapel Murders of 1888 have remained unsolved for over 130 years and hundreds of theories have been suggested as to the killer's identity. Despite numerous books claiming to unmask the infamous Victorian villain, none have come close…until now. The authors of this book are all members of H Division Crime Club, the world's largest body of experts on the Jack the Ripper murders. They have all come together for the first time in history to deliver their own personal research into each suspect and to finally nail down the identity of the man known as Jack the Ripper.

This graphic account of convicted killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka shows that in some relationships, neither party is the “better half”. Both halves of this Canadian couple add up to one evil story.

Take a walk through the depths of human depravity with Unbelievable Crimes, Volume Two. I’ll delve into some of the most shocking and disturbing crime cases in recent history, taking you on a harrowing journey through some of the most twisted tales you’ve never heard of—yet.

Inside the minds of the world's most depraved serial killers. Sunday Times best-selling author Christopher Berry-Dee is the man who talks to serial killers. A world-renowned investigative criminologist, he has gained the trust of murderers across the world, entered their high security prisons and discussed in detail their shocking crimes. The killers' pursuit of horror and violence is described through the unique audiotape and videotape interviews which Berry-Dee conducted, deep inside the bowels of some of the world's toughest prisons.

Charles Sobhraj remains one of the world's great con men and as a serial killer, the story of his life and capture endures as legend. First published in 1979, but updated here to include new material, On the Trail of the Serpent draws its listeners into the story of Sobhraj's life as told exclusively to journalists Richard Neville and Julie Clarke. Blurring the boundaries between true crime and novelisation, this remains the definitive book about Sobhraj - a riveting tale of sex, drugs, adventure and murder.