True Crime Serial

The true story of Barbara Stager, a devoted mother, loving wife, and dedicated church leader who committed an almost perfect crime. By all accounts, Stager seemed to lead the perfect life in her community in Durham, North Carolina. After her husband, popular high school coach Russ, died tragically, the police were inclined to believe her story - that she accidentally shot him. Suspicions rose when the police discovered that Stager's previous husband had died similarly 10 years prior.

United States of True Crime is an anthology series with books devoted to the most disturbing cases in each of the 50 states. This audiobook focuses on 20 of the most chilling crimes in California history. True crime junkies may recognize some of the highly publicized cases but I’ve made sure to include lesser-known, equally unsettling crimes.

William Neal, who called himself "Wild Bill Cody," was seductive and skillful at separating love-struck women from their money, and ultimately, their lives. Apprehended by police, Neal, who proclaimed himself “better than Ted Bundy,” pleaded guilty to three murders then insisted on representing himself at his death penalty trial. But the psychopathic killer found himself up against the incredible courage of his one surviving victim.

On January 9, 2002, twelve-year-old Ashley Pond left her family’s apartment in Oregon City, Oregon, to catch her bus to school. Then, she vanished. Ashley loved her single-parent mother, but she hated her drinking, and the father figures in her life had come and gone. So she had learned to rely on her friends. Recently, however, things in her life had become even more complicated, so when she disappeared, many people believed she’d simply run away. But Janine O’Neill had prosecuted crimes against children in Oregon City for seven years.

By the time he was brought to trial in 1992, Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo had killed more than fifty women and children, often sexually abusing them and leaving their bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Although he was initially arrested in 1984, the police lacked enough evidence to pin the unsolved murders on him and he was able to torture and kill dozens more before his eventual conviction.

Before David Wilson became the UK's pre-eminent criminologist, he was just a young boy growing up in the Scottish town of Carluke. As a child, the brutal murder of a young woman rocked this small community, but very quickly a man was arrested for the crime, convicted and put behind bars. For most, life slowly carried on - case closed.

On July 20, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, a man in dark body armor and a gas mask entered a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises with a tactical shotgun, a high-capacity assault rifle, and a sidearm. Soon twelve were dead and fifty-eight were wounded. A Dark Night in Aurora uses the twenty-three hours of unredacted interview transcripts never seen by the public and Reid’s research to bring the listener inside the mind of a mass murderer. The result is chilling, gripping study of abnormal psychology and how a lovely boy named Jimmy became a killer.

Ted Bundy killed at least 35 girls and women, and possibly hundreds. Was his first victim eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr who disappeared from their Tacoma, Washington neighborhood in 1961? Her body was never found and there were no clues, just two tenacious detectives who spent the rest of their lives trying to solve the case.

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.

A seemingly normal husband father of two decides to kill young girls after storming an Amish schoolhouse, and sex may have been the prime motivator. A young high school student has a secret desire for murder, and decides a middle of the night visit to his best friend's house will do nicely to satiate his hunger to kill. A seedy individual living in an even seedier part of Philadelphia decides to populate his basement with kidnapped women for sex and the bearing of children, and it is death to those who do not submit.

On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O'Neil's mother, teenaged Kim Byers, saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. At the end of his shift at the pharmacy where they both worked, fifteen-year-old Rob went outside to speak to a contractor named John Wayne Gacy about a possible job. That night Rob became Gacy's final victim; his body was later found in the Des Plaines River. Kim's testimony, along with a receipt belonging to her found in Gacy's house, proving that Rob had been there, would be pivotal in convicting the serial killer who killed over thirty young men and boys.

Of all the many psychopaths and sociopaths that have hunted for human victims throughout history, few have been more disturbing or mysterious than Christopher Bernard Wilder - the Beauty Queen Killer. From the middle of the 1960s until 1984, Wilder sexually assaulted countless women and murdered at least nine in Australia and the United States. The Beauty Queen Killer was not only a true psychopath, but also a hunter, as he carefully chose attractive girls and young women to victimize.

Ted Bundy is one of America’s most notorious serial killers. Between the mid- and late 1970s, Bundy admitted to the murders of more than 30 young women and girls across the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado.

In 2003, Kathleen Folbigg was found guilty of smothering her four young children to death, one by one. Medical experts told her trial that they had never come across a family like hers, where three or more infants had died from natural causes. Extracts from diaries she had written were judged to be virtual admissions of guilt, and Folbigg was sentenced to 40 years in jail. But did she do it?

Dennis Rader appeared to be the perfect neighbor: a father, church council president, and city employee. But behind closed doors, he was the BTK Killer—one of the most sadistic and methodical serial killers in American history. From 1974 to 1991, Rader murdered ten victims and vanished... only to resurface decades later in a chilling game with law enforcement. In Dennis Rader: The BTK Killer, David G. Stone delivers an in-depth account of how Rader maintained a monstrous secret life for decades.

Three spine chilling true crime stories in one collection from the best-selling author Robert Brown. This collection contains the first three of Robert Browns best-selling true crime novels. Includes: Bonfire Bodies, The Candy Man, and The Acid Alchemist.

Annie Monahan was arguably the most successful "black widow" of the early twentieth century, when you factor in the time it took for authorities to finally catch up with her. She had killed three husbands and her own niece, garnering sizable payouts from life insurance companies as she acted as a beneficiary in all of the cases. She performed these acts of murder in the sleepy town of New Haven, Connecticut, dealing with police who always seem to be one step behind her.

The first documented female serial killer in the US came out of the tiny state of Delaware, as did a signature killer who attracted FBI profilers. Political intrigue winds through an unsolved mystery in Wilmington while a high-powered attorney ruined his life to punish his mistress. Here we have poisoners, bludgeoners, and some privileged teenagers who killed their baby. The corridor state between New Jersey and Maryland might be small, but it has harbored some very dark characters.

Richmond, Virginia. On the morning of October 19, 1979, parolee James Briley stood before a judge and vowed to quit the criminal life. That same day James met with his brothers, Linwood and Anthony, and 16-year-old neighbor Duncan Meekins. What they planned - and carried out - would make them American serial killer legends and reveal to police investigators a seven-month rampage of rape, robbery, and murder exceeding in brutality already documented cases of psychopaths, sociopaths, and sex criminals.

In this audiobook adaptation of the 2013 documentary, David Wilson introduces listeners to notable serial killers throughout Britain. Using interviews, archives, and his own extensive knowledge, he is able to piece together the stories of these criminals, as well as the story of Broadmoor Hospital, the high-security prison that was home to many of the criminally insane and housed some of the most notorious criminals in Britain's history.