True Kidnapping

For most of the 20th century, the name Hearst was most closely associated with one of America's most famous (and infamous) newspaper magnates, William Garrison Hearst, whose life was the inspiration for Citizen Kane. But in the 1970s, his granddaughter Patricia made headlines thanks to a series of events that would wind up being one of the most bizarre chapters of the 20th century.

La crónica de un secuestro real magistralmente retratado por Gabriel García Márquez. "Era, en efecto, el automóvil de Maruja. Había transcurrido por lo menos media hora desde el secuestro, y sólo quedaban los rastros: el cristal del lado del chofer destruido por un balazo, la mancha de sangre y el granizo del vidrio en el asiento, y la sombra húmeda en el asfalto, de donde acababan de llevarse al chofer todavía con vida. El resto estaba limpio y en orden."

The Jan Broberg Story tells the winding tale of the Brobergs, a church-going, Idaho family that falls prey to a sociopathic neighbor who will stop at nothing to be with their young daughter. Robert Berchtold, furniture store owner and family man, coaxes his way into the Broberg’s life, meticulously building their trust and bonding with their young girls. One day, Robert offers to take their 12-year-old daughter, Jan, horseback riding, only he doesn’t return her home.

There is perhaps no crime more disturbing than the abuse of a child—and no court cases as upsetting as those in which juveniles who have faced abuse are tried for fighting back. In this gripping memoir Sara Kruzan, a survivor of childhood abuse and sex trafficking, tells the honest, disturbing, and ultimately empowering story of her journey from abuse to incarceration without parole for killing her abuser to finally gaining her liberation.

What possesses a mum to kidnap her own child? That's what Maggie asks herself when she's asked to foster 13-year-old Saskia, the subject of a bitter custody battle between her parents. When Saskia's mum Rosa fears the courts are going to favour her ex-husband, James, she takes matters into her own hands. With Rosa facing criminal charges, and Saskia refusing to live with her dad, her future looks uncertain. Will Maggie be able to step in and discover the bombshell that will tear this family apart?

At 8.00 a.m. on Monday 18th June 2001, Danielle Jones left home dressed in her schoolgirl uniform - and promptly vanished. The 15-year old’s body was never recovered, but Danielle’s parents soon learned that her ‘Uncle Stuart’, a close family friend, had concealed a decades-long history of sexual violence against teenage girls. Despite the absence of a body, Stuart Campbell was jailed in 2002 for Danielle’s abduction and murder, and sentenced to life in prison.

Crisis Cops 2, much like the first book, will take you into the world of Hostage/Crisis Negotiations. These are interesting real-life stories from police officers that have been negotiating crisis situations for decades. Crisis Cops 2 will explore first-hand accounts of some of the most intense, life-or-death situations that have happened over the last several decades.

Nine wholesome university students mountaineering in the Urals go missing, and are later uncovered from the snows of a bleak forest's edge in the Siberian Taiga, in a series of grisly discoveries. Why were the climbers wearing no boots? Why were stout branches of the forest pines singed to a height of 30 feet? What were the mysterious markings in the bark of nearby trees? What was so-called "overwhelming force" that was capable of breaking eight ribs in a single blow without bruises?

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is one of the most beloved and notorious novels of all time, selling over 60 million copies worldwide to date. Yet very few of its readers know that the subject of the novel was derived from a real-life case: the 1948 abduction of 11-year-old Sally Horner. Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, The Real Lolita tells Sally Horner's full story for the very first time.

North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields held the promise of unimaginable wealth… But for some, the price was paid in blood. James Henrikson was a man driven by greed and a lust for power. A mix of charm and ruthlessness, he carefully concealed his criminal past while rising to oilfield royalty alongside his equally deceptive wife, Sarah Creveling. But their short-lived empire was fragile, a house of cards held together by lies. When it all began to crumble, James was blinded by rage and consumed by a need for revenge.

Kathi Spiars can't believe she's found such a good man to marry as Stephen Marcum. Twelve years later, she starts to suspect that he isn't who he says he is. As she digs into his past, she doesn't realize that learning the truth will lead to a lifetime of fear and hiding.

If you’re a fan of true crime, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the big-name cases: Ted Bundy, BTK, David Berkowitz, Christopher Watts, Diane Downs, Casey Anthony. The list of well-known, notorious cases throughout history is seemingly endless. Books, websites, podcasts, streaming television series, and magazines are filled with their abhorrent tales of mayhem. They’re some of the most foul killers the world has ever known. In this volume, you’ll find 12 assorted true crime stories ranging in date from the 1950s to 2020.

What would you do if your son suddenly disappeared in Syria, and you had no idea what had happened to him? Would you contact the FBI? The State Department? Pray? Would you Google “What to do if your son disappears in Syria”? When the unthinkable happened, the answer, in the case of Ann Goodwin and her husband Tag, was: all of the above. Their 30-year-old son Sam, who was attempting to become one of the few people in history to travel to every single country on the planet, vanished in a supposed safe-zone run by the Kurds on the Turkish border.

From the 1940s through the 1960s, young pregnant women entered the front door of a clinic in a small North Georgia town. Sometimes their babies exited out the back, sold to Northern couples who were desperate to hold a newborn in their arms. But these weren't adoptions - they were transactions. And one unethical doctor was exploiting other people's tragedies. Jane Blasio was one of those babies.

For almost three decades, renowned baby-seller Georgia Tann ran a children's home in Memphis, Tennessee—selling her charges to wealthy clients nationwide, Joan Crawford among them. Part social history, part detective story, part expose, The Baby Thief is a riveting investigative narrative that explores themes that continue to reverberate today.

Between 1950 and 1970, the Vatican and the American Catholic Church sent nearly four thousand Italian children to the United States for adoption into “good” Catholic homes. With the religious stigma of unwed motherhood turning families against daughters and a Church and State wanting “illegitimate” children sent abroad, mothers were lied to, given forms to sign that they didn’t understand, or even told their baby had died, all to further supply this international adoption pipeline.

When Amy Price took a temporary design job at an Art Deco hotel in Los Angeles to help a friend, she had no idea the path it would lead her down. Before long, she would become manager of the Cecil Hotel, seeking to make it more welcoming and correct its notoriety, not helped by sitting at the foot of Skid Row, or the fact that since its opening in 1927, there had been any number of deaths by suicide, and residents such as serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.

THE STORIES OF THOSE WHO HAVE VANISHED ON KAUAI Experience the bizarre, unusual, and heartbreaking stories of those who have gone missing on Kaua’i, never to be seen again. In recent years, this Pacific paradise has been plagued by a series of disappearances and unexplained occurrences that have left families shattered, communities stunned, and authorities baffled. Through meticulous research and intimate storytelling, we'll explore the cases of those who have vanished from the island without a trace.

As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown. But in the winter of 1978-79, he became known as one of many so-called “sex murderers” who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s.

El oyente recorrerá el laberinto del los acontecimientos en la noche del 26 de septiembre, sus trampas, su oscuridad y la luz. Entrará en la Normal Rural "Raúl Isidro Burgos", escuchará las intensas voces de sus estudiantes....