True Kidnapping

In May 1971, Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were two seventeen-year-olds driving to an end-of-the-school-year party in a rundown Studebaker Lark, when they seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Police back then didn't do enough to try and find them. Investigators thirty years later did too much. Two families endure decades of pain as they await answers of what happened to their girls. When a third family is pulled into the mystery, they quickly learn their nightmare is just beginning.

The Lady Vanishes is an engrossing story of how a small team of seasoned investigative journalists and storytellers, a daughter's intuition, and a team of listener super-sleuths uncovered a web of intrigue spanning nine decades and three continents, and how—after 57 episodes, 20 million downloads, and sparking a coronial inquiry—they discovered at the heart of the mystery a stranger-than-fiction international man of mystery who could hold the key to what really happened to Marion.

AK47s, masked thugs, and brutal urgency erupt from Roy Hallums' account of his abduction in Iraq, shredding through those frequently sterile cable news reports revealing that another "American contractor is being held hostage...". Hallums was the everyman behind that report⁠—a 56-year-old retired Naval commander working as a food supply contractor in Baghdad's high-end Mansour District. His abduction was transacted in a matter of minutes, amidst a hail of gunfire and a handful of casualties.

My Search for Madeleine is a tirelessly researched, personal search by one of the UK's top investigative journalists. Jon Clarke looks into the bizarre and harrowing abduction of toddler Madeleine McCann, three, from her holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007. He was the first national newspaper journalist on the scene and has spent the last 15 years investigating the crime, from claims that the parents killed her to the most recent prime suspect Christian Brueckner, a dangerous pedophile and rapist. Ultimately, this is an intriguing descent into the dark heart of Europe.

From podcasts and documentaries to online forums, true crime is booming. But as one Audible editor and self-professed crime obsessive observes, the genre is being pulled in new and different directions along with a changing social landscape. She wanted to know: Can we ethically engage in true crime as real concerns surface around the crimes, victims, and systemic issues that directly impact the humans we are hearing about?

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?

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?

Featuring cameos by Abby and her kidnapper! A true crime classic that made headlines around the world, shocking and moving everyone including some of the biggest celebrities—among them tough guy crooner Frank Sinatra still pained by his own son's kidnapping a decade before.

It was a cold and foggy February night in 1983 when a group of armed thieves crept onto Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland, to steal Shergar, one of the thoroughbred industry's most renowned stallions. The thieves demanded a hefty ransom for the safe return of one of the most valuable Thoroughbreds in the world, but the ransom was never paid and Shergar's remains have never been found.

What exactly is this controversy about Netaji’s ‘disappearance’? Efforts by the authors led to the declassification of more than 1,300 secret files on Bose. Does new material offer new evidence on Bose’s reported death in 1945? The Bose Deception: Declassified opens a window to this and much more.

In his international best seller A Beautiful Child, award-winning investigative journalist Matt Birkbeck told the heartbreaking story of a brilliant and beautiful young woman known as Sharon Marshall. Caught in the murderous web of the monster she called her father, Sharon wasn’t her real name. But her horrifying story captured the hearts of people everywhere and lead to a 10-year search to resolve two great mysteries - what was her true identity and what became of her young son Michael, who was kidnapped from his first grade classroom and never seen again.

He pulled off what some deem the crime of the century: skyjacking a commercial jetliner, collecting a ransom of $200,000, parachuting off the aft stairs of the Boeing 727 into the night, and simply disappearing. Since November 1971, “D. B. Cooper”—no one knows his real name or identity—has become a figure of enduring fascination and obsession. The FBI pursued him for over forty years, before closing the case and leaving it unsolved. Unsolved, perhaps, but much admired. D. B. Cooper’s exploit over the skies of the American Northwest has inspired books, films, and endless speculation.

In December 1919, Ambrose Small, the mercurial owner of the Grand Opera House in Toronto, closed a deal to sell his network of Ontario theatres, deposited a million-dollar cheque in his bank account, and was never seen again. As weeks turned to years, the disappearance became the most "extraordinary unsolved mystery" of its time.

An Unexplained Death is an obsessive investigation into a mysterious death at the Belvedere - a once-grand hotel - and a poignant, gripping meditation on suicide and voyeurism.

Brainstorm is an amazing five-year probe into the mysterious death of beloved movie star Natalie Wood by a real-life criminal law authority who determinedly pursued the truth in the face of Los Angeles County officials hell-bent on keeping it buried forever. Brainstorm: An Investigation of the Mysterious Death of Film Star Natalie Wood is the first-person account of Sam Perroni’s probing investigation of the actress’s death.

In Hoffa’s Shadow tells the moving story of how Goldsmith reunited with the stepfather he’d disowned and then set out to unravel one of the 20th century’s most persistent mysteries and Chuckie’s role in it. Along the way, Goldsmith explores Hoffa’s rise and fall and why the golden age of blue-collar America came to an end, while also casting new light on the century-old surveillance state, the architects of Hoffa’s disappearance, and the heartrending complexities of love and loyalty.

Twenty-one-year-old Vancouver student Elisa Lam was last heard from on January 31, 2013, after she checked into downtown LA's Cecil Hotel - a 600-room building with a nine-decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day, Elisa vanished. A search of the hotel yielded nothing. More than a week later, complaints by guests of foul-smelling tap water led to a grim discovery: Elisa's nude body floating in a rooftop water tank, in an area extremely difficult to access without setting off alarms.

In September 2002, Mexican writer Ernestina Sodi and her sister, actress Laura Zapata, were kidnapped at gunpoint in Mexico City. Deliver Us from Evil is a first-person account of the living nightmare endured by the two women. Blindfolded for much of her ordeal, Ernestina Sodi learns to identify the members of this well-organized, brutal, and professional kidnapping gang by voice and smell. Plunging listeners into the dark world of crime, rage, and violence without mercy, this real-life drama culminates in a thrilling and truly unforgettable climax.

The Momster Diaries shines the light on riveting and compelling survival stories with intimacy and candor.

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. The already sensational story took the first of many incredible twists on April 3, when the group released a tape of Patty saying she had joined the SLA and had adopted the nom de guerre “Tania.”