True Kidnapping

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.

Whether in Truman Capote’s detailed murder of the Clutter family or Ted Bundy’s small-town charm, criminals have always roamed rural America and towns worldwide. Featuring murder stories, criminal case studies, and more, The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns contains all-new accounts from writers of true crime, crime journalism, and crime fiction. And these entries are not based on a true story - they are true stories. Edited by acclaimed author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto, the stories in this volume span the globe.

The incredible true story of one of America's largest ransom cases - and the massive FBI and police manhunt to bring the radical captors to justice.

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.

Gaia Cooper is just 14 years old when she is groomed by a criminal gang and forced to commit organised credit card fraud. Despite being placed in care – somewhere Gaia should feel safe – she is left even more vulnerable, and is horrifically abused and exploited by the men manipulating her. Will the authorities save Gaia – or will she have to save herself?

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.

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....

In the summer of ’84, fourteen-year-old Frankie Jubilee is shuttled off to Litani, Minnesota, to live with her estranged mother, a county prosecutor she barely knows. From the start, Frankie senses something uneasy going on in the small town. The locals whisper about The Game, and her mother warns her to stay out of the woods and away from adults. When a bullying gang of girls invites Frankie to The Game, she accepts, determined to find out what’s really going on in Litani. She’s not the only one becoming paranoid. Hysteria burns through the community. Dark secrets emerge.

Updated 5th Anniversary Edition Including Exclusive Interview with Steve AveryIn 2016-17, while working for the USA TODAY NETWORK's Wisconsin Investigative Team, author John Ferak wrote dozens of articles examining the murder case against Steven Avery, who had already beaten one wrongful conviction only to be charged again with the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005. This case captured global attention through the Netflix documentary "Making A Murderer."

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.

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 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.

Charlie works at St Patrick’s residential home, where the walls are so thick no one can hear you cry. He’s asking child protection expert Shane Dunphy for help, before someone gets murdered. Charlie tells him of mistreatment, brutality and random cruelty, and now Maisie, his girlfriend, a resident at the home, has gone missing. When Shane finds out what has happened to Maisie, he knows he’s uncovered a world of trouble. Shane works his connections and, together with the ingenuity of the care home residents, attempts to bring the guilty to justice.

Chris Thomas is not yet 30 years old when he finds himself managing the immense pressure, eccentric personalities, and extenuating circumstances of an international story, where one small misstep could adversely impact the search for a missing teenager and the reputation of her family. Now, 20 years later, Thomas takes listeners behind the scenes, providing new details, perspectives, and commentary on finding Elizabeth Smart.

On January 21, 1998, the night before his 38th birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped by a car full of gun-toting thugs. Hoping to make a large withdrawal with his ATM card, they took him, blindfolded, to a Brooklyn apartment, and improvised. All night, his captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of "gangsta" philosophy, sought his legal advice, and even offered him sexual favors from their prostitute girlfriends as a "birthday present."

Es la real y cruda narración de uno de los secuestros que mayor consternación ha causado en la opinión públicamexicana. Escrito por Ernestina Sodi y Laura Zapata, hermanas de la cantane Thalía, que fueron privadas de su libertad, golpeadas y encerradas con los ojos vendados, mientras los secuestradoresiniciaban las negociaciones para pedir su rescate

Dive into two dark stories of crime and murder from best-selling author James Patterson, and can be seen on ID, inspired by true crime horrors where murder isn't always the worst thing that can happen to you.

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.

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.

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.