True Kidnapping

It’s a total crime wave: A mini encyclopedia of true crime, packed with stories of killers, cons, survivors, forensics and more! More than 200 stories of killers, con artists, master thieves, and brazen kidnappers—and strong survivors, detectives, forensic breakthroughs, and legal minds on...

A gripping expose of a notorious cold case. 1978. An idyllic beachside community. A series of abductions and rapes. So what happened to Trudie Adams? Back in the 1970s, Sydney's Northern Beaches felt like a slice of paradise to those who lived there. Bordered on one side by the glistening blue of the Pacific and on the other by stunning rugged bushland, it was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone. So, when a popular local girl, 18-year-old Trudie Adams, disappeared one night while hitchhiking home from the surf club dance, her family, friends and community were devastated.

In the early hours of 27th January 1996, after an evening spent celebrating at Club Bayview in the Perth suburb of Claremont, 18-year-old Sarah Spiers called a taxi to nearby Mosman Park. But when the cab arrived, she’d already gone. She was never seen again. Four months later, on 9th June 1996, 23-year-old Jane Rimmer disappeared from the same area, her body later found in bushland south of Perth. When the body of a third young woman, 27-year-old Ciara Glennon, was found north of the city, having vanished from Claremont in August 1997, it was clear a serial killer was on the loose.

Marie seems to have it all: a devoted husband, two wonderful children, and a professional career. But all of that changes when she drives her car into the darkened parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. After she lowers her car window to place an order at the drive-through, a man suddenly appears and places a gun at her temple. What follows is every woman's worst nightmare.

With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators, and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Best-selling true-crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.

Dr. Fred Abel ist von seiner lebensgefährlichen Verletzung genesen, und die ersten Fälle halten ihn schon wieder in Atem. Vor allem aber freut er sich darauf, seine Zwillinge aus einer lang vergangenen "karibischen Affäre" in Berlin zu begrüßen. Doch kaum sind die Jugendlichen da, werden sie entführt. Gibt es einen rassistischen Hintergrund? Ein verbrecherisches Komplott in deren Heimat? Oder hat jemand mit Abel noch eine Rechnung offen?

Resilience isn’t inherited. It’s a hard-fought skill forged by our ability to pick up the broken pieces of our past and remake them into something new. Meet four-year-old Delicia, a poor but carefree child who is about to have her world shattered. Along with her seven-year-old brother Nile, she is kidnapped from her Los Angeles home by her estranged father and taken to Iraq, a foreign world she has never known. This is just the beginning of a string of traumas, hardships, and assaults Delicia will endure throughout her tumultuous childhood.

Tödliche Mutterliebe - Die letzten Szenen einer Ehe - Tod im Vorüberfahren: Spannende Kriminalfälle wie diese beschreibt Sabine Rückert im Hörbuch zum beliebten Podcast Zeit Verbrechen. Dabei erweckt sie sachliche Gerichtsurteile zum Leben, stellt Fragen an unsere Gesellschaft, nimmt das Justizsystem genau unter die Lupe und beschäftigt sich intensiv mit Kriminalpsychologie. Vor allem aber sieht sie immer die Menschen hinter einem Fall - ob Täter oder Opfer. Lehrreich und aufrüttelnd!

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.

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.

American bush pilot Russell Stendal, on a routine trip, landed his plane in a remote Colombian village and found himself in the middle of an armed ambush. Within minutes, he was taken hostage by Communist guerrilla fighters and told he would be held for ransom. Held at gunpoint deep in the jungle for 142 days, Russell began to write. He told the story of his life and recorded his experience inside the guerrilla camp. That writing became a bridge between him and his captors, many of whom were young, armed, and spiritually lost.

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.

Cova 312 é a história real de como as Forças Armadas mataram pela tortura um jovem militante político, Milton Soares de Castro, forjaram seu suicídio e sumiram com o corpo. Preso em 1967, Milton, integrante do primeiro e frustrado grupo de guerrilha pós-golpe de 1964, desapareceu sem deixar rastros. A guerrilha — que jamais aconteceu — teria início na serra do Caparaó, mas Milton foi preso e levado para a Penitenciária de Linhares, em Juiz de Fora, onde foi torturado e morto. Os militares forjaram documentos informando que ele havia se suicidado.

Detrás de la desaparición de Marcela Basteri, la madre del cantante Luis Miguel, existe una historia que, tras muchos años, finalmente es contada desde su Lado B: una historia de violencia de género que, como muchos otros casos, quedó impune. Escrito y narrado por Shanik Berman, escucharemos el tránsito gradual que llevó a Marcela Basteri a desaparecer silenciosamente en medio de un mundo rodeado por reflectores.

It is plausible that Donald Henry Gaskins was born a psychopath; it may also be said that his life experiences helped turn him into a sociopath. The Meanest Man in America earned the title of the most prolific serial killer in South Carolina’s history. Although it was never confirmed, Gaskins claimed to have murdered more than 100 people, with some reports as high as 181.

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.

On February 2, 1963, a tanker with 39 men aboard departed Beaumont and never returned. In the mid-spring of 1882, Billy the Kid's friend, foe, and equal escaped Huntsville Penitentiary and vanished. On December 9, 1961, a young boy in Wichita Falls disappeared without a trace. On November 18, 1936, a father and son were swallowed by a Walled Kingdom. On December 23, 1974, three girls went to a Fort Worth mall and were never seen or heard from again. This collection explores 20 baffling disappearances that investigators have studied for decades, to no avail.

In 1978, Steven Kubacki disappeared without a trace near Lake Michigan. Fifteen months later, he reappeared—disoriented, in unfamiliar clothes, and claiming no memory of what had happened. For over four decades, the mystery of his disappearance gripped armchair detectives, Reddit sleuths, and TikTok theorists. Now, for the first time, Kubacki tells his story in his own words.

Stolen Babies of Spain chronicles how and why baby-stealing began in Spain just after the civil war of 1936 - 1939. This heartbreaking and tragic history of the worst, modern-day network of stolen babies pulls back a web of deceit and terror, uncovering pain, suffering, and, worse, organization and profit. Using more than 300 interviews conducted by the authors, many of them exclusive, Greg Rabidoux and Mara Lencina reveal the personal stories of the adults who were stolen babies as they search for their biological parents and their true origins.

What was Takako Konishi really doing in North Dakota, and why did she end up dead? Did she get lost and freeze to death, as the police concluded, while searching for the fictional treasure buried in a snowbank at the end of the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo? Or was it something else that brought her there? Unrequited love, ritual suicide, a meteor shower, a far-flung search for purpose? The seed of an obsession took root in struggling film student Jana Larson when she chanced upon a news bulletin about the case.