Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in True Crime

“Free the West Memphis Three!” - maybe you’ve heard the phrase, but do you know why their story is so alarming? Do you know the facts? The guilty verdicts handed out to three Arkansas teens in a horrific capital murder case were popular in their home state - even upheld on appeal. But after two HBO documentaries called attention to the witch-hunt atmosphere at the trials, artists and other supporters raised concerns about the accompanying lack of evidence.

Noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. One night, Corchado received a tip that he could be the next target of the Zetas, a violent paramilitary group - and that he had 24 hours to find out if the threat was true. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man's quest to report the truth of his country - as he races to save his own life.

For 13 violent months in the 1930s, John Dillinger and his gang swept through the Midwest. The criminals of the Depression robbed almost at will, as the Indiana State Police had only 41 members, including clerks and typists. Dillinger's daring escapes at Crown Point jail or through the withering machine gun fire of FBI agents at Little Bohemia Lodge, along with his countless bank robberies, excited the imagination of a despondent country.

Detroit mortgage broker Mark Unger adored his wife Florence and their two young sons. But after a decade of marriage and increasing financial trouble, Mark's life began to slowly unravel. He became addicted to pain killers and gambling, and ended up spending five months in rehab. Forced to go back to work, Flo became bitter and resentful of Mark and began to have an affair with one of his friends. When Mark returned home and his disability checks weren't enough to make ends meet, Flo filed for divorce.

After Jack the Ripper and before Son of Sam there was only one name their equal in terror: the deadly, elusive, and mysterious Zodiac. Beginning in 1968 the hooded mass murderer terrified the city of San Francisco and the Bay Area with a string of brutal killings. A sexual sadist, his pleasure was torture and murder.

Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world’s biggest companies—and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable.

Drug Lord, a firsthand account of drug dealing, murder, and corruption, tells of drug kingpin Pablo Acosta, who smuggled up to 20 tons of cocaine each year into the United States before treachery brought about his downfall and grisly death.

This work was published in 1724, under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson, by an unknown British author, usually assumed to be Daniel Defoe. This work is the prime source for the biographies of many well-known pirates of that era and shaped the popular notions about pirates of the day. Included are Blackbeard, Black Bart, Jolly Roger, Anne Bonny (aka Anne Bonn), Edward Teach, Henry Avery, Mary Read, and many more.

Meet Michael Blutrich, mild-mannered New York lawyer and founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York City history, funded by the proceeds of an insurance embezzlement scheme. All Blutrich wanted was to lay low, make the club a success, and put his criminal acts behind him. But the Mafia got involved, and soon the FBI came knocking. Scores became wildly popular, in part thanks to Blutrich's ability to successfully bend the rules of adult entertainment. Unfortunately for Blutrich, it would all soon implode.

One of the biggest scores in Mafia history, the Lufthansa Airlines heist of 1978 has become the stuff of Mafia legend - and a decades-long investigation that continues to this day. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony DeStefano sheds new light on this legendary unsolved case using recent evidence from the 2015 trial of 80-year-old Mafia don Vincent Asaro, who for the first time speaks out on his role in the fateful Lufthansa heist.

Lucie Blackman - tall, blond, 21 years old - stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo in the summer of 2000 and disappeared. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. The seven months in between had seen a massive search for the missing girl involving Japanese policemen, British private detectives, and Lucie’s desperate but bitterly divided parents. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult or snatched by human traffickers? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? And what did her work as a hostess in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo really involve?

Reputed to have killed his first man at the age of 12, William Bonney went on to gun his way into Western legend as Billy the Kid. When he was finally shot himself at the age of 21, the Kid was famous throughout the country as the boy who, so he boasted, had killed a man for every year of his life. This is the story of William Bonney as told by the lawman who ended his notorious career.

In a small village in New York, mob bosses from all over the country - Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joe Bonanno, Joe Profaci, Cuba boss Santo Trafficante, Jr., and Paul Castellano - were nabbed by Sergeant Edgar D. Croswell as they gathered to sort out a bloody war of succession. For years FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had adamantly denied the existence of the Mafia, but Robert Kennedy immediately recognized the shattering importance of the Apalachin summit....

Appointed to conquer the "crime capital of the world", the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Assigned by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins by clearing the streets of filth and installing lanterns throughout Paris, turning it into the City of Light. The fearless La Reynie pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city. He unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests.

Based on extensive research and hundreds of interviews, including two with active directors of Central Intelligence, William H. Webster and Robert M. Gates, and with three former D.C.I.s, Inside the C.I.A. is the first in-depth, unbiased account of the Agency's core operations, its abject failures, and its resounding successes.

In 1978, two corpses were discovered in the sea off Guatemala. Hooded, bound with ropes and weighted down with heavy engine parts, Chris Farmer and his girlfriend Peta Frampton were thrown from a yacht on which they had been crewing. This is the gripping account of how Chris's family painstakingly gathered evidence against the boat's Californian skipper, Silas Duane Boston, working alongside the FBI, Interpol, and police in the UK and the USA. Almost four decades later in 2015, there was a major breakthrough in the case when, using Facebook, Chris's sister Penny tracked Boston down.

The diamonds of Sierra Leone have funded one of the most savage rebel campaigns in modern history. These "blood diamonds" are smuggled out of West Africa and sold to legitimate diamond merchants in London, Antwerp, and New York, often with the complicity of the international diamond industry. Eventually, these very diamonds find their way into the rings and necklaces of brides the world over.

In this newly revised edition of Fighting Terrorism, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel's Likud Party and a noted authority on international terrorism, offers a compelling approach to understanding terrorism. Netanyahu's points are "soberly and clearly made," says The New York Times, and The Washington Times calls the book "an excellent primer on the groups, motives and methods of the current terrorist threat."

On a hot June morning in 1975, a fatal shoot-out took place between FBI agents and American Indians on a remote property near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in which an Indian and two federal agents were killed. Eventually, four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges in the deaths of the two agents. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book.

On December 7, 1941, the nation of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and prompted the United States’ entry into the bloodiest war in human history. Americans have long debated the cause of the bombing; many have argued that the attack was a brilliant Japanese military coup or a failure of US intelligence agencies or even a conspiracy of the Roosevelt administration. But despite the attention historians have paid to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the truth about that fateful day has remained a mystery - until now.