Showing titles in True Crime

Operation Sayers takes a detailed look at the notorious Sayers brothers' rise to the top of the criminal ladder on the backstreets of Newcastle’s West End and the authorities' attempts to bring them crashing back down to earth by any means necessary.

"Big Bob" Bashara put on a respectable face. To his friends in Detroit's affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe, he was a married father of two, Rotary Club President, church usher, and soccer dad who organized charity events with his wife, Jane. To his "slaves", he was "Master Bob", a cocaine-snorting slumlord who operated a sex dungeon and had a submissive girlfriend to do his bidding - and he wanted more slaves to serve him. But Bashara knew he couldn't rule a household of concubines on his income alone. He eyed his wife's sizable retirement account and formulated a murderous plan.

In 1979, Brenda Spencer, a seemingly average teenage girl living in a nice suburban neighborhood, made and executed plans that would place her in infamy and set a violent and terrifying national precedent. She recieved a rifle for Christmas and a month later set her sights and opens fire on the elementary school across the street. The event is forever glorified by the song "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats and marks the bloody beginning of the American phenomenon of school shootings.

Sophie Jenkins is living a happy life in the idyllic Dorset countryside when she meets Martin Brett, the man who will go on to abuse her and haunt her dreams for years to come. A momentary act of neglect leads to a horrible series of events that leaves her changed forever. Badly let down by the adults entrusted to care for her, Sophie’s life begins to spiral downward. However, Sophie’s message is ultimately one of hope and empowerment. She is in the process of rebuilding her life when fate leads her to encounter her childhood attacker once again.

The architect of O.J. Simpson's Dream Team tells the inside story of the Simpson murder trial from the beginning. In this book, the man who created the defense strategy answers the questions of fact, law, and ethics that were fired at him before and after the jury's verdict. With candor, wit, and compassion, Shapiro brings to light the details of The Trial of the Century, giving us revealing glimpses of O.J. Simpson, Johnnie Cochran, Marcia Clark, Chris Darden, Judge Lance Ito, Barry Scheck, F. Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz, and many others.

The principal criminal court of England, historically reserved for the more serious and high-profile trials, Court Number One opened its doors in 1907 after the building of the 'new' Old Bailey. In the decades that followed it witnessed the trials of the most famous and infamous defendants of the twentieth century. It was here that the likes of Madame Fahmy, Lord Haw Haw, John Christie, Ruth Ellis, George Blake (and his unlikely jailbreakers, Michael Randle and Pat Pottle), Jeremy Thorpe and Ian Huntley were defined in history.... 

On a beautiful October day in the San Fernando Valley, teenager Missy Avila was lured into the woods, beaten, tortured, and drowned. Missy's best friend, Karen Severson, publicly vowed to find the killer and even moved in with Missy's family to help. Three years later, a surprise witness exposed the murderers as Missy's two best friends—one of whom was Karen. New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury delivers a story full of twists, turns, betrayals, and confessions.

We advise listeners that this podcast contains strong language, adult themes and content that some people may find triggering. Listener discretion is advised. An ordinary Aussie, a big bank, an outrageous true story...

Ordinary people who do unthinkable things...The Minds of Madness is a True Crime Podcast that examines the most disturbing criminal minds and the impact violent crimes have on survivors of homicide.

Among the 34 cases covered are: Pamela Smart, a volunteer at a high school drug awareness program who urged her 15-year-old lover and his friends to kill her husband; Nancy Kissel, an expat American in Hong Kong who served her investment banker husband a strawberry milkshake laced with drugs then clubbed him to death with a statue; and Celeste Beard whose husband was disemboweled by her lesbian lover.

Looking for an escape from childhood abuse, Reymundo Sanchez turned away from school and baseball to drugs, alcohol, and then sex and was left to fend for himself before age 14. The Latin Kings, one of the largest and most notorious street gangs in America, became his refuge and his world, but its violence cost him friends, freedom, self-respect, and nearly his life. This is a raw and powerful odyssey through the ranks of the new Mafia.

I start all of my true crime books with a quick word of warning. Most news articles and television true crime shows skim over the vile details of truly horrible crimes. In my books, I don’t gloss over the facts, regardless of how disgusting they may be. I try to give my listeners a clear and accurate description on just how demented the killers really were. I do my best not to leave anything out. The stories included in these books are not for the squeamish.

After bursting onto the scene in 2002, Rudy Kurniawan quickly became the leading purveyor of rare wines to the American elite. But in April 2008, his lots of Domaine Ponsot Clos Saint-Denis red burgundy - dating as far back as 1945 - were abruptly pulled from auction. The problem? The winemaker was certain that this particular burgundy was first produced only in 1982.

Sailing instructor Donald MacNeil was delighted when he was hired to skipper a yacht across the Mediterranean. The pay was good, and the work was easy - or so he thought. He had to sail to South America to collect one of the biggest shipments of cocaine ever bound for the UK. Refusal was not an option. There followed a harrowing journey to Venezuela, where almost £50 million of coke was waiting. But someone had tipped off the authorities. Donald and his fellow crewman were arrested, convicted of drug smuggling, and sentenced to six years in the notorious island prison of San Antonio.

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. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing Lolita.   

Robert Mazur spent five years undercover infiltrating the criminal hierarchy of Colombia's drug cartels. The dirty bankers and businessmen he befriended knew him as Bob Musella, a wealthy, mob-connected big shot living the good life. Together they partied in expensive hotels, drank the world's finest champagnes, drove Rolls-Royce convertibles and flew in private jets. But under Mazur's designer suits and hidden away in his quality briefcase, recorders whirred quietly.

In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr’s Broken Faith is a terrifying portrait life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.

La Luz del Mundo has been called the world’s largest cult that no one has ever heard of. Sochil Martin grew up inside it. Her harrowing true story to escape and seek justice is an epic that exposes alleged crimes of biblical proportions.

By 1990, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. During 40 years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Overnight, almost 100,000 Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed. This is the story of what they did next.

This book is a testament to how low human nature can get and offers a comprehensive breakdown of the cases’ key dates before looking into the gritty details. In the chapters, you will learn about the origin of the word “serial killer”, dispel common myths about murderers, and get one step closer to understanding why people kill.