True Crime Serial

Christopher Wilder was about as bad as they get. A predator and serial killer, he first came to the attention of police in Sydney when, as a teenager in 1963, he was charged with rape. A good behaviour bond was not a deterrent, and over the years his crimes escalated. After moving to the USA in his early 20s, Wilder continued to perfect his vile and deadly trade. He was a chameleon with a modus operandi refined over the decades, luring young teenage girls with the promise of a career as a photographic model.

If you are looking for a story that will make you question your fellow humans, then Herb Baumeister, the I-70 Strangler, will do just the job! Luring and murdering countless people is the last thing you expect from this normal dad. To his community, Herb Baumeister is a husband, a father, and a successful businessman. But all that came crashing down as the nation found out about his horrific hobby.

Serial Killers and Prostitutes taps into the best-selling author's expertise on serial murderers and sex trade workers in offering an in-depth look at four noteworthy cases in which the two worlds collide.

In 1888, between August and November, the women of London’s East End were terrorized by a deranged serial killer. A man was stalking the streets at night, seizing random women who worked those streets and killing them. This man mutilated his victim’s bodies after death, removing body parts and organs.

Prostitutes and animals could no longer satisfy Peter Kürten’s sexual deviancy. During a burglary of a local tavern, he stumbled upon a nine-year-old girl asleep in her bed. He strangled her, slashed her throat with a pocket knife, and orgasmed upon hearing her blood drip to the floor. His crimes were halted by World War I and an eight-year prison sentence but he unleashed his urges with a spate of brutal murders in 1929 earning him the nickname "The Düsseldorf Monster."

When he was arrested in July 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer had a severed head in the refrigerator, two more in the freezer, two skulls and a skeleton in a filing cabinet. But if anything could be more disturbing than the brute horror of this scene, it was the evidence that Dahmer had been using these human remains not only for sexual gratification but as part of a dark ritual of his own devising - to furnish a shrine to himself.

Back in her natural habitat, Dr Nell Ward heads to a woodland pond to survey local newt populations. She's shocked to discover a car submerged in the water - with the driver dead behind the wheel. Nell recognises the dead man as professional racing driver, and tabloid love rat, Jack Rafferty, whose performance on (and off) Finchmere's racetrack had earned him enemies. Suspecting this isn't the tragic accident it appears DI James Clark calls upon Nell and her ecological skills to help find the murderer.

While Burnham overcame politics, infighting, personality clashes and Chicago's infamous weather to transform the swamps of Jackson Park into the greatest show on Earth, Holmes built his own edifice just west of the fairground. He called it the World's Fair Hotel. In reality, it was a torture palace, a gas chamber, a crematorium. These two disparate but driven men are brought to life in this mesmerizing, murderous tale of the legendary Fair that transformed America and set it on course for the twentieth century.

In 1894, Leonarda Cianciulla was born into an abusive household. As a young girl, she attempted suicide twice. After decades of abuse, Leonarda sought stability and married Raffaele Pansardi. Her mother did not approve and conveyed her anger in the strongest possible sense. She cursed the marriage. Leonarda believed that her mother’s words had power and they haunted her. In 1939, Leonarda’s eldest son, Giuseppe, informed her that he was going to join the Army. She decided that the only way to protect him was through the most extreme means - human sacrifice.

A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians.

Welcome back to Unsolved Serial Killers, the third volume with 10 more bone-chilling and nightmare-inducing cases of serial killers you've never heard of, and the victims whose names were either never discovered or have been forgotten over time. Featuring 10 more of the most shocking and notorious serial killers who were never caught, take a ride from coast to coast, and relive the terrible crimes that rocked perfectly normal communities and shattered their sense of security as they encountered firsthand the depravity of mankind.

There have been countless attempts to solve the brutal murders committed by Jack the Ripper more than a hundred years ago. It seems that almost everyone has their own theory and their own suspect, ranging from the reasonably likely to the entirely preposterous. What this most famous of British criminal cases has always required is a professional eye to analyse with all the benefits of modern investigate techniques. Now that has been provided by Steven Keogh in Murder Investigation Team: Jack the Ripper.

In November 1987, a young couple on an overnight trip to Seattle vanished without a trace. A week later, the bodies of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook were found in rural Washington. It was a brutal crime, and it was the perfect crime: With few clues and no witnesses, an international manhunt turned up empty, and the sensational case that shocked the Pacific Northwest gradually slipped from the headlines.

Serial killers are not simple monsters, as many believe. They are human beings just like us: men and women who have made the wrong choices or been turned into ugly creatures by their upbringing. Some seek to cause pain and shock - others just wish to scratch an itch that they have in their mind. All of them bring darkness in their own way.

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.

The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers is the most comprehensive set of its kind in the history of true crime publishing. Written and compiled by Susan Hall, the four-volume set has more than 1600 entries of male and female serial killers from around the world.

When Chris Bryson was discovered nude and severely beaten stumbling down Charlotte Street in Kansas City in 1988, police had no idea they were about to discover the den of one of the most sadistic American serial killers in recent history. This is the true story of Robert Berdella, nicknamed by the media the Kansas City Butcher, who from between 1984 and 1988 brutally raped, tortured, and ultimately dismembered six young male prostitutes in his unassuming home on a quiet street in Kansas City.

Fear was the unacknowledged specter haunting the streets of London during the Second World War; fear not only of death from the German bombers circling above, but of violence at the hands of fellow Londoners in the streets below. Mass displacement, the anonymity of shelters, and the bomb-scarred landscape offered unprecedented opportunities for violent crime. In this absorbing, sometimes shocking account, Amy Helen Bell uncovers the hidden stories of murder and violence that were rife in wartime London.

Having spent years interviewing imprisoned criminals—including notorious serial killers—he discovered that the lack of remorse these people showed was in many ways even more terrifying than the crimes they had committed. Yet in the course of these conversations, the author also had the chance to interview his subjects' psychiatrists and, in doing so, uncovered a terrible truth: a monster can be hidden behind a friendly face.

Discover unspeakable acts of brutality and violence in this volume of 12 shocking true crime cases. If you’re fascinated by the stories of both killers and victims, and how police work with forensics and evidence in pursuit of coldblooded murderers, this captivating book is for you, taking you on a journey through some of the most unforgettable murders in recent times.