Tales of true crime never fail to prove the truth can be far more chilling than fiction.
Son: A Psychopath and his Victims (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.99)
A classic from “the dean of true crime” (The Washington Post)—now with a new foreword—this 1983 masterpiece tells the incredible story of a Spokane, Washington serial rapist who was exposed as the handsome, privileged son of one of the city’s most elite families.
For more than two years, a rapist prowled the night streets of the homey, All-American city of Spokane, Washington, terrorizing women, sparking a run on gun stores, and finally causing one newspaper to offer a reward—the calls taken by the distinguished managing editor himself, Gordon Coe. In March 1981, luck and inspired police work at last produced an arrest, and Spokane shuddered. The suspect was clean cut and conservative…and Gordon Coe’s son.
For eighteen months, Jack Olsen researched the cases of Fred and Ruth Coe to try to learn not only what happened within that family, but how and why. He interviewed more than 150 people and built up a portrait not only of that extraordinary family, but of the mind of a psychopath. And searching the memories of the women in Fred Coe’s life, he unearthed a most horrifying question: What is it like to love and live with a man for years—and then discover he is a psychopathic criminal?
In this “gruesomely spellbinding” (Glamour) examination of the mind of a psychopath and of the women—and men—who were his victims, Olsen delivers “a harrowing portrait…It has become fashionable with books about vicious crimes to compare them to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Finally there is a book that deserves the comparison” (Richmond Times-Dispatch).
One Amazon reviewer says:
On one level, this 1984 Edgar Award Nominee is the story of a sociopathic rapist, a clean-cut realtor named Fred Coe who raped dozens of women in sunny Spokane, Washington. Olsen paints the portrait of a man whose exterior grandiosity and air of savoir faire barely conceal his deep insecurity about his career failures–a temperamental prima donna who emulates the pathetic hero of “American Gigolo.” But on another, even more compelling level, this is the story of the women in Fred’s life: His histrionic, clinging mother is a fair-skinned beauty in jet-black wigs, outrageous attire, and excessive jewelry, who eventually plots to kill the judge and prosecutor who put her dear “Son” away. A wife, and later on a girlfriend, both devoted to Fred, are devastated by his exposure as a brutal rapist.
If I Can’t Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.99)
In If I Can’t Have You, bestselling author Gregg Olsen and co-author Rebecca Morris investigate one of the 21st Century’s most puzzling disappearances and how it resulted in the murder of two children by their father.
Every once in a great while a genuine murder mystery unfolds before the eyes of the American public. The tragic story of Susan Powell and her murdered boys, Charlie and Braden, is the only case that rivals the Jon Benet Ramsey saga in the annals of true crime. When the pretty, blonde Utah mother went missing in December of 2009 the media was swept up in the story – with lenses and microphones trained on Susan’s husband, Josh. He said he had no idea what happened to his young wife, and that he and the boys had been camping in the middle of a snowstorm.
Over the next three years bombshell by bombshell, the story would reveal more shocking secrets. Josh’s father, Steve, who was sexually obsessed with Susan, would ultimately be convicted of unspeakable perversion. Josh’s brother, Michael, would commit suicide. And in the most stunning event of them all, Josh Powell would murder his two little boys and kill himself with brutality beyond belief.
Pure Murder – Pinnacle True Crime (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $5.99)
“We gotta kill ‘em. They know what we look like.”
On a hot summer night in Houston, two teenage girls—–bright, beautiful, success-bound friends–—took a shortcut home from a friend’s apartment to make their curfew. They never reached their homes.
The next morning, the families of the two girls began a frantic search, organizing friends and neighbors and posting thousands of fliers across the sprawling city. But not until an anonymous 911 call four days later were the bodies of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena finally recovered.
Their killers were soon rounded up—a brutal, unrepentant gang of teenage boys whose convictions should have put them behind bars for life. But in the halls of justice, nothing is ever a sure bet . . .
“A compelling read.”
—Suzy Spencer, New York Times bestselling author of Wasted
“No one faces evil head on like Corey Mitchell.”
—Gregg Olsen
The Darkest Night: Two Sisters, a Brutal Murder, and the Loss of Innocence in a Small Town (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.99)
ONE CAR RIDE. TWO SISTERS. A MONSTROUS FATE.
Casper, Wyoming:1973. Eleven-year-old Amy Burridge rides with her eighteen-year-old sister, Becky, to the grocery store. When they finish their shopping, Becky’s car gets a flat tire. Two men politely offer them a ride home. But they were anything but Good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes at the hands of these men before being thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived. The other did not.
Years later, author and journalist Ron Franscell–who lived in Casper at the time of the crime, and was a friend to Amy and Becky–can’t forget Wyoming’s most shocking story of abduction, rape, and murder. Neither could Becky, the surviving sister. The two men who violated her and Amy were sentenced to life in prison, but the demons of her past kept haunting Becky…until she met her fate years later at the same bridge where she’d lost her sister.
The Stranger She Loved: A Mormon Doctor, His Beautiful Wife, and an Almost Perfect Murder (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.99)
In 2007, Dr. Martin MacNeill—–a doctor, lawyer, and Mormon bishop–—discovered his wife of 30 years dead in the bathtub of their Pleasant Grove, Utah home, her face bearing the scars of a facelift he persuaded her to undergo just a week prior.
At first the death of 50-year-old Michele MacNeill, a former beauty queen and mother of eight, appeared natural. But days after the funeral when Dr. MacNeill moved his much younger mistress into the family home, his children grew suspicious. Conducting their own investigation into their mother’s death, the MacNeill’s daughters uncovered their father’s multiple marital affairs, past criminal record, and falsified college transcripts he used to con his way into medical school.
It would take six long years to solve the mystery of Michele’s murder and secure a first-degree murder conviction against the once prominent doctor. New York Times bestselling author Shanna Hogan delves into the high-profile case, unmasking the monster beneath the doctor’s carefully concocted façade.
The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.99)
Theodore Bundy was one of the more infamous, and flamboyant, American serial killers on record, and his story is a complex mix of psychopathology, criminal investigation, and the U.S. legal system.
This in-depth examination of Bundy’s life and his killing spree that totaled dozens of victims is drawn from legal transcripts, correspondence and interviews with detectives and prosecutors. Using these sources, new information on several murders is unveiled.
The biography follows Bundy from his broken family background to his execution in the electric chair.
“Despite the multitude of books about Bundy, The Bundy Murders offers fresh material and ideas about Bundy’s predatory movements. Well researched and highly recommended, for Bundy scholars and true crime fans alike.”
–Katherine Ramsland, author of The Human Predator and The Devil’s Dozen
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