Family Murders True Crime

In August 2018, a young Colorado mother and her two daughters vanished without a trace. What began as a missing persons case quickly spiralled into a national obsession — and then, a nightmare. Behind the Watts family's polished social media presence and picture-perfect suburban life, a far darker story was taking shape. When Chris Watts, Shanann’s husband and the girls’ father, stepped in front of the cameras to plead for their safe return, few could have imagined the devastating truth that would soon emerge. Behind Closed Doors takes readers deep inside one of the most haunting ...

This true story begins on a sunny morning in 2003, just before the Fourth of July, outside of Flint Michigan, when an 80-year-old grandmother has mysteriously disappeared from the face of the Earth. She was my mother. Three days after she disappeared, the charred remains of her new car were identified, after being completely destroyed by an intentional fire; but she was nowhere to be found.

On the beautiful island of Jersey, the wealthy Newall family were the epitome of success: Roderick, the eldest son, was a handsome Royal Green Jackets lieutenant, and his younger brother, Mark, was a financier. On the night of 10 October 1987 Nicholas and Elizabeth Newall went out to dinner with their sons to celebrate her 48th birthday. It was the last time that the parents were seen alive. Sometime during that evening, they were bludgeoned to death at their home, their bodies removed, leaving only bloodstains behind.

As William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead, it’s not even past.” This observation seems especially true in matters of family, when the fury between generations is often never resolved and instead secretly carried, a wound that cannot heal. For David Berg, this is truer than for most, and once you listen to the story of his family, you will understand why he held it privately for so long and why the betrayals between parent and child can be the most wrenching of all.

The affluent suburb of Cheshire, Connecticut, seemed like the perfect place for Dr. William Petit and his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, to raise their two lovely daughters.... Until July 23, 2007, when, according to police, two ex-cons invaded the Petit home hoping to embark on a routine robbery - one that would ultimately prove deadly.

Janet March had it all: a corporate lawyer husband, two beautiful children, a promising career as an artist, and a dream house she designed herself. But behind closed doors, her husband led a destructive double life. On August 16, 1996, Janet had an appointment to finally file for divorce. But she never arrived. On the night of August 15, she vanished. Janet's disappearance incited a massive search and media frenzy that revealed her husband Perry's seedy dealings.

In his account of the sensational life and murder of Grady Stiles Jr., also known as the legendary carnival freak Lobster Boy, author Fred Rosen explains how Stiles' death was engineered by his wife, Mary Teresa, the carny known as the Electrified Girl. Rosen describes how Mary Teresa arranged for her husband's murder after years of physical and emotional abuse. During Mary Teresa's dramatic trial, Rosen becomes a character in his own book.

M. William Phelps reveals an unfathomable pattern surrounding repeating arms inventor Samuel Colt - from the death of all his children, including Sam's sea captain son's mysterious demise aboard his yacht, to the eccentric life of his widow.

On 22 May 2017, a bomb exploded in the middle of a crowd of young fans leaving an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena. Twenty-two people were killed and hundreds more were injured. Saffie-Rose Roussos, aged eight, was the youngest victim to die in the attack. She had been at the concert with her mother, Lisa, and her elder sister, Ashlee.

On November 29, 1909, police were called to a ramshackle home in East Orange, New Jersey, where they found the emaciated body of 24-year-old Oceana "Ocey" Snead facedown in the bathtub - dead of an apparent suicide by drowning. There was even a note left behind. But it would not take authorities long to discover that Ocey's death was no suicide. And Ocey's own mother and two aunts were far from the sorrowful caretakers they appeared to be.

When beautiful and vivacious Charlotte Salter fails to turn up to her husband Alec’s 50th birthday party, her kids are worried, but Alec is not. As the days pass and there’s still no word from Charlie, her daughter, Etty, and her sons, Niall, Paul and Ollie, all struggle to come to terms with her disappearance. How can anyone just vanish without a trace?

A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming of age in the wake of immense loss and her mission to know the woman who gave her life. When Sarah Perry was 12, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah's bedroom.

On February 21, 1992, 22-year-old Brian Bechtold walked into a police station in Port St. Joe, Florida, and confessed that he’d shot and killed his parents in their family home in Silver Spring, Maryland. He said he’d been possessed by the devil. He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and ruled “not criminally responsible” for the murders on grounds of insanity. But after the trial, where do the "criminally insane" go?

Blood was found at his home in Franklin County, PA. All evidence pointed to one suspect: Scott North, a former employee of Carl’s, a regular attendee of Franklin County courts, and the son of a Chambersburg, PA cop. After burglarizing a tavern, a judge granted him work release, and then another dismissed a recent gun charge. Days later, he ran from his unsupervised worksite and began a crime spree that may have ended with the murder of Carl Wade Ryder.

John Gotti was the last great leader of the Gambino crime family, the dominant Sicilian mafia family of New York. Gotti's boys had their fingers in everything from gambling houses, to drug trafficking, prostitution, to weapons dealing. Gotti originally came to lead the organization in 1985, but had been an enforcer for the mob since the early 70's. Originally, Gotti made a name for himself by helping avenge the death of Manny Gambino, nephew of the notorious leader of the family, Carlo Gambino. Gotti and two accomplices gunned down one of Manny's killers in a bar on Staten Island. Gotti did...

County Kerry, Ireland, 1825. Nóra, bereft after the sudden death of her beloved husband, finds herself alone and caring for her young grandson Micheál. Micheál cannot speak and cannot walk, and Nóra is desperate to know what is wrong with him. What happened to the healthy, happy grandson she met when her daughter was still alive? Mary arrives in the valley to help Nóra just as the whispers are spreading: the stories of unexplained misfortunes, of illnesses, and the rumours that Micheál is a changeling child who is bringing bad luck to the valley.

Inspired by a true story. In 1825, in a remote Irish valley lying between the mountains and Flesk River of Killarney, three women are brought together by strange and troubling events. Nora Leahy, a widow, has lost her daughter and her husband in the same year and is now burdened with the care of her grandson, Michael. The boy cannot walk or speak, and Nora has kept him hidden from neighbours, who might see in his deformity evidence of supernatural interference.

Liz Catalano is shocked when a DNA ancestry test reveals she’s adopted. But she could never have imagined trying to connect with her unknown family would plunge her into an FBI investigation of a notorious serial killer. The Tri-State Killer has been abducting pairs of women for 40 years, evading all police efforts and leaving barely a trace behind. Can Liz figure out who in her new family is the cold-blooded killer? And can she save his newest victims before it’s too late?

Growing up, Molly Walling could not fathom the source of the dark and intense discomfort in her family home. Then, in 2006, she discovered her father's complicity in the murder of two Black men on December 12, 1946, in Anguilla, deep in the Mississippi Delta. Death in the Delta tells the story of one woman's search for the truth behind a closely held, 60-year-old family secret. Though the author's mother and father decided that they would protect their three children from that past, its effect was profound.

Please Don't Shoot: A Shocking True Crime Story Three angry women. Three loaded handguns. And nine innocent lives caught in the crossfire. Do you think it will help to plead, "Please don't shoot"? In these chilling true crime stories, the answer is "no." One woman ends her ex-husband's new romance with a single, cold-blooded shot—right in front of their Christmas tree, with her twin daughters as horrified witnesses. Another mother guns down her own children on a quiet suburban street—a twisted act of revenge meant to punish her husband. And in a third harrowing case, a young woman ...