First True Crime

Before the Five Families who so notoriously dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the one-fingered, surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare, pioneering the bizarre initiation rituals, imaginative protection rackets, influential underworld reigns, and Mafia wars later popularized by countless books, television shows, and movies.

Murder, terrorism, and mass killings were prominent in the news for 2018, and in this true crime anthology, you will find the cases that made international headlines from January to the end of December.

In 1976, Di Rushing and her husband, Sam decided to open the first winery in Mississippi. Their business was thriving by 1990, with eight national award-winning wines, a beautiful vineyard, and a successful restaurant. But in March of 1990, a series of unforeseen events rocked the operation. After the Rushings discovered one of the tour guides, Ray Russell, selling drugs in the winery parking lot, they fired him. He responded with a terrorizing vengeance that persisted over the next nine months.

Under the Trestle is the true story of the most compelling murder case in Virginia history. In 1980, Gina Renee Hall, a Radford University freshman, went to a Virginia Tech nightclub on a Saturday night. She was never seen again. Her abandoned car was found parked beneath a railroad trestle bridging the New River, with blood in the trunk. The investigation led police to a secluded cabin on Claytor Lake, where there was evidence of a violent attack. Former Virginia Tech football player Stephen Epperly was charged with murder, despite the fact that Gina's body was never found.

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.

This book is for listeners of true crime podcasts and audiences of both fiction and true-crime nonfiction. It's the true story of first-generation Irish-American nurse Jane Toppan, born as Honora Kelley. Jane Toppan was absolutely a monster, but she did not start out that way. When Jane was a young child, her father abandoned her and her sister to the Boston Female Asylum. From there, Jane was indentured to a wealthy family who changed her name, never adopted her, and wrote her out of the will.

From Forever Morris Publishing's best selling author, Chanel Ivy comes the Her Carnal Games Series. Book 1-3 filled with whirlwind lesbian romance and drama unlike any other. The definition of carnal desire is purely sexual and physical, without any spiritual element. That person's ruling passion is that of carnal love. Emma Cross, a hugely successful CEO, is used to getting what she wants when she wants it with no questions asked and no strings attached. When she meets Mia Blackburn, a thirty-two-year-old divorced mother, she can't help but be drawn to her gorgeous body. Still, Mia's ...

The gun was never supposed to go off. When a drug dealer assured twenty-nine-year-old Ron Hammer and his brother-in-law that they could make some quick easy money, they were intrigued. He promised them that when a local grocer delivered a bag of money to his store to cash Friday paychecks, they only needed to show him a gun and he’d hand over the bag. But high on meth and dulled by liquor, they ended up in a scuffle with their target, and the gun accidentally fired. And when Phillip Robinson rushed from the shelves he’d been stocking to investigate the commotion at the front of the ...

A gang of train-robbing brothers. A vigilante army with hemp ropes. And a second act of violence that shocked the nation. In Civil War–era Indiana, the infamous Reno brothers turned rebellion into an art form. From petty cons to the nation’s first moving train robbery, they built a criminal empire fueled by bounty-jumping scams, counterfeit money, and fear. But when the justice system failed, a group of masked vigilantes took matters into their own hands, executing ten members of the gang in three midnight lynchings that blurred the line between justice and murder, and creating an ...

Mary "Mae" Foley was a force to be reckoned with. On one hip she held her makeup compact, on the other, her NYPD badge. When women were fighting for the vote, Mae was fighting crime in the heart of New York City—taking down rapists, bootleggers, Nazis, and serial killers. One of the first women to be sworn into the police force, Mae not only fought crime in the city that never sleeps, but also did something much bigger—challenged the patriarchal systems that continually tried to shut her and other women down.

Written by one of its own graduates, Class 11: Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class is an insider's view of the first CIA training class after September 11, 2001 - a look at the most elite and secretive espionage training program in the country.

The Vanishing Act brings together the first three gripping installments of the Shadows of the Past series, diving deep into the lives, disappearances, and legacies of three extraordinary women. Each case reveals the darker side of history, where secrets, scandals, and societal pressures converge into captivating mysteries that remain unsolved to this day.

A true crime account that rocked bucolic central Minnesota, Pain in Paynesville, walks readers through the author’s experiences in the 1980s as a serial predator stalked boys in his hometown, two abductions, and a murder that would remain unsolved for almost 30 years. The waves of pain and trauma caused by personal crimes cascade through families, friends, and communities. The toll and costs are too often hidden, unrecognized and repeated. Kris Bertelsen’s courageous sharing of his personal journey offers a firsthand account of his experiences and observations in the aftermath of ...

Meet Roxy.... After years of abuse at the hands of her husband, she's completely lost her mind. Sadly though, turns out her insanity might be her only escape from her nightmarish marriage. With her two young children, Jada and Junior witnessing their mother's torment, Roxy vows to put and end to the abuse, refusing to let history repeat itself through her kids. But will she save herself before it's too late, or will she only find her freedom through a hole in the ground? Find out what happens when a woman's feed up to the top of her skull with the mistreating, the cheatings and the beatings.

It is 1935, and the deaths of Isabella Ruxton and Mary Rogerson would result in one of the most complex investigations the world had ever seen. The gruesome murders captured worldwide attention, with newspapers keeping the public enthralled with all the gory details. But behind the headlines was a different, more important story: the groundbreaking work of Scottish forensic scientists who developed new techniques to solve the case and shape the future of scientific criminal investigation.

Upon graduating from the FBI academy, newly minted Special Agent James “Fitz” Fitzgerald heads to his first office - New York City. Once there, Fitz is immediately assigned to the highly-respected bank robbery squad. The investigations begin. Before long, he’s involved in the arrest of serial killers, murderers, robbers, kidnappers, extortionists, and pedophiles (including a fellow FBI agent), all on his way to a promotion to Quantico to the profiling unit. Fitz’s first assignment as a profiler is to the Unabom task force in San Francisco.

In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic, its uncertain future contested by the two major political parties of the day: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached - with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge - their animosity reached a fever pitch.

Sandy Johnson was in shock. Her husband, Duane, and young daughter, Sherrie, were violently ill when word arrived that her infant nephew just died of mysterious causes. Days earlier, the entire family was happy, healthy, and living the American dream. Now they were at the center of a terrifying medical crisis. Duane soon died in a condition unlike anything the doctors had ever seen. As they raced to discover what disease or toxin could have done so much damage so quickly, Lt. Foster Burchard of the Omaha police began to suspect foul play.

Charged with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber. Maintaining his innocence, he read everything on criminal law available in the prison library and persuaded a new lawyer to petition for the then-innovative DNA testing. After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in America, Kirk Bloodsworth became the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.

When a “neutral” United States becomes a trading partner for the Allies early in World War I, the Germans implement a secret plan to strike back. A team of saboteurs - including an expert on germ warfare, a Harvard professor, and a brilliant, debonair spymaster - devise a series of “mysterious accidents” using explosives and biological weapons, to bring down vital targets such as ships, factories, livestock, and even captains of industry like J. P. Morgan. New York Police Inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department’s Bomb Squad, is assigned the difficult mission of stopping them.