True Child Crime

Charlene Downes was 14 years old when she went missing in the seedy underbelly of Blackpool. Once a happy-go-lucky schoolgirl, she had turned into a truant. Though Charlene was hanging out with a new crowd by takeaway shops and the pier, her mum, Karen, always knew her typical teenage daughter would come home. But one day she didn't.

A heart-stopping story that highlights the failure of the agencies we trust to protect the most vulnerable among us—and a truth more compelling and powerful than we could imagine. Abuse reports from neighbors draw attention to twelve-year-old Alexey who runs away to hide in the woods. The local child protection agency sends the director of the children’s home to visit Alexey and his younger sisters, Anastasia and Svetlana.

On an unseasonably warm winter evening in Pennsylvania, 15-year-old Patty Desmond sneaked out through the basement of her house. She had a history of running away, and that, combined with an argument with her mother, gave police reason to suspect she’d come home in a week or two.

Run, Hide, Repeat is a memoir of a childhood steeped in unexplained fear and menace. Gripping and suspenseful, it moves from Dakin's uneasy acceptance of her family's dire situation to bewildered anger. As compelling and twisted as a thriller, Run Hide Repeat is an unforgettable portrait of a family under threat and the resilience of family bonds.

Murder, Mayhem, and Moonshine relates 75 true crime stories from Macon County, Tennessee between 1879 and 1939. These stories run the gamut of crime. Some are tragic, some bizarre, some grotesque, and some are a little humorous. Although all of the alleged crimes mentioned here took place decades ago, many of them detail the types of crimes that remain common today across the United States and the world. Besides murder, there are stories about child abduction, rape, bullying, domestic violence, racial problems, drunk driving, confidence games, and others.

Ryan and Phil had always been inseparable. Twins born thirty-five minutes apart, Ryan was the protective one, constantly looking out for his younger brother. They can't remember how old they were when the abuse started, but they can remember their uncle very clearly. A frequent visitor to their home in Lincoln, he lavished their family with expensive treats. School holidays and weekends were spent visiting him, when he would often take the two little boys aside to play the games he liked. Trapped with him, day after day, year after year, the abuse continued until Ryan and Phil turned sixteen.

Early on August 12, 2000, four of America's best young rock climbers were sleeping in their portaledges high on the Yellow Wall, in the central Asian mountain range of Kyrgyzstan,. By daybreak, they would be taken at gunpoint by militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. In a life-and-death journey over six terrifying days, they would be forced to choose between saving their own lives and committing an act none of them thought they ever could.

"Failure to comply with these requests means no one will ever see the girl again, except the angels in heaven." The year is 1927, and Christmas is right around the corner. In the city of Los Angeles, lights are shining, streets are bustling, and a well-to-do family of five is living out what seems to be just another ordinary day. However, unbeknownst to all but one man, this would be the last time the Parker family would ever experience such peace. By the time dusk falls, they would be forever torn apart. Marion Parker's Abduction and Murder is an excursion into a crime so chilling that it ...

Like the biblical Job, John Ramsey had it all - wealth, social position, a loving family. And like Job, Ramsey was destined for great affliction, as many of the most precious things in his life were cruelly taken from him.

Oskar's school teacher raises the alarm. Oskar's mother is abroad, and he has been left in the care of friends, but has been arriving in school hungry, unkempt and with bruises on his arms, legs and body. Experienced foster carer Cathy Glass is asked to look after him, but as the weeks pass, her concerns deepen. Oskar is far too quiet for a child of six and is clearly scared of something or someone.

Lisa Montgomery presented her husband, Kevin, with their newborn baby girl, while a state way, police were investigating the brutal murder of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett. She'd been found lying in a pool of blood, and investigators soon realized that someone had strangled Bobbie Jo to death, then cut the fetus from her womb. When they found Bobbie Jo's baby in Lisa's arms, they knew who was responsible for this grisly murder.

The notion of children killing other children is one of the most disturbing realities in our society. It shatters the perception of childhood innocence, revealing the complexity and darkness that can sometimes lie beneath the surface. While such crimes are rare, their impact is devastating, leaving families, communities, and society at large searching for answers. This book delves into the troubling phenomenon of child-on-child murder, exploring the psychological, social, and environmental factors that lead children to commit such horrific acts. We will examine the motives behind these ...

Ted Bundy killed at least 35 girls and women, and possibly hundreds. Was his first victim eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr who disappeared from their Tacoma, Washington neighborhood in 1961? Her body was never found and there were no clues, just two tenacious detectives who spent the rest of their lives trying to solve the case.

Most twelve-year-old boys are preoccupied with comics and playing with their friends. Twelve-year-old Frank Heeney, however, is about to start three years of hell at Ireland’s notorious St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack County Galway. St. Joseph’s is an inferno of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of the administrators. Many children, some as young as four, die from such conditions and are secretly disposed of in the surrounding wilderness. As Frank spends three years at St. Joseph’s Letterfrack and two years at St. Patrick’s children’s prison, he is...

By the time she was in her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she grew older, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her family—the only people she had in the world—began to unravel. She started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere.

In 1962, Jerry Sherwood gave up her newborn son, Dennis, for adoption. Twenty years later, she set out to find him - only to discover he had died before his fourth birthday. Harold and Lois Jurgens, a middle-class, churchgoing couple in picturesque White Bear Lake, Minnesota, had adopted Dennis and five other foster children. To all appearances, they were a normal Midwestern family, but Jerry suspected that something sinister had happened in the Jurgens household. She demanded to know the truth about her son's death.

When Julia Henry's daughters disappear, she uncovers a web of secrets rooted in their birth mother's past. Every mother's nightmare becomes Julia Henry's reality when her daughters, Jewel and Opal, vanish without a trace. The secret to their abduction might lie buried in a dark past, tangled in a web of secrets and deceit of their birth mother. As Julia digs deeper, she uncovers secrets that stretch to her own doorstep, challenging everything she knows about her life. In a race against time, Julia must navigate a maze of lies to rescue her daughters.

Javier Valdez recoge los relatos más intensos, conmovedores y sorprendentes que tiñen la realidad social y política de México a diario. El número de niños y jóvenes que participan activamente en las actividades del narcotráfico en México es cada día mayor. Batos de 13, 14,15 años y hasta los 21 ó 23 años actúan alucinados y con feroz valentía en levantones, asesinatos, decapitaciones, transporte de droga y secuestros. Y este libro impactante comparte historias reales de estos acontecimientos.

In the summer of 1994, when Molly Brodak was 13 years old, her father robbed 11 banks, until the police finally caught up with him while he was sitting at a bar drinking beer, a bag of stolen money plainly visible in the backseat of his parked car. Dubbed the "Mario Brothers Bandit" by the FBI, he served seven years in prison and was released, only to rob another bank several years later and end up back behind bars. In her powerful, provocative debut memoir, Brodak recounts her childhood and attempts to make sense of her complicated relationship with her father.

Award-winning investigative journalist and contributing Wired editor Scott Carney leads listeners on a breathtaking journey through the macabre underworld of the global body bazaar, where organs, bones, and even live people are bought and sold on The Red Market. The Red Market sheds a blazing new light on the disturbing, billion-dollar business of trading in human body parts, bodies, and child trafficking, raising issues and exposing corruptions almost too bizarre and shocking to imagine.