True Crime Memoir

Karen by Kelsey Grammer delves into the deeply personal and tragic story of the author's sister, Karen, who was brutally murdered at the age of 18. Kelsey was just 20 years old and studying theater at Juilliard in New York when his younger sister, a recent high school graduate, moved to Colorado Springs, where she was kidnapped by several men who had intended to rob the Red Lobster where she worked. They instead kidnapped Karen, raped her repeatedly, and ultimately stabbed her to death.

The grandson and great-grandson of Chicago police officers, Chicago Police Detective James Sherlock was CPD through and through. His career had seen its share of twists and turns, from his time working undercover to thwart robberies on Chicago's L trains to his years as a homicide detective. He thought he had seen it all. But on this day, he was at the records center to see the case file for the murder of John Hughes, who was 17 years old when he was gunned down on Chicago's Southwest Side in 1976. The case's threads led everywhere.

Detective Michael Palermo built his career on his unique ability to inhabit two worlds at once: the world of law enforcement and the underworld of New York’s crime family organizations. Palermo participated in over 2,000 arrests while maintaining close relationships with the kingpins of organized crime - ties that allowed him to stay one step ahead of the rest of the New York City Police Department. This true crime drama takes you inside the police force at its most corrupt.

Mark Lane tried the only US court case in which the jurors concluded that the CIA plotted the murder of President Kennedy, but there was always a missing piece: How did the CIA control cops and secret service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza? How did federal authorities prevent the House Select Committee on Assassinations from discovering the truth about the complicity of the CIA? Now, Mark Lane tells all in this explosive new book.

In the summer of 1969, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel carried out horrific acts of butchery on the orders of the charismatic cult leader Charles Manson. At their murder trial the following year, lead prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi described the two so-called Manson Women as "human monsters". But to anyone who knew them growing up, they were bright, promising girls, seemingly incapable of such an unfathomable crime. Award-winning journalist Nikki Meredith began visiting Van Houten and Krenwinkel in prison to discover how they had changed during their incarceration.

This second giant 6-volume bundle includes a total of 92 real and gripping stories of harrowing crimes. Listen about how detectives and forensic science identified, tracked down, and convicted these twisted offenders, most of whom you will have never heard about before.

When U.S. Marshal John Partington suddenly found himself protecting the family of renowned mobster Joe "The Animal" Barboza, he made up the rules as he went along. Among Partington's diverse activities: convincing Barboza's wife not to leave; keeping the witness, his wife, and their child alive; and transporting the witness to and from hearings in the face of death threats. Unbenownst to him, this experience would lead to the founding of the Witness Protection Program.

Grace Metalious, born and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire, came from humble beginnings. A former mill worker, mother of three, and school principal’s wife, she would shock the nation in 1956 with the publication of Peyton Place, her first novel about a murder in a small town. Quickly becoming the best-selling book of its time, the sexually charged book spawned sequels, two Hollywood movies, and a long-running television series on ABC starring Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neal.

Explore the controversial and gripping narrative in Why I Killed Gandhi?, (story behind Mahatma Gandhi's assassination), by Nathuram Godse. This thought-provoking account delves into the mind of the man who assassinated one of the world's most iconic leaders. Understand the ideological conflicts and personal convictions that led to this tragic event. This book provides a unique perspective on a pivotal moment in history, challenging listeners to reflect on the complexities of political and moral beliefs.

While investigating financial crimes for CNN Money, Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken were intrigued by reports that elderly Americans were giving away thousands of dollars to mail-in schemes. With a little digging, they soon discovered a shocking true story. Victims received personalized letters from a woman who, claiming amazing psychic powers, convinced them to send money in return for riches, good health, and good fortune. The predatory scam has continued unabated for decades, raking in more than $200 million in the United States and Canada alone - with investigators from all over the world unable to stop it.

Prepare to dive into 84 unforgettable true crime stories that zip through seven decades of murder and mayhem. From the roaring '20s to the gritty '90s, this is your ticket to a crime tour that’s more thrilling than a haunted roller coaster. Some of these cases might ring a bell, while others will be fresh horrors you’ve never encountered. And some mysteries are still as cold as the killer's heart. This collection is like a time machine that stops at every dark alley of history's most horrific crimes.

Someone you know or even love is the person who will kill you. Usually, that’s true. But that is not what happened in 2018 to two college students in Iowa. Two young women who had everything to live for, were killed by two men with nothing to lose. Completely random attacks. Neither case had anything else in common except they both shocked the nation and even the world. What’s worse, being murdered by a loved one or a stranger who jumps out of the bushes when you are most vulnerable? Previously published as We’ll Find You and Let’s Do Murder, The Iowa Murders tells the shocking true...

Britain's most infamous criminals: the Kray twins. The extent of their activities has always been uncertain. But now, it is time for the conclusive account of their story, from their East End beginnings, to becoming the kingpins of London's underworld. This objective account, compiled by best-selling crime author and criminal lawyer James Morton, cuts through the conflicting versions of their stories and answers burning questions still being asked 50 years after their infamous conviction.

This shocking true story of an abducted child’s harrowing struggle for survival amidst a horrific Russian military program is a raw examination of the atrocities of war, the resilience of spirit, and the existence of the supernatural. When an unfamiliar hand grabbed Tina Soctoy by the shoulder in the woods near her home at age 6, she suddenly found herself far from her family, disoriented, and imprisoned in the house of a military operative. His mission was to turn her into a merciless weapon of war. Her mission was to survive. In horrifying detail, Soctoy recounts the terrifying ...

In 1976, the body of Anna Mae Aquash, an American Indian luminary, was found frozen in the Badlands of South Dakota—or so the FBI said. After a suspicious autopsy and a rushed burial, friends had Aquash exhumed and found a .32-caliber bullet in her skull. Using this scandal as a point of departure, The Unquiet Grave opens a tunnel into the dark side of the FBI and its subversion of American Indian activists. But the book also discovers things the Indians would prefer to keep buried. What unfolds is a sinuous tale of conspiracy, murder, and cover-up.

Fabián Escalante, the founder of the Cuban Intelligence Services and head of the Cuban State Security Department, provides a clear-eyed, first-person account of his experiences defending Fidel Castro from the extraordinary attempts to take his life. From lethal poisons to plastic explosives to bazookas, Escalante introduces and describes an array of assassination plots and historical figures and depicts the ensuing cat-and-mouse game in the midst of the Cold War.

In 2014, American private contractor Alan Gross was rotting in a Cuban prison, convicted of undermining the Havana regime. At that same time, Cuban intelligence agent Gerardo Hernández was serving two life sentences in a US federal penitentiary on charges related to espionage. Then, it all changed. I Spy: The U.S., Cuba, and the Secret Deal That Ended the Cold War describes how secret negotiations to free the two men helped bring an end to half a century of hostilities between the United States and Cuba.

Whether venturing into a blood-spattered farm in Texas, down a lonely mountain road in Alabama, or into the deceptively sunny Ohio suburbs, acclaimed mystery writer Craig Rice lends her hard-boiled style and a wicked irony to this gallery of real-life murders. A saintly middle-aged widow bludgeoned to death in her New Jersey home; the headless torsos of two women found floating in the Lake of the Ozarks; a New Year’s fire in Pennsylvania set to cover the traces of a more ghastly crime; a traveling evangelist on a divine mission blown to bits in Berkeley....

In Curated True Crime Volume #13: Cradle Crime, you'll hear about some of the most heartbreaking, premeditated, and tragic murders by people who victimized the most innocent and defenseless victims there are. Follow law enforcement, detectives, and forensic experts as they connect the threads of evidence that lead to relentlessly solving these senseless crimes.

2015 saw the worst American maritime disaster in decades. The captain of the SS El Faro commanded his crew to sail straight into a hurricane. The ship sank and all 33 crew members died. The sinking raised troubling questions: Why did the captain choose to sail into the hurricane? Why did no one on board or on shore stop him? And why was such an old and heavily loaded ship even allowed on the water?