True Crime Women

From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best - or worst.

20 Shocking True Crime Cases of Women Who Kill, including; Ellen Boehm: A uniquely evil monster, Boehm took out her petty grievances on the innocents she was supposed to protect, her own infant children. Christina Walters: Christina wasn’t your average single mom, she was a gangbanger, eager for her first kill. Pity the unfortunate soul who crosses her path tonight. Pamela Gourlay: An addict desperate for a fix comes knocking on her neighbor’s door in the middle of the night. In her pocket, she’s carrying a boning knife. Kathleen Worrall: Sibling rivalry runs out of control in this ...

Professional bakers and a local food blogger are participating in the Baking Spirits Bright holiday baking competition and they aren’t about to go down without a fight. The competition quickly heats to a boiling point, with flaring tempers and mysterious happenings. When one of the entrants is found dead, stabbed with Becca’s chocolate chipper, Becca tries to salvage the season by finding the killer. But the heat is on, and Becca is in danger of getting burned.

The lush, green hills that mark the border of North and South Carolina are home to a close-knit community. When the savaged remains of high-spirited Heather Catterton and sweet-natured Randi Saldana were found and a local man was linked to their murders, residents were forced to face an evil in their midst. The killer was one of their own….

20 Shocking True Crime Cases of Women Who Kill, including Sharee Miller: Plain-looking and dumpy, Sharee nonetheless had a hold on the men in her life. She could get them to do anything for her. Even commit murder. Rachel Wade: The battle was over a man who was hardly worth the trouble. It would end with one young woman dead and the other in prison for a very long time. Stella Nickell: A case of product tampering leaves two people dead. But who slipped cyanide into the Excedrin pills. Could it be someone connected to one of the victims? Kimberly McCarthy: Once she’d been an honor student ...

When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher “KC” Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone.

Killer Romance: Love Stories with a Body Count unveils a gripping anthology of love tales laced with murder. From Victorian London’s gaslit alleys to Texas highways and French estates, these stories chart passion’s descent into peril. A doctor flees with his mistress, a cellar hiding gruesome secrets; a betrayed wife’s road chase ends in her husband’s death; a trapped heiress poisons her boorish spouse. Each romance ignites with desire and ends in a body count, driven by infidelity, jealousy, or desperation. Blending historical intrigue with modern twists, these narratives pit love ...

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. For the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong?

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told.

What if a respected surgeon could destroy your life with just one diagnosis? In early twentieth century Green Bay, Wisconsin, this terrifying reality was all too true for two women. Mary, an illiterate maid, and Mollie, a college-educated socialite, fell victim to the physical violence and mental abuse of celebrated surgeon Dr. John R. Minahan. To silence them, he claimed they had the shameful and dreaded disease of syphilis.

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.

The stories of six brutal murderers of women. Were these men simply bad, or were they actually mad? The juries of the day had their say, but you can make up your own mind. The Acid Bath Murderer- The disturbing life of John George Haigh. Blood-drinking lunatic, or opportunistic ‘man with a disposal plan’? The Ladykiller- Was post-war Britain ready to be introduced to the ‘charming’ aircraft pilot Neville George Clevely Heath? The Southwark Poisoner- Was George Chapman a serial-killing poisoner, or something even worse? True Justice?- The controversial case of Ronald True, a case ...

In the heat of the city, a man is out of time: speeding in a beat-up Ford Tempo, blasting easy-listening music. Reporter Steve Everett drinks too much, makes love to his boss' wife, and has just stumbled upon a shocking truth: A convicted killer is about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit. In the cold confines of Death Row, Frank Beachum is also out of time. Ready to say good-bye to the wife and child he loves and hello to the God he still believes in, Beachum knows he did not kill a convenience store clerk six years ago.

Every mother's worst fear became Sharon Rocha's reality. On Christmas Eve 2002, she received a phone call from her son-in-law saying that her daughter, Laci, was missing. In the hours, days, and eventually months that followed, Sharon struggled to avoid accepting what no parent should ever have to face: the certain knowledge that her child is never coming home.

Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith.

For decades, osteopathic physician Larry Nassar built a sterling reputation as the go-to doctor for America's Olympians while treating countless others at his office on Michigan State University's campus. It was largely within the high-pressure world of competitive gymnastics that Nassar exploited young girls, sexually assaulting hundreds of them under the guise of medical treatment. In Start by Believing, John Barr and Dan Murphy confront Nassar's acts, which represent the largest sex abuse scandal to impact the sporting world.

Stephen L. Carter delves into his past and retrieves the inspiring story of his grandmother’s life. She was Black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s - and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected 20 lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male.

20 Shocking True Crime Cases of Women Who Kill, including Beth Carpenter: When a male stripper turns up dead, the last person you’d suspect is an up-and-coming young lawyer. Penny Bjorkland: A demure and pretty teen with an odd obsession – she wants to know what it feels like to kill someone. Kelly Silk: When mental health problems take over a young mother’s life, no one is safe – not even her loving husband and precious children. Joyce Chant: Joyce had endured years of abuse at the hands of her sadistic husband. At some point, a woman has to say, “enough.” Sandy Cain: A bored ...

20 Shocking True Crime Cases of Women Who Kill, including; Ellie Nesler: A controversial case from Tuolumne County, California. Ellie Nesler was either an avenging angel or a dangerous vigilante. You decide. Maryann Castorena: Jose thought that he’d found the love of his life in Maryann. What he’d really found was a gold-digger, a love-cheat, a cold-hearted killer. Iva Kroeger: A truly repulsive individual, Kroeger made her living duping others out of their possessions. And when duping didn’t work, she resorted to murder. Sarah Vercauteren: Heroin can lead its users down some dark ...

Kevin, Meg's cyber-savvy nephew who lives in the basement, comes to her with a problem. He's become involved as the techie for a true-crime podcast, one that focuses on Virginia cold cases and unsolved crimes. And he thinks their podcast has hit a nerve with someone...one of the podcast team has had a brush with death that Kevin thinks was an attempted murder, not an accident. Kevin rather sheepishly asks for Meg's help in checking out the people involved in a couple of the cases.