Winner of the Gold Dagger AwardA fascinating true crime story that details the rise of modern forensics and the development of modern criminal investigation.At the end of the nineteenth century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher terrorized the French countryside, eluding authorities for years, and murdering twice as many victims as Jack The Ripper. Here, Douglas Starr revisits Vacher's infamous crime wave, interweaving the story of the two men who eventually stopped him—prosecu...

Essence and emblem of life--feared, revered, mythologized, and used in magic and medicine from earliest times--human blood is now the center of a huge, secretive, and often dangerous worldwide commerce. It is a commerce whose impact upon humanity rivals that of any other business--millions of lives have been saved by blood and its various derivatives, and tens of thousands of lives have been lost. Douglas Starr tells how this came to be, in a sweeping history that ranges through the centur...

A riveting true crime story that vividly recounts the birth of modern forensics.At the end of the nineteenth century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher, known and feared as “The Killer of Little Shepherds,” terrorized the French countryside. He eluded authorities for years—until he ran up against prosecutor Emile Fourquet and Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, the era’s most renowned criminologist. The two men—intelligent and bold—typified the Belle Époque, a period of immense scientific achiev...

A beautiful nurse. A lethal injection. A gruesomely charred corpse.Nothing could have shocked the sleepy community of Morgantown, West Virginia, more than the lurid details that surfaced after a house fire claimed the life of Shelly Michael's husband Jimmy. Local authorities suspected possible arson. Then they discovered that Jimmy had been dead before the fire even started—paralyzed by a fatal dose of muscle relaxant . . .Did Shelly Michael, a respected nu...

"Benson is a master of true crime." --Robert ScottDeadly DreamsJoyce Wishart was living out her life's dream, running her own art gallery in sunny Sarasota, Florida. But that dream ended in nightmare when a deranged drifter named Elton Brutus Murphy walked through the door with a knife in his hand and a voice in his head commanding him to rape and kill. In the space of half an hour, Joyce was dead--brutally mutilated--and the tony arts enclave plunged into ...

The crime that shocked post-Civil War America and inspired the folk song that became The Kingston Trio's hit, "Tom Dooley."At the conclusion of the Civil War, Wilkes County, North Carolina, was the site of the nation's first nationally publicized crime of passion. In the wake of a tumultuous love affair and a mysterious chain of events, Tom Dooley was tried, convicted and hanged for the murder of Laura Foster. This notorious crime became an inspiration for musician...

On May 24, 1977, Trudy Resnick Farber was abducted from her home by a masked, armed intruder, taken to a remote wooded mountainside and buried alive! A million dollar ransom demand was made for her release. The Day the Catskills Cried is the complete and true story concerning a horrific crime that shook the Catskill region of New York.

One brutal murder. Two possible suspects. And a "fascinating . . . puzzling case" that divided a Michigan community ( Lansing State Journal).In the summer of 1982, the body of twenty-year-old Maggie Hume was found under a pile of blankets in the closet of her apartment. A Catholic school girl and daughter of a local football coach, Maggie had been raped and strangled. It was the only active murder investigation in Battle Creek, Michigan, suggesting the cas...

From award winning criminologist R. Barri Flowers and the bestselling author of THE PICKAXE KILLERS and THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS, comes a powerful new historical true crime short, MURDER AT THE PENCIL FACTORY: The Killing of Mary Phagan 100 Years Later.On the afternoon of April 26, 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan arrived at the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta, Georgia, where she worked, to pick up her paycheck.The next day, Mary's bloody, battered, and bruised dead body...

"A socialite bride, a $1 million inheritance, an older husband of questionable social rank, Yankees misbehaving on Southern soil . . . [A] web of intrigue" ( Our State).A news media frenzy hurled the quiet resort community of Pinehurst, North Carolina, into the national spotlight in 1935 when hotel magnate Ellsworth Statler's adopted daughter was discovered dead early one February morning weeks after her wedding day. A politically charged coroner's inquest...

The truth behind the legend of New Orleans' infamous slave owner, madwoman, and murderess, portrayed in the anthology series, American Horror Story.On April 10, 1834, firefighters smashed through a padlocked attic door in the burning Royal Street mansion of Creole society couple Delphine and Louis Lalaurie. In the billowing smoke and flames they made an appalling discovery: the remains of Madame Lalaurie's chained, starved, and mutilated slaves. This house...

Before he could bleed out, his family discovered the bloody, bloody scene, and rescued the beleaguered coal man. He said his only regret is that he didn't kill his meddling mother-in-law, too. This "novelette" length true crime story details the family quarrel that led to the gruesome crime and the delivery of turn-of-the-century justice.