When Piper Streyle failed to show up for work, a coworker called her home. Piper's three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Shaina, answered and said, "A mean man carried Mommy away." Then the line went dead. In the tranquil region of southeast South Dakota, word of the young mother who was brazenly abducted from her home in broad daylight shocked residents. Piper was the second woman to vanish, following the startling incident of a young woman who narrowly escaped abduction by fighting for her...

“Please, no! Don't make me go back to the park. I can draw you a map. I promise I can show you where everything happened.”The lone survivor trembled as she pleaded with investigators.For over forty years, the events of what happened at Gitchie Manitou the night of November 17, 1973, remained a mystery to all but a few. Then the lone survivor broke her silence. Five teenage friends had driven to the park to spend a few hours around a campfir...

A terrified voice cried out in the night. "Who are you? What do you want?"The sound of snapping twigs closed in on the five teenagers enjoying an evening around a glowing campfire at Gitchie Manitou State Park. The night of music and laughter had taken a dark turn. Evil loomed just beyond the tree line, and before the night was over, one of the Midwest's most horrific mass murders had left its bloodstains spewed across the campsite. One managed to survive and would come to be known...

Was murder part of the game?Seventeen-year-old Kat McDonough grew up with theater in her blood—and a penchant for make-believe. More than a decade older, Seth Mazzaglia was well known in the community theater circle of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He, too, had a rich inner life—and he soon had Kat convinced that they were soul mates.To intensify their bond, Seth lured Kat into a world of violent sex and role-playing, where she was his slave. But even that was...

On July 13, 2011, Laura Jean Ackerson of Kinston, North Carolina, went to pick up her two toddler sons. It would be the last time she was seen alive.Laura's ex, Grant Hayes—the father of her two sons—and his wife, Amanda, the mother of his newborn daughter, both pointed the finger at each other as the one guilty of murdering Laura, cutting up her body, and then transporting and disposing of the remains on the shores of Oyster Creek, Texas.This is the hauntingly true story o...

When the bodies of three teenagers were found on the shores of Lake Waco, Texas, in July, 1982, even seasoned lawmen were taken aback by the savage mutilation and degradation they had been subjected to. Yet only fifty-two days after the gruesome triple-murder was discovered, frustrated authorities suspended the case indefinitely.Patrol Sergeant Truman Simons, who had been called to the scene that night, saw the carnage first-hand—and vowed to find the ferocious killer or killers. H...

A seemingly perfect world held an even more unlikely killer...Julie Keown had a great job, financial security, and a perfect husband who was attending Harvard Business School. But after Julie suddenly died, and doctors discovered she’d been poisoned with the main ingredient in antifreeze, her parents began to suspect that her husband, James, was not so perfect. This blow-by-blow account shows how investigators and state police unraveled James Keown’s chilling web o...

"I KILLED MY PARENTS."Seventeen-year-old Tyler Hadley posted an invitation on Facebook: party at my crib tonight. But this was no ordinary house party in the Florida suburbs; it was a grisly crime scene. Later that night, Tyler revealed to his best friend, Michael, that he'd bludgeoned his parents to death with a hammer. Michael didn't believe him…until he entered the master bedroom and saw the bodies of Tyler's parents on the floor—murdered, beyond the sh...

Dr. John Yelenic was a successful dentist in a small Pennsylvania town. When he met Michele Kamler, he thought he'd finally found the woman of his dreams. She was beautiful, intelligent, and seemed to want all the same things out of life as he did.Michele married Yelenic in 1997. But by 2002, the relationship fell apart…and what followed was a bitter, three-year-long battle in which Michele made demands for Yelenic's money and even accused him―falsely, it would later be shown―of se...

Detroit mortgage broker Mark Unger adored his wife Florence and their two young sons. But after a decade of marriage and increasing financial trouble, Mark’s life began to slowly unravel. He became addicted to pain killers and gambling, and ended up spending five months in rehab.Forced to go back to work, Flo became bitter and resentful of Mark and began to have an affair with one of his friends. When Mark returned home and his disability checks weren’t enough to make ends meet, Fl...

They Were The Perfect Family...For twenty years, Ken and Kristine Fitzhugh and their two sons had lived lives of comfortable middle-class normality in the university town of Palo Alto, California. Then came the shocking news that Kristine Fitzhugh was dead, the victim of a terrible accident.... By the time the Palo Alto Police Department looked closer at the death of Kristine Fitzhugh, there could be only one conclusion. Someone had murdered Kristine in her own hom...

Casper, Wyoming: 1973. Eleven-year-old Amy Burridge rides with her eighteen-year-old sister, Becky, to the grocery store. When they finish their shopping, Becky's car gets a flat tire. Two men politely offer them a ride home. But they were anything but good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes at the hands of these men before being thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived; the other did not.Years later, author and journalist Ron F...