Mother. Nurse. Gold-digger. Cause célèbre. When Daisy de Melker stood trial in 1932, accused of poisoning her son and two husbands, the public couldn't get enough of her. Crowds gathered outside court baying for blood, and she waved to them like a celebrity. Against the backdrop of Johannesburg in its golden age, a booming metropolis of opulence and chaos nicknamed the 'City of Gold' and the 'University of Crime', she had quietly gone about her sinister business while around her sensationa...

In 1913, a secretive American millionaire, who lived on the top fl oor of the famous Carlton Hotel, had a crazy idea: to make movies in Johannesburg. And not just any movies but the biggest in the world, huge spectacles with elaborate sets, thousands of extras and epic story lines. Isidore Schlesinger – better known as 'IW' – built a studio on a farm called Killarney, where he set out to challenge a place in America that was in its infancy: Hollywood. The glamour, gossip and high drama of ...

In The Girl with the Crooked Nose, Ted Botha tells the absorbing story of Frank Bender, a gifted, self-taught artist who can bring back the dead and the vanished through a unique, macabre sculpting talent. Bender has been the key to solving at least nine murders and tracking down numerous criminals. Then he is called upon to tackle the most challenging and bizarre case of his career.Someone is killing the young women of Juarez. Since 1993, the decomposing bodies of as many...

Mother. Nurse. Gold-digger. Cause célèbre. When Daisy de Melker stood trial in 1932, accused of poisoning her son and two husbands, the public couldn’t get enough of her. Crowds gathered outside court baying for blood, and she waved to them like a celebrity.Against the backdrop of Johannesburg in its golden age, a booming metropolis of opulence and chaos nicknamed the ‘City of Gold’ and the ‘University of Crime’, she had quietly gone about her sinister business while around her sen...

London's forgotten scandals, secrets and personalities from the twentieth century, told by the writer of the popular blog Another Nickel in the Machine.

The London of Jack the Ripper: Then and Now' is a photographic journey through the London of Jack the Ripper as it was when he stalked the mean streets and alleyways of the Capital.Robert Clack and Philip Hutchinson take the reader on a step-by-step tour of the crime scenes, giving a detailed history of the victims, the crimes and the police investigation.Using many previously unpublished photographs and illustrations, the authors put the reader on the very streets that Jack walked, s...

The streets of London flourish like possibly no other city on earth, with stories from its rich history, stories of death - fire - disease, of riots, and grisly murders, but also of tales of hope, happiness, determination and success. Behind every story and every street however, are the people who lived, worked, played, and even murdered there. Did you know for instance that when Great Scotland Yard was being built in 1890, that the dismembered body of a woman was discovered by workmen, du...

In this memoir, a forensic psychiatrist chronicles her work with more than 80 serial killers and her thoughts on what compels them.Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life in the suburbs of a major city. She has a physician husband, two children, and a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is more than that. She is one of the world's leading experts on serial killers, and has spent as many as four hundred hours alone in rooms with depraved...

'A wonderful account of a life filled with far more ups and downs than its subject's languid demeanour ever suggested.' -Miles JuppEven if the name doesn't ring a bell, you'd recognise David Tomlinson's face – genial and continually perplexed, he was Mr Banks in Mary Poppins, Professor Browne in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Peter Thorndyke in The Love Bug. To many, he's the epitome of post-war British comedy....

This compendium brings together thirty-three murderous tales — one from each of the capital's boroughs — that not only shocked the City but made headline news across the country. Throughout its history the great urban sprawl of Greater London has been home to some of the most shocking murders in England, many of which have made legal history. Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind these heinous crimes. They include George Chapman, who was hanged in ...

The case of Jack the Ripper has at last been cracked by the one man most qualified to do so -- a former murder squad detective. Trevor Marriott casts aside the rumours which have for so long dogged the most famous police case of all time. Revealing the techniques used by modern day policemen, he skilfully and compellingly leads us straight to the criminal world's best-kept secret: the identity of Jack the Ripper. He shows the tally of victims may be far higher than previously known and tha...

In 1888 Jack the Ripper made the headlines with a series of horrific murders that remain unsolved to this day. But most killers are not shadowy figures stalking the streets with a lust for blood. Many are ordinary citizens driven to the ultimate crime by circumstance, a fit of anger or a desire for revenge. Their crimes, overshadowed by the few, sensational cases, are ignored, forgotten or written off. This book examines all the known murders in London in 1888 to build a p...