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Expert Witness: The Weight of Our Testimony When Justice Hangs in the Balance by Ann Wolbert BurgessBased on Dr. Ann Burgess' personal experiences within the criminal justice system, reader's experience a groundbreaking look into the crucial role played by expert witnesses in the most high-profile criminal cases. From Bill Cosby to the Menendez brothers to Larry Nassar, Burgess reveals the deeply human stories behind the trials that have captivated a nation, offering first-hand accounts and never-before-seen interviews with attorneys, victims, and offenders. Expert Witness places readers inside the mind of the nation's most prominent courtroom expert, following Burgess as she takes on one seismic case after the next. Throughout the narrative, each case deepens the reader's understanding of the art and science of expert testimony, taking readers from the women's movement of the 1970s to the #MeToo movement of today--one of the largest social reckonings in recent history. At its core, Expert Witness is a story of empowerment. It's a story of compassion and the ever-increasing need for individuals to stand up and speak truth to power or to popular opinion. And it's ultimately a story of how revolutionary one voice can be.
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The Monsters We Make: Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling by Rachel CorbettAuthor Rachel Corbett explores how criminal profiling became one of society's most seductive and quixotic undertakings through five significant moments in its history. Corbett follows Arthur Conan Doyle through the London alleyways where Jack the Ripper butchered his victims, depicts the tailgate outside of Ted Bundy's execution, and visits the remote Montana cabin where Ted Kaczynski assembled his antiestablishment bombs. Along the way emerge the people who studied and unraveled these cases. We meet self-taught psychologist Henry Murray, who profiled Adolf Hitler at the request of the U.S. government and later profiled his own students--including the future Unabomber--by subjecting them to cruel humiliation experiments. We also meet the prominent Yale psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis, who ended up testifying that Bundy was too sick to stand trial. Finally, Corbett takes the story into our own time, explaining the rise of modern predictive policing policies through a study of one Florida family that the analytics targeted--to devastating effects. With narrative intrigue and deft research, Corbett delves deep into the mythology and reality of criminal profilers, revealing how thin the line can be separating those who do harm and those who claim to stop it.
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No bond is more sacred than that between a mother and child. And no one is more sympathetic than a mother whose child faces a life-threatening illness. But what if the mother is the cause of the illness? What if the sympathy is the point? Munchausen by Proxy (MBP) has fascinated and horrified both professionals and the general public since this disturbing form of child abuse was first identified. But even as the public has been captivated by these tales of abuse and deception, there remains widespread misinformation and confusion about MBP. Are these mothers unfeeling psychopaths, or sick women who need help? And more important, how can we protect the children whose lives are at stake? The Mother Next Door offers a groundbreaking look at MBP from an unlikely duo: a Seattle novelist whose own family was torn apart by it, and the Texas detective who has worked on more medical child abuse cases than anyone in the nation. Readers ride along on three high-stakes MPB investigations; through riveting reporting and shocking stories from the family members, friends, and doctors caught in the blast zone of these unthinkable acts, a twisted portrait of motherhood and deceit is revealed. With help from some of the top MBP experts in the world, Dunlop and Weber uncover the complex maze of psychological, systemic, and cultural issues that compound MBP and offer solutions for how we might find our way out. |
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Rabbit Heart: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Story by Kristine S. ErvinKristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life. In her mother's absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp--from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin's drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding its way into her own fraught adolescence. In the process of both, she reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be--a self beyond the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim--what a 'true' victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be.
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Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli FrankelIn January 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short, completely drained of blood, was discovered in an undeveloped lot in Los Angeles. Its gruesome mutilations led to a firestorm of publicity, city-wide panic, and an unprecedented number of investigative paths led by the LAPD--all dead ends. The Black Dahlia murder remained an unsolved mystery for over seventy years. Six years earlier and sixteen hundred miles away, another woman's life ended in a similarly horrific manner. Leila Welsh was an ambitious, educated, popular, and socially connected beauty. Though raised modestly on a prairie farm, she was heiress to her Kansas City family's status and wealth. On a winter morning in 1941, Leila's butchered body was found in her bedroom bearing the marks of unspeakable trauma. One victim faded into obscurity. The other became notorious. Both had in common a killer whose sadistic mind was a labyrinth of dark secrets. Eli Frankel reveals a key fact about the Black Dahlia crime scene that leads inexorably to the stunning identification of a criminal who was at the same time amateurish and fiendish, skilled and lucky, sophisticated and brutish. Drawing on documents, law enforcement files, interviews, the victims' own letters, trial transcripts, military records, and more, this true-crime saga puts together the missing pieces of a legendary puzzle.
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Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline FraserAuthor Caroline Fraser maps the lives and careers of Ted Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem--the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson. Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero, in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was hardly unique in the West. As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers.
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She Kills: The Murderous Socialite, the Cross-Dressing Bank Robber, and Other True Crime Tales by Skip HollandsworthRaised in Texas, journalist Skip Hollandsworth joined Texas Monthly in 1989, and the stories he has written over three-plus decades have helped define a locale and a culture. Reported, written and curated by Hollandsworth, She Kills brings together beloved stories that focus in particular on female offenders--from the high schooler who was so desperate to move back in with Mom that she had no choice but to poison her father's refried beans to the wallflower nurse in small-town Texas who one day started killing off her patients to the lovelorn dental hygienist who ordered a hit on her rival.These are expertly crafted tales that will stop readers in their tracks and leave them gasping with shock and pleasure. Each piece is updated by Hollandsworth, who provides background on his original storytelling and new information on the perpetrators and victims, where available.
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Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert KingFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King comes a chilling exploration of one of America's most haunting wrongful conviction cases. Based on the hit podcast, Bone Valley dives into the dark heart of rural Florida, where a young man's life was upended by a tragic miscarriage of justice. Captivating, enraging, and all too true. Leo Schofield was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, Michelle. Always insistent on his innocence, he was poorly served by his legal defense: the investigation was sloppy, the case flimsy, and numerous pieces of evidence were ignored. He was sentenced to life in prison. Over thirty years later, Gilbert King is tipped off to Leo's case and is astonished by what he found: layers of corruption, flawed evidence, and deep-seated errors. He can't shake the story and starts to get to know Leo and his family. Leo shows an incomprehensible amount of grace and love about his situation, which spurs Gilbert even more to tell his story. Bone Valley is at once a revelatory investigation into a murder, a chilling portrait of the criminal justice system, and a uniquely powerful story of grace and redemption.
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Out of the Woods: A Girl, a Killer, and a Lifelong Struggle to Find the Way Home by Gregg OlsenIn May 2005, authorities discovered the Groene family murdered in their Idaho home. The family's youngest members--eight-year-old Shasta and her brother, nine-year-old Dylan--were nowhere to be found. As a community prayed for their return, Shasta and Dylan were already miles away in the woods of Montana at the hands of serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan. After a harrowing forty-eight day ordeal, Shasta was rescued. In many ways, her survival story was only beginning. In the following years, while Shasta struggled to outrun her trauma, a pattern of self-destructive behavior shadowed her like an ever-worsening thunderstorm. She still had hope buried deep inside - every bit as much as the little girl who had been held captive in the woods. This would be an all-new battle for Shasta and she was determined not to lose.
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The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy by James PattersonThe murders of four innocent college students attending the University of Idaho left us all with so many questions. Now, after more than 300 interviews, James Patterson and ... journalist Vicky Ward finally have some answers. We know what it was like to live in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022, the day of the cold-blooded killings. We know what the local police and FBI did right. And what they did wrong. We've learned so much about the four heartbroken families--the Mogens, Goncalveses, Kernodles, and Chapins. And we have the backstory for Bryan Kohberger--brilliant grad student, loner, apparent incel--now indicted and facing trial. Now you are the jury. The evidence is in.
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50 States of Murder: An Atlas of American Crime by Harold SchechterFilled with hundreds of entries organized by location, 50 States of Murder is a lively and chilling work of storytelling and an authoritative survey of the homicidal history of the United States--perfect for any true-crime obsessive. Certain crimes are impossible to imagine happening anywhere but where they did: Could the Manson murders have gone down somewhere besides the 1960s sex-and-drug-fueled, occult-dabbling culture of Southern California? Would Truman Capote's In Cold Blood have been as powerful if the Clutter family massacre happened anywhere besides the tightly knit world of Holcomb, Kansas? Or would the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski have been able to hole up in the woods evading notice for decades anywhere but in Montana? Discover each state's most memorable and notorious crimes through expert authorship, stunning visuals, and interactive design.
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The Man No One Believed: The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders by Joshua SharpeIn 1985, a white man walked into a South Georgia church and brutally murdered Harold and Thelma Swain, two pillars of the area's Black community. For fifteen years, the case remained unsolved. Then authorities zeroed in on Dennis Perry, a carpenter who grew up nearby. Convicted with devastatingly flawed evidence, Perry received a double life sentence. When award-winning journalist and South Georgia native Joshua Sharpe retraces the case, he discovers a winding path of corruption, devastating missteps, and secrets. And he confronts a long-ignored suspect: an alleged white supremacist who had bragged about committing the murders. And even as evidence mounts of Perry's innocence, local officials work to keep him in prison--until Sharpe's reporting forces the state to launch a new investigation. The Man No One Believed tells the unbelievable story of one of the most confounding cases in Georgia history, the extraordinary fight to free an innocent man, and how state officials worked against the odds to deliver justice for the Swains after all.
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Blood in the Water: The Untold Story of a Family Tragedy by Casey ShermanWhen Nathan Carman, a young man with a complicated past, is miraculously rescued from a lifeboat bobbing in the unforgiving North Atlantic, questions swirl about the fate of his mother, who is presumed to have drowned when their fishing boat sank. Nathan is in remarkably good shape for being lost at sea for a week, and his account of what exactly happened out there on the waves raises questions from family members and law enforcement. Nathan's story of a fishing trip gone awry doesn't quite add up, and suspicion mounts. The mysterious murder of Nathan's multi-millionaire grandfather a few years before had made Nathan's mother an extremely wealthy woman. With a seven-million-dollar fortune at stake, did Nathan commit the ultimate betrayal? Or is there more to this tragic tale than meets the eye?
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The Sleep Room: A Sadistic Psychiatrist and the Women Who Survived Him by Jon StockThe Sleep Room is thriller novelist Jon Stock's investigation into one of the most revered figures in British postwar medicine, the private world of the Sleep Room in Ward Five, and the science of the psychology that produced it. Dr. William Sargant ran a lucrative private practice, published multiple books on psychiatry, and was awarded the Starkey medal and prize by the Royal Society of Health for his work on psychiatric medicine. But what he was best known for was the apogee of his career: the Sleep Room in Ward Five. This was a dark gallery where patients selected by Sargant were subjected to deep narcosis, sleeping for more than twenty-one hours per day for weeks at a time, and roused only for sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. When his patients finished their treatment, they had lost not only memories of trauma, but also any sense of who they were or why they were there. At least four of them died in the room. Between 1964 and 1972, hundreds of women were treated in the now-shuttered ward of the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Women and Children. A group of survivors, now in their sixties and seventies, have come forward to share their stories and advocate for change.
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