True crime: serial killers and murderers Books

Book SynopsisIt's time to set the record straight about Steven Avery.The Netflix series Making a Murderer was a runaway hit, with over 19 million US viewers in the first 35 days. The series left many with the opinion that Steven Avery, a man falsely imprisoned for almost 20 years on a previous, unrelated assault charge, had been framed by a corrupt police force and district attorney's office for the murder of a young photographer. Viewers were outraged, and hundreds of thousands demanded a pardon for Avery. The chief villain of the series? Ken Kratz, the special prosecutor who headed the investigation and trial. Kratz's later misdeeds—prescription drug abuse and sexual harassment—only cemented belief in his corruption.This book tells you what Making a Murderer didn't.While indignation at the injustice of his first imprisonment makes it tempting to believe in his innocence, Avery: The Case Against Steven Avery and What Making a Murderer Gets Wrong and the evidence shared inside—examined thoroughly and dispassionately—prove that, in this case, the criminal justice system worked just as it should.With Avery, Ken Kratz puts doubts about Steven Avery's guilt to rest. In this exclu- sive insider's look into the controversial case, Kratz lets the evidence tell the story, sharing details and insights unknown to the public. He reveals the facts Making a Murderer conveniently left out and then candidly addresses the aftermath—openly discussing, for the first time, his own struggle with addiction that led him to lose everything.Avery systematically erases the uncertainties introduced by the Netflix series, confirming, once and for all, that Steven Avery is guilty of the murder of Teresa Halbach.Table of ContentsForewordChapter One True Crime TodayChapter Two The DisappearanceChapter Three The VictimChapter Four The PerpetratorChapter Five The BloodChapter Six The KeyChapter Seven The BonesChapter Eight The BulletChapter Nine The AccompliceChapter Ten The DecisionChapter Eleven The VillainsChapter Twelve The “Prize”Chapter Thirteen The Vast, Fantastical Police ConspiracyChapter Fourteen The AftermathAcknowledgments

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Book SynopsisOn Monday, December 4, 1967, a body was discovered in the science building of the largest university in West Texas. The next day, citizens of Lubbock gathered for the Carol of Lights, and event typically the centrepiece of the holidays for the quiet college town. But in 1967, the normal festive excitement and anticipation was shockingly and swiftly shattered by the harrowing events that had occurred just twenty-four hours earlier.For the first time, the story of this shocking murder has been painstakingly reconstructed by Alan Burton and Chuck Lanehart. Piecing together timelines based on interviews, journalists' archives, courtroom transcripts, and the personal experiences of Lubbockites, Fatal Exam situates the murder, relates the capture, and details the trial of the crime's perpetrator. Not your standard psychopathic master, the criminal at this story's center cuts a challenging profile, and his story shines an unusual light on the criminal justice system.Fatal Exam is a crime story, but it's also the story of its biggest university in West Texas and the peculiar town-and-gown relationship that comes in such a far-flung setting.

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Book SynopsisRe-examines this unresolved murder in Kenya and the underlying role of rumour, the media and inter-state relations on how the death has been reported and investigated. Julie Ann Ward was a British tourist and wildlife photographer who went missing in Kenya's Maasai Mara Game Reserve in 1988 and was eventually found to have been murdered. Her death and the protracted search for her killers, stillat large, were hotly contested in the media. Many theories emerged as to how and why she died, generating three trials, several "true crime" books, and much speculation and rumour. At the core of Musila's study are thefollowing questions: why would this young woman's death be the subject of such strong contestations of ideas and multiple truths? And what does this reveal about cultural productions of truth and knowledge in Kenya and Britain, particularly in the light of the responses to her disappearance of the Kenyan police, the British Foreign Office, and the British High Commission in Nairobi. Building on existing scholarship on African history, narrative, gender and postcolonial studies, the author reveals how the Julie Ward murder and its attendant discourses offer insights into the journeys of ideas, and how these traverse the porous boundaries of the relationship between Kenya and Britain, and, by extension, Africa and the Global North. Grace A. Musila is a lecturer in the English Department of Stellenbosch University, South AfricaTrade ReviewA sensitive, sophisticated and subtle work...readers interested in modern African politics, the legacies of colonialism or the ethics of development will benefit greatly from Musila's insights. * RED PEPPER *Feminism and gender studies, history, international studies, African studies and literature, sociology and creative writing programmes would be among the priority home disciplines for this book. * JOHANNESBURG REVIEW OF BOOKS *What Musila does with the questions that she takes up is brilliant. This is a smart book-smart in its interconnectivity, in its insights, and in the voracious mind behind it. A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour should be assigned to upper-level classes in African studies and cultural studies. Scholars might know some of this already, but we have never seen it put together just this way. * AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW *Grace Musila has managed to produce what must be termed an academic thriller. . . . [Her] text is an achievement - a study in the postcolonial hangovers and political ruthlessness besetting Kenya and countries like it that also exposes the lingering racism and greed of British involvement. * SAFUNDI *A mix of erudite critical analysis of the range of stories that emerged from the death of Julie Ward; examining the conduct and narratives of officialdom, the pain and search efforts of Julie's father; the seeming unwillingness of the Kenyan state to fully support Mr Ward's quest for truth and justice, as well as the British government's not-too-convincing involvement, among others. * DAILY NATION *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Versions of Truth Portrait of an Assassin State Sex, Gender and the 'Criminal' State Julie Ward's Death and the Kenyan Grapevine Wildebeest, 'Noble Savages' and Moi's Kenya: Cultural Illiteracies in the Search for Julie Ward's Killers Farms in Africa: Wildlife Tourism, Conservation and Whiteness in Postcolonial Africa Faultlines in the Official British Response to the Julie Ward Mystery Engaging Modernity Afterword by Stephanie Newell

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Book SynopsisIn the autumn of 1888, a series of grisly murders took place in Whitechapel in London's East End, the Abyss, the Ghetto, the City of Eternal Night. The Whitechapel murderer, arguably the first of his kind, was never caught but the killings gave rise to the best known pen-name in criminal history - Jack the Ripper. The Whitechapel killer was terrifyingly real but Jack was the creation of Fleet Street, the gallows humour of a newspaper hack whose sole aim in life was to sell newspapers. And where the Dear Boss' letter, with its trade name' signature led, thousands followed. This book is not about the world's first serial killer but about the sick, the perverted, the twisted souls who put pen to paper purporting to be the killer or suggested ever more lurid ways in which he could be caught. Innocent men were put in the frame by Victorian trouble-makers who would be perfectly at home with today's Internet trolls, pointing cruel fingers in almost perfect anonymity. The book takes the lid off Victorian mindsets, exposing a dark and unnatural place as topsy-turvy as that inhabited by the killer himself.

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Book SynopsisBefore Charles Manson, there was Tony Costa-the serial killer of Cape Cod1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Long-haired teenagers roam the streets, strumming guitars and preaching about peace and love... and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire-the leader of their counter-culture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands out hallucinogenic drugs like candy. But beneath his benign persona lies a twisted and uncontrollable rage that threatens to break loose at any moment. Tony Costa is the most dangerous man on Cape Cod, and no one who crosses his path is safe.When young women begin to disappear, Costa's natural charisma and good looks initially protect him from suspicion. But as the bodies are discovered, the police close in on him as the key suspect. Meanwhile, up-and-coming local writers Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer are locked in a desperate race to secure their legacies as great literary icons-and they both set their sights on Tony Costa and the drug-soaked hippie culture that he embodies as their next promising subject, launching independent investigations that stoke the competitive fires between two of the greatest American writers.Immersive, unflinching, and shocking, Helltown is a landmark true crime narrative that transports us back to the turbulent late 1960s, reveals the secrets of a notorious serial killer, and unspools the threads connecting Costa, Vonnegut, and Mailer in the seaside city that played host to horrors unlike any ever seen before.

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