Amelia Dyer, Angel Maker


Book Description

"Amelia Dyer: Angel Maker tells the true story of a "kind", "homely" and "motherly" nurse who made a living by strangling unwanted babies to death. Born into a respectable working-class family, Amelia joined a nationwide network of women who pursued an "occupation which shuns the light". Amelia became adept at her trade, sidestepping the authorities for almost three decades and even initiating her own daughter into her nefarious profession." "Using hospital, prison and police archives, census records, contemporary newspaper reports and Dyer's own correspondence, authors Alison Rattle and Allison Vale reconstruct her life. Here, for the first time, is the full story of this ordinary woman who became a monster."--BOOK JACKET.




The Ore Knob Mine Murders


Book Description

How could the peace and quiet of Ashe County, North Carolina (in the mountains, at the Virginia-Tennessee corner), turn into a nightmare of crime and drugs, and the old copper mine itself become a dumping ground for the dead? In 1982, two bodies had been chipped from an icy grave and brought up from the 250-foot mine shaft where they had been thrown while still alive. Now, there were rumors of 21 bodies still down there. If the mine was ever re-opened, what would they find--copper or bodies? Murder, drugs, prostitution and gangs come together in the history of the Ore Knob Mine. A small Appalachian community became the heart of a vicious drug ring ruled by the Outlaws motorcycle gang from Chicago. Ashe County made national headlines when a police informant came forward confessing that he had pushed a man alive into the Ore Knob Mine shaft. This book is the full story.




The Angel Makers


Book Description

"In Victorian England, clairvoyant flower seller Constance Piper goes searching for the truth behind a new rash of murders in London's East End. With the aid of Detective Constable Hawkins, Constance links the mysterious death of a young prostitute to Mother Delaney's vile trade as a baby farmer"--




Amelia Dyer and the Baby Farm Murders


Book Description

On 30 March 1896, a bargeman hooked a parcel from the river Thames at Caversham. Inside the brown paper package was the body of a baby girl - she had been strangled with tape. When two more tiny bodies were found in a carpet bag, the police launched a nationwide hunt for a serial killer. A faint name and address on the sodden wrapping provided Reading police with their first clue. Can Chief Constable George Tewsley and his colleagues catch this heartless baby farmer before more infants meet a similar fate? The first in a new historical true crime series, Victorian Supersleuth Investigates, Angela Buckley recounts the frantic race to stop Amelia Dyer - one of Britain's most prolific murderers.




Little Shoes


Book Description

In the summer of 1937, with the Depression deep and World War II looming, a California triple murder stunned an already grim nation. After a frantic week-long manhunt for the killer, a suspect emerged, and his sensational trial captivated audiences from coast to coast. Justice was swift, and the condemned man was buried away with the horrifying story. But decades later, Pamela Everett, a lawyer and former journalist, starts digging, following up a cryptic comment her father once made about a tragedy in their past. Her journey is uniquely personal as she uncovers her family's secret history, but the investigation quickly takes unexpected turns into her professional wheelhouse. Everett unearths a truly historic legal case that included one of the earliest criminal profiles in the United States, the genesis of modern sex offender laws, and the last man sentenced to hang in California. Digging deeper and drawing on her experience with wrongful convictions, Everett then raises detailed and haunting questions about whether the authorities got the right man. Having revived the case to its rightful place in history, she leaves us with enduring concerns about the death penalty then and now. A journey chronicled through the mind of a lawyer and from the heart of a daughter, Little Shoes is both a captivating true crime story and a profoundly personal account of one family's struggle to cope with tragedy through the generations.




Female Serial Killers


Book Description

In this fascinating book, Peter Vronsky exposes and investigates the phenomenon of women who kill—and the political, economic, social and sexual implications buried with each victim. How many of us are even remotely prepared to imagine our mothers, daughters, sisters or grandmothers as fiendish killers? For centuries we have been conditioned to think of serial murderers and psychopathic predators as men—with women registering low on our paranoia radar. Perhaps that’s why so many trusting husbands, lovers, family friends, and children have fallen prey to “the female monster.” From history’s earliest recorded cases of homicidal females to Irma Grese, the Nazi Beast of Belsen, from Britain’s notorious child-slayer Myra Hindley to ‘Honeymoon Killer’ Martha Beck to the sensational cult of Aileen Wournos—the first female serial killer-as-celebrity—to cult killers, homicidal missionaries, and our pop-culture fascination with the sexy femme fatale, Vronsky not only challenges our ordinary standards of good and evil but also defies our basic accepted perceptions of gender role and identity. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS




The WVU Coed Murders


Book Description

Some said that the killer couldn't be a local. Others claimed that he was the wealthy son of a prominent Morgantown family. Whispers spread that Mared and Karen were sacrificed by a satanic cult or had been victims of a madman poised to strike again. Then the handwritten letters began to arrive: "You will locate the bodies of the girls covered over with brush--look carefully. The animals are now on the move." Investigators didn't find too few suspects--they had far too many. There was the campus janitor with a fur fetish, the "harmless" deliveryman who beat a woman nearly to death, the nursing home orderly with the bloody broomstick and the bouncer with the "girlish" laugh who threatened to cut off people's heads. Local authors Geoffrey C. Fuller and S. James McLaughlin tell the complete story of the murders for the first time.




Amelia Dyer


Book Description

See this lady? You would NOT want to lock horns with her. You certainly wouldn't give her your baby. But in the late nineteenth century, that's exactly what a lot of women did. Why? Because in an era when having a child out of wedlock was so severely frowned upon, Amelia Dyer took advantage of this. She advertised in the press offering to ''adop...




The Kentucky Cannibal


Book Description

In 1850, following a divorce and a number of encounters with the law, Boone Helm headed 'Out West' to chase the Californian Gold Rush with his cousin. When his cousin pulled out at the last minute, Helm was incensed, and brutally stabbed him to death. Helm was detained in an asylum for the mentally disturbed but managed to escape. Helm continued his journey west with renewed vigour, where he opportunistically killed and consumed the flesh of adversaries and travelling companions, earning him the nickname 'The Kentucky Cannibal'. After several brutal months in the wilderness, he finally made it California. At a time where violence was the law of the land, Helm's savage set of skills could finally be recognised and rewarded. The Kentucky Cannibal is a riveting account of Boone Helm and his bloody exploits across the Wild West. Ryan Green's entrancing narrative draws the reader into the real-live horror experienced by the victims and has all the elements of a classic thriller. CAUTION: This book contains descriptive accounts of abuse and violence. If you are especially sensitive to this material, it might be advisable not to read any further




Child Killer


Book Description

From the summer of 1979 through the spring of 1981, Atlanta, Georgia was held under siege by a serial killer and dozens of victims started to appear. The series of murders, which became known as the "Atlanta Child Murders case," gripped the city of Atlanta with fear and shocked the nation because most of the victims were children. The fact that the victims were all black and mostly male caused many in Atlanta's black community to fear that their children were being targeted by a racist conspiracy.In this true crime book you will read about how the Atlanta Child Murders case put a city under siege and how a task force of law enforcement officers from several different agencies eventually captured the killer. You will follow the investigation as the police use what was at the time fairly new techniques of criminal profiling and fiber evidence to capture and convict the killer. For many around the country, once the killer was arrested, it was difficult to accept. The killer was a young, nerdy-looking man named Wayne Williams. To many people his background didn't seem to indicate he was a serial killer, but the professional profilers knew otherwise!Open the pages of the following book and learn the true story of Wayne Williams and the Atlanta Child Murders. You will learn about how Williams evolved from a nerdy kid who loved electronics into what is perhaps the most prolific black serial killer. You will be horrified by some of the details of this case, but you will not be able to put down this book.




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