Murder in Pleasanton


Book Description

A journalist digs into the California cold case of a teenager murdered in his hometown in this disturbing true crime account. In April 1984, fourteen-year-old Foothill High freshman Tina Faelz took a shortcut on her walk home. About an hour later, she was found in a ditch, brutally stabbed to death. The murder shook the quiet East Bay suburb of Pleasanton and left investigators baffled. With no witnesses or leads, the case went cold and remained so for nearly thirty years. Then the investigation finally got a break in 2011. Improved forensics recovered DNA from a drop of blood found at the scene matching Tina’s classmate, Steven Carlson. Through dusty police files, personal interviews, letters and firsthand accounts, journalist Joshua Suchon revisits his childhood home to uncover the story of a shocking crime and the controversial sentencing that brought long-awaited answers to a tormented community.




Lowcountry Murder of Gwendolyn Elaine Fogle, The: A Cold Case Solved


Book Description

For decades, evidence of the 1978 murder of Gwendolyn Elaine Fogle lay in the evidence room at the Walterboro Police Department. Investigators periodically revisited the case over the years, but it remained the department's top cold case for thirty-seven years. Special Agent Lieutenant Rita Shuler worked on the case shortly after she joined the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), and she couldn't let it go, not even after her retirement in 2001. In May 2015, Lieutenant Shuler teamed up with new investigator Corporal Gean Johnson, and together they uncovered key evidence that had been overlooked. With new advancements in DNA and fingerprint technology, they brought the case to its end in just four months. Join Shuler as she details the gruesome history of this finally solved case.




Zero at the Bone


Book Description

This haunting true crime tale brings to life the infamous 1953 kidnapping and murder of Bobby Greenlease. The son of a wealthy Kansas City automobile dealer, Bobby was just six years old when a pair of grifters, Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Heady, snatched him away-and set what was then the country's highest ransom ever paid. Six hundred thousand dollars later, Bobby was killed anyway, setting off a chain of events that would culminate in notorious mobster Joe Costello stealing half the ransom and Hall and Heady's eventual double execution. Told by acclaimed journalist John Heidenry in bone-chilling detail, and featuring a cast of characters ranging from underground crime bosses and hard-boiled detectives to the victim's family and the murderers themselves, this is the story of one of the most complex and least understood crimes in American history. Book jacket.




Murder in Brentwood


Book Description

For audiences of the popular FX television series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, based on Jeffrey Toobin's The Run of His Life and starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., John Travolta, David Schwimmer, and Courtney B. Vance. Named on Vogue Magazine's "American Crime Story Reading List" as one of the "eight definitive books on the trial of the century." Twenty years ago, America was captivated by the awful drama of the O.J. Simpson trial. The Simpson "Dream Team" legal defense had a seemingly impossible task: convincing a jury that their client was innocent of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. In order for O.J. Simpson to get away with murder, the defense attorneys had to destroy the reputation of Mark Fuhrman, a brilliant Los Angeles detective who was the lead on the murder scene and had collected overwhelming physical evidence against Simpson. Now Fuhrman tells his side of the story in the #1 New York Times bestseller Murder in Brentwood, a damning exposé that reveals why and how Simpson's prosecution was bungled. Fuhrman offers a sincere mea culpa for allowing his personal mistakes to become a focal point of the defense's strategy but also stands by the evidence he collected, writing: "One thing I will not apologize for is my policework on the O.J. Simpson case." With Fuhrman's own hand-drawn maps of the crime scene, his reconstruction of the murders, and interrogation transcripts, Murder in Brentwood is the book that sets the record straight about what really happened on June 12, 1994—and reveals why the O.J. Simpson trial was such a catastrophe.




Swift Justice


Book Description

Hailed in a starred Kirkus Review as "one of the most riveting, revealing, and intensely readable true crimers to appear in a long time", Swift Justice is Harry Farrell's unforgettable story of the mob violence that paralyzed the town of San Jose in 1933. Farrell reconstructs the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart and the lynching of his accused murderers days later. 8 pages of photos.




Rope Burns


Book Description

The true crime story of a killer couple from California, their gruesome torture chamber on wheels, and the terror they left in their wake. The true story of one of the most notorious crime couples in recent American history is told. Michelle Michaud and James Daveggio forged a perverse alliance in late 1997. After customizing Michaud's minivan into a mobile torture chamber, the pair hit the road and began a nightmare spree of incest, kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder. Sixteen Pages of Shocking Photos! Michaud and Daveggio’s case was featured on Oxygen’s Snapped: Killer Couples.




Where Sadness Breathes


Book Description

In the autumn of 1973, Willie Steelman and Douglas Gretzler embarked on a murderous drug-fueled rampage across Arizona and California. Steelman was little more than a petty thief, an addict, a dreamer, never able to unleash the man he thought himself to be, but that changed earlier that summer when he met Gretzler. And it was in that Denver, Colorado crash pad where they formed a pact, a third person, created out of their collective souls, someone capable of the unthinkable, together achieving what neither could ever imagine doing on his own. Authorities were soon following the trail of their dead, coming up just hours short of catching them before their final evil act. Hidden in the closet of a farmhouse near Lodi, California, they found the last nine victims. Two entire families shot point blank, including children as they slept, all executed in a violent display of power and paranoia. Days later, when the count was complete, Willie and Doug had killed seventeen, and they could never honestly say why. Of those final nine, four were the author's aunt, uncle and cousins, and haunted for two decades over the mystery of what happened, he retraces the killers' steps, following their ghosts into the darkness, slowly piecing together the puzzle of this deadly odyssey. Where Sadness Breathes chronicles their day by day road trip, told from the inside perspective of a family member who for twenty years was consumed by the randomness of such unexplainable loss, and who along the way uncovers a true American tragedy, as well as the cleansing power of forgiveness.




A Tangled Web


Book Description

In the tradition of her acclaimed mother, Ann Rule, author of The Stranger Beside Me, bestselling author Leslie Rule exposes the trail of a sadistic sociopath, identity thief, and killer . . . It was a bleak November in 2012 when Cari Farver, thirty-seven, vanished from Omaha, Nebraska. Texts sent indicated that the hardworking mother had quit her job, abandoned her son, and cut ties with everyone. Cari’s boyfriend, Dave Kroupa, accepted the breakup at face value. Her mother, Nancy Raney, however, had doubts. “I need to hear your voice,” Nancy begged. When the texter refused to speak, Nancy reported Cari missing. While no one saw or spoke to Cari, more than 12,000 sinister emails and texts were sent in her name over the next years. Police believed Dave and his girlfriend, Shanna “Liz” Golyar, when they reported that the missing woman was cyberstalking them. The tormentor was eerily aware of Dave’s every move, knew when Liz visited and threatened the couple. It never occurred to Dave that Cari was a victim—that the real stalker had killed before, and was planning to kill again. Leslie Rule tracks the heart-pounding path to long-awaited justice—from a twisted past to the deadly deception and the high-tech forensics that condemned the killer to prison. “Rule's first true crime book hits the mark.” —Katherine Ramsland, author of Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader the BTK Killer “A deft, fascinating true crime story of obsession.” —Library Journal (Starred Review) With a New Update by the Author Includes Reading Group Guide




The Columbarium


Book Description

Where can you find a cookie jar in the shape of a baseball filled with the ashes of an 84-year-old Chinese woman or a cardboard take-out carton with the remains of a 350-pound, agoraphobic pot-dealer? The Columbarium is the backdrop for peering into the eccentric lives of some of the dead, as well as of the people they left behind. When Jed takes a job fixing up the Columbarium, he is quickly thrust into the lives of strangers, both living and dead, and ultimately comes to terms with his past and his own psychological demons.




McGlincy Killings in Campbell, California, The: An 1896 Unsolved Mystery


Book Description

On the morning of May 27, 1896, the peaceful township of Campbell awoke to shocking news. Six people were brutally murdered at the home of Colonel Richard P. McGlincy, one of the town's most respected citizens. The suspect, James Dunham--the colonel's son-in-law--fled the scene and disappeared into the hills of Mount Hamilton overlooking Santa Clara County. This heinous crime triggered a massive, nationwide manhunt while investigators pieced together the details. Author Tobin Gilman examines the mind and motives of the killer, the sensational media coverage and the colorful personalities associated with the protracted and unresolved pursuit of justice.