St. Martin's True Crime Classics

In September 2001, the headless body of an elderly man washing ashore in Galveston, Texas. also recovered were garbage bags containing the severed limbs of the victim--and a newspaper with a home delivery address that left arresting officers to the downscale apartment of Robert Durst, an unkempt transient who dressed in drag. Incredibly, his bail was posted the following morning. New York authorities were quick to make the unbelievable connection. This was the Robert Durst, the dashing real estate scion whose family's fortune was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He was also the Robert Durst who was a "person of interest" in the number of a prominent woman journalist, as well as a high-profile suspect in the mysterious disappearance of his first wife 20 years earlier. How could Robert Durst degenerate from a powerful New York City businessman to a cross-dressing fugitive wanted in a murder investigation? The answer was more startling than anyone who knew him could ever have imagined...

Innocent children turned ruthless murderers...Hate-filled and deeply disturbed...They kill with cold-blooded savagery... Nothing was too good for precious Katy-- sports cars, jewelry, designer clothes. Her father, a successful South Florida businessman, could not resist any of her whims. But when he tried to curb her fast-lane lifestyle, she had him shot through the head while he slept. Behind closed doors of her suburban Chicago home, Nancy Knuckles was a sadistic disciplinarian who, for years, terrorised her four children with religious fanaticism, beatings, and psychological torture, until they finally rebelled with a vengeance. After the oldest daughter strangled mom and stuffed her in a trunk, the kids partied hard, inviting their friends over for booze and rock 'n' roll. Susan Cabot was a beautiful B-movie queen and obsessive mother. Her son Tim-- born a dwarf-- was pumped full of experimental drugs extracted from cadavers to increase his height. When the ex-film star's badly beaten body was discovered in her Hollywood home, little Timmy claimed she had been killed by men using Ninja methods-- before confessing. Killer Kids is Clifford L. Linedecker's shocking true crime book of children who turn to murder.

When prosperous lawyer Ernest Brendel mysteriously disappeared, along with his wife Alice, and their 8-year-old daughter Emily, friends in the close-knit Rhode Island neighborhood worried that family had been kidnapped. It would be agonizing months in a massive FBI search before they would know the heartbreaking truth. The shaken community began to lose hope that the family would ever be found alive. Their worst fears were confirmed when heavy rains from a tropical storm uncovered Alice and Ernest Brendel's badly decomposed bodies--shot with a giant crossbow, strangled, and buried in the quiet woods of the town. Lying under her mother's corpse was little Emily's lifeless body, now a silent witness to her killer's shocking identity. Like a hand pointing from the grave, the evidence led authorities to one of Ernest Brendel's closest and most trusted friends. What Ernest couldn't have known was that Christopher Hightower--a Sunday school teacher and respected member of the community--was a psychotic liar obsessed with greed, jealousy, and murderous revenge.

Fifty-five-year-old Dr. Harold "Fred" Shipman has a noble dedication to his profession, winning the trust of his patients with ingratiating charm and an old-school bedside manner. In fact, he even made house calls--but his unsuspecting patients has no idea of the evil that lurked behind the friendly facade of the kindly doctor... After thirty years of practice, Dr. Shipman's true nature was finally exposed--that of a calculating killer who delivered his own prescription for death. Authorities eventually unearthed the shocking possibility that the fatherly physician had killed as many as 297 people. As body after body was exhumed from the local graveyard, the question grew more disturbing. How could such a prolific killer remain undetected for so long? What motive drove this seemingly "good" doctor to his deadly obsession with murder? And just how many people did Harold Shipman kill? The search for answers would take investigators into the life of a man who forever changed the stereotype of the sweet country doctor...

A Heart-Stopping Page-Turner: Unravel the Unthinkable in Sins of the Mother On October 25, 1994, a hysterical Susan Smith told police a tale that would strike terror in the hearts of mothers everywhere: An unidentified gunman had sped off with her two little boys, leaving her screaming on the side of the road. For more than a week, the people in the tiny town of Union, South Carolina, rallied around the young mother. They combed the woods and neighborhood parks for the missing children and prayed for their safe return, while FBI teams launched a massive manhunt. No one ever suspected that the pretty 23-year-old who tearfully pleaded for her children in front of millions of TV viewers could be capable of such a heartless act...until she led police to the watery graves of her young sons. Join the shaken community's journey of grappling with their sorrow, anger, and confusion. Sins of the Mother is more than a crime story; it's an exploration of human frailty and the dark side of maternal love.

He Made Them Feel Beautiful, Special and Adored... Tall, blond and strikingly handsome with penetrating icy green eyes, Glen Rogers could use his knee-weakening charm to entice lonely women out of romantically lit bars and into the night. Each one thought she had found the perfect man--until Roger got her alone and turned on her in a bloody rage that would end in her own violent death... Then He Led Them Like Lambs to the Slaughter... In all, four women would find out too late the deadly truth. For underneath his Prince Charming facade, Roger hid a twisted fury that could only be sated by strangling or stabbing beautiful, vulnerable women. Finally, after a gruesome six-week killing spree that shocked the nation and landed Rogers on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list, he was caught in a grueling twenty-mile high-speed chase. Smooth Operator Here is the fascinating true story of one of the most notorious serial killers in history--a man who used his fatal charms to lure innocent women into a cruel date with destiny... By Clifford L. Linedecker, and with 8 pages of startling photographs.

On September 17, 1998, police found Las Vegas gambling magnate Ted Binion lying dead on the floor of his palatial home, an empty bos of Xanax beside him. The police had been called by Binion's live-in lover, Sandra Murphy, 23, a California girl who had been working in a Vegas strip club when Binion had first met her. At first it seemed it was a fatal drug overdose that killed the handsome multi-millionaire. But was it? A few days later, Binion's "friend" Rick Tabish was arrested for trying to break into a vault where the eccentric millionaire had stored seven million dollars' worth of silver bars and coins. Family members hired ex-homicide detective-turned-private investigator Tom Dillar to start digging into the case. Dillard turned over the evidence he collected to Las Vegas police. What they found led to Binion's death being ruled a homicide and Murphy and Tabish's arrest for murder. The state said they were greedy lovers who'd conspired to kill Binion before they could strike Murphy out of his will, while the defense claimed that his vengeful family was trying to railroad Murphy to keep her from inheriting her fair share of the estate. The two sides collided in court, amid lurid charges and countercharges of physical abuse, drug use and illicit passion, in what became the Southwest's Murder Trial of the Century!

From the darkest corner of your bedroom a gaunt face suddenly looms over you. You're pulled violently from your bed and a terrifying voice screams, "Swear to Satan!" During a two year rampage, a sadistic serial killer entered the homes of families from El Paso to San Francisco. He raped, mutilated and tortured his unfortunate victims in one of the most vicious crime sprees in California history. This is the horrifying account of his bloody journey, of the strange coincidence that led to his arrest-and of the sensational trial where the Night Stalker's eerie sexual magnetism resulted in women actually demonstrating for his acquittal.