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October 2004 Calendar of Books and DVD's on True Crime and Justice
October
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Books
America's
Most Hated Woman: The Life And Gruesome Death Of Madalyn Murray O'haire by
Ann Seaman -- Why did Life magazine dub her "the most hated woman in America"?
Did she unravel the moral fiber of America or defend the Constitution?
They found her hasped in a shallow grave, sawed up, and burned. Thus ended
Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the "atheist bitch" whose 1963 U.S. Supreme Court
case ended school prayer. Her Christian-baiting lawsuits spanned three
more decades; she was on TV all over the country, foul-mouthed-witty, and
passionate, launching today's culture wars over same-sex marriage and faith-based
initiatives. She was a man-hater who loved sex, a bully whose heart broke
for the downtrodden. She was accused of schizophrenia, alcoholism, and
embezzlement, but never cowardice or sloth. She was an ideologue who spewed
toxic rage even at the followers who made her a millionaire. She was a
doting mother who approached prospects to mate with her lonely children,
and whose cannibalistic love led them to their grave. She thrived on her
fame, but just as the curtain of obscurity began to lower, the family vanished
in one of the strangest of America's true crimes. This is the real story
of "the most hated woman in America," by the only author to interview
the killer and those close to him and to witness the family's secret
burial in Austin, Texas.
The
Art Of The Spy: By The International Spy Museum Of Espionage by Denis Collins
Assassinations:
Notorious Crimes That Changed the World by R. G. Grant, Readers Digest The
history of Western civilization has been harshly punctuated with assassinations
of political leaders, religious figures, and celebrities. Assassinations-with
the help of new and fascinating research-tells the true stories of the
most notorious of these assassinations as well as attempted assassinations.
Illustrated with photographs, newspaper clippings, diagrams, and other
archival artifacts, the book chronicles 2,500 years of these infamous deeds.
The foreword is written by James and Sarah Brady. James Brady, former White
House press secretary and assistant to President Ronald Reagan, was seriously
wounded in the attempted assassination of the President.
Beyond Bad: Library Edition Sandra Lee; Audio Cassette
Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer by Sheriff David Reichert
The
Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters
in Turn-of-the-Century New York City -- In the summer of 1909, the
gruesome murder of nineteen-year-old Elsie Sigel sent shock waves through New
York City and the nation at large. The young woman's strangled corpse was discovered
inside a trunk in the midtown Manhattan apartment of her reputed former Sunday
school student and lover, a Chinese man named Leon Ling. Through the lens of
this unsolved murder, Mary Ting Yi Lui offers a fascinating snapshot of social
and sexual relations between Chinese and non-Chinese populations in turn-of-the-century
New York City. Sigel's murder was more than a notorious crime, Lui contends.
It was a clear signal that attempts to maintain geographical and social boundaries
between the city's Chinese male and white female populations had failed. When
police discovered Sigel and Leon Ling's love letters, giving rise to the theory
that Leon Ling killed his lover in a fit of jealous rage, this idea became even
more embedded in the public consciousness. New Yorkers condemned the work of
Chinese missions and eagerly participated in the massive national and international
manhunt to locate the vanished Leon Ling. Lui explores how the narratives of
racial and sexual danger that arose from the Sigel murder revealed widespread
concerns about interracial social and sexual mixing during the era. She also
examines how they provoked far-reaching skepticism about regulatory efforts to
limit the social and physical mobility of Chinese immigrants and white working-class
and middle-class women. Through her thorough re-examination of this notorious
murder, Lui reveals in unprecedented detail how contemporary politics of race,
gender, and sexuality shaped public responses to the presence of Chinese immigrants
during the Chinese exclusion era.
Choosing
Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore Albert Mudrian
In 1986, it was unimaginable that death metal and grindcore music would ever
impact popular culture. Yet this amalgam of hardcore punk and heavy metal would
endure for years to come. Initially circulated through an underground tape-trading
network by scraggly slackers, this new genre of music spread rapidly as bands
rose from every corner of the globe. This exciting history, featuring an introduction
by famed DJ John Peel, tells the two-decade-long history of these underground
genres through the eyes and ringing ears of the artists, producers, and label
owners — past and present — who propelled them. The book covers the scene in
every dark detail, from its late '70s beginnings in the U.K.'s anarcho-punk
scene, to the early '80s American version that featured unplayable — and to
some, unlistenable — riffs, to legendary groups like Napalm Death and Godflesh,
to the genre's alleged death and resurrection in the late 1990s. Breaking Blue A classic piece of investigative journalism previously out of print, Breaking Blue is an engrossing must-read for anyone interested in Northwest history. Timothy Egan's page-turning account vividly recreates the rough-and-tumble days of Spokane and Eastern Washington during the Depression, as it tracks an unfolding murder and a half-century effort to conceal the truth.
Capital Punishment (Face the Facts)
Carnage, Cops And Deadlines: A Reporter's Story Roscoe Blunt
Cleveland Cops: The True Stories Cops Tell Each Other by John H. Tidyman
Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution -- by Barry Coward, Julian Swann
Contrabando:
Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy Don Henry Ford Jr
Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder: A Reporter and a Detective's Twenty-Year Search for Justice by Leonard Levitt
Cosa
Nostra: A History Of The Sicilian Mafia by John Dickie
Death's
Acre Bill, Dr. Blass --
Dr. Bill Bass, one of the world's leading forensic anthropologists, gained international
attention when he built a forensic lab like no other: The Body Farm.
Dr. Bill Bass created the world's first and only laboratory devoted to the study
of human decomposition: The Body Farm. Bass has written or co-written more than
200 scientific publications, many based on mysteries he helped solve.
Now, this
master scientist unlocks the gates of his lab to reveal his most intriguing
cases-and to revisit the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, fifty years after
the fact.
Detective Notebook: Crime Scene Science --
What does it take to solve a real crime? By going step by step through the
detection process, kids will discover that you need more than mere deduction
to catch a thief, forger, or murderer: you need smart science. Budding detectives
will meet the people who help bring a perpetrator to justice and learn what
makes up hard evidence. They'll check their ability to separate fact from
opinion; test their powers of observation and memory; try to recognize sounds
and smells; and gather the tools of the trade. Fingerprinting, chromatography,
even tracing a bullet's trajectory are all covered, along with intriguing
true crime stories.
Dillinger: The Untold Story, Revised Edition G. Russell Girardin
Il
Dottore: The Double Life of a Mafia Doctor Ron Felber
Kill Or Be Killed by Robert Scott
The
Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval
France by ERIC JAGER
Murder
at Mount Hermon: The Unsolved Killing of Headmaster Elliott Speer by
Craig Walley --
Elliott Speer, the charismatic young headmaster of Mount Hermon School for
Boys in Northfield, Massachusetts, had begun to initiate long overdue
progressive reforms at the strict tradition-bound Christian prep school,
winning the affection of many students and faculty. But on the evening
of September 14, 1934, the thirty-five-year-old administrator was abruptly
killed by a shotgun blast through his study window. The murder made front-page
news across the country, yet no one was ever charged with the crime. This
investigation by a veteran attorney and Mount Hermon alumnus is the first
to explore the life of Elliott Speer and recount the events that led
to his death. Drawing on newspaper archives, a transcript, once thought
lost, of a secret inquest, and interviews with surviving relatives and
students at the time, Craig Walley takes a new look at the unsolved killing
and the failure to name and try a suspect. Among the clues turned up
in the investigation are a forged note on the headmaster's letterhead,
a mystery novel in Speer's library that described the nearly identical
murder of an English headmaster, and a resentful Dean, passed over for
promotion and angered by liberal educational reforms. Propounding the
idea that Speer's break with the school's history of extreme Christian
conservatism, which belatedly brought Mount Hermon in line with modern
theories of education, had infuriated some members of the community,
Walley's absorbing probe of the case dares to point the finger at the
likely killer, something law enforcement was unable or unwilling to do
publicly after that fateful night. Complete with a biography of Elliott Speer
and a history of Mount Hermon from its founding by a noted evangelist to the
time of the shooting, this suspenseful account builds a compelling social
picture of the scene of a notorious crime and resolves a longtime New
England mystery to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of the murder.
Murder
by the Bay: Historic Homicide in and about the City of San Francisco by
Charles F. Adams --
San Francisco has had more than its share of truly fascinating and historic
homicides. The city and its Bay Area can stand proudly with Paris, London, and
New York in the splendor of its misdeeds murders that have suspense, horror,
audacity, and flair. The homicides chronicled in Murders by the Bay, have been
selected because a convergence of personality, circumstance, character, and
geography makes them peculiarly San Franciscan. Each of these crimes illustrates
an historic importance, each has impacted its times either in the course or
application of the law or in the manner in which the affair revealed a shortcoming
in society. They range from the Montgomery Street killing of James King of William,
editor of the Daily Evening Bulletin, in 1856 to the sensational trial of early
movie comedian Fatty Arbuckle who was accused of killing a showgirl at a party
in the St. Francis Hotel to the shocking "City Hall Murders" in which former
city supervisor Dan White killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey
Milk. Most were solved, some were not. They are murders that fascinated the
city and frequently the country, sometimes for weeks, often for years and even
decades.
Murder On The Rails: The True Story Of The Detective Who Unlocked The Shocking Secrets Of The Boxcar Serial Killer by William G. Palmini, Tanya Chalupa
Needle
Work by Fred Rosen
-- Describes the murderous exploits of Carol Giles, an unfaithful wife,
and her boyfriend, Tim Collier, who had killed Giles's diabetic husband with
a heroin-laced shot of insulin and then brutalized and murdered the only witness,
waitress Nancy Billitier.
No Spark Of Malice: The Murder Of Martin Begnaud by William Arceneaux
On
the Run: A Mafia Childhood by Gregg Hill, Gina Hill
-- The story takes us through Gregg and Gina's early years as they visit their
father in prison and rub up against Mafia culture in ways both terrifying and
poignant. In 1980, a daylight raid on the Hill home cuts the family loose from
its already shaky moorings. Facing decades in prison for, among other things,
his involvement in the infamous Lufthansa hijacking, Hill becomes a witness
for the state and, immediately, a wall of protection seals off Gregg and Gina
from their previous lives.Nomadic now, wandering from community to community,
constructing new identities and making new friends only to have those identities
compromised and those friends cast aside, Gregg and Gina desperately seek normalcy
but are continually thwarted. Making their lives even more difficult - indeed,
putting their lives in peril - is their father, whose scams continue even after
his being absorbed into 'the Programme' and whose capacity for violence remains
dangerously high.
Pleasure, Change, and Canon (The Berkeley Tanner Lectures) by Frank Kermode, Robert Alter -- The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. Pleasure and Change contains two lectures on this important subject by the distinguished literary critic Sir Frank Kermode. In essays that were originally delivered as Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in November of 2001, Kermode reinterprets the question of canon formation in light of two related and central notions: pleasure and change. He asks how aesthetic pleasure informs what we find valuable, and how this perception changes change over time. Kermode also explores the role of chance, observing the connections between canon formation and unintentional and sometimes even random circumstance. Geoffrey Hartmann (Yale University), John Guillory (New York University), and Carey Perloff (director of the American Conservatory Theatre) offer incisive comments on these essays, to which Kermode responds in a lively rejoinder. The volume begins with a helpful introduction by Robert Alter. The result is a stimulating and accessible discussion of a highly significant cultural debate.
Poisoning (True Crime) by Richard Platt
Reckless:
Millionaire Record Producer Phil Spector and the Violent Death of Lana Clarkson --
by Carlton Smith
-- In the early morning hours of February 3, 2003, police were summoned to the
spooky Alhambra, California castle of legendary music producer Phil Spector.
There they discovered the body of actress Lana Clarkson, dying in a chair, shot
through the mouth. Spector claimed she had killed herself, but was soon charged
with murder. The pop music genius, who revolutionized music from the Beatles
to the Ramones, was making headlines again. But Spector, notorious for his eccentric
behavior, volatile temper, and fascination with guns, pleaded innocent. What
really happened on that fateful pre-dawn morning in Spector's hilltop mansion?
As the controversial wunderkind's life of fame, money, and excess was coming
undone, a true Hollywood mystery was about to unfold.
Serial
Killers Peter Vronsky is an investigative journalist and a producer
of documentary films for television. His work has appeared on PBS, Discovery
Channel, MTV, CNN, and various international channels. The comprehensive
examination into the frightening history of serial homicide. In this unique
book, Peter Vronsky documents the psychological, investigative, and cultural
aspects of serial murder, beginning with its first recorded instance in
Ancient Rome, through 15th-century France, up to such notorious contemporary
cases as cannibal/necrophile Ed Kemper, Henry Lee Lucas, Ted Bundy, and
the emergence of what he classifies as the "serial rampage killer" such
as Andrew Cunanan. Vronsky not only offers sound theories on what makes
a serial killer, but also provides concrete suggestions on how to survive
an encounter with one-from recognizing verbal warning signs to physical
confrontational resistance. Exhaustively researched with transcripts of
interviews with killers, and featuring up-to-date information on the apprehension
and conviction of the Green River Killer and the Beltway Snipers, Vronsky's
one-of-a-kind book covers every conceivable aspect of an endlessly riveting
true-crime phenomenon.
Terrorism
and Disaster Management: Preparing Healthcare Leaders for the New Reality Frank
Kermode --
Disaster preparedness goes far beyond drafting a plan. As a healthcare leader,
you must ensure that your organization has the appropriate programs and trained
staff in place to respond quickly to any disaster event or threat. But you may
be struggling with questions such as, "Where does my facility fit into communitywide
preparedness systems?"; "Who is in charge, and what do they expect of me?";
and "What do I need to do first?" These questions and more are answered throughout
this book. This resource focuses on planning and preparedness, with a
special emphasis on issues of terrorism. Leaders in the fields of emergency medicine,
law, and terrorism response provide guidance in the areas of: Understanding the
legal and ethical issues surrounding disaster planning and preparedness. Obtaining
disaster assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Navigating
the confusing web of governmental and agency direction, control, and oversight.
Achieving and maintaining local interagency cooperation. Integrating civilian
and military response. Meeting the preparedness needs of special populations.
Tracker:
Hunting Down Serial Killers by
Maurice Godwin, Fred Rosen Tracker provides a rare and dramatic look inside
cases such as the:
I-95 Snipers
BTK (Wichita, KS Serial Killer)
Baton Rouge serial killer – Derrick Todd Lee
Slave Master – Internet serial killer – John Robinson
Special sections on: The Dru Sjodin Case
Missing Person Case – Maura Murray
Special Epilogue: How to avoid being a victim
Tracker
presents former police officer Maurice Godwin's method of psychological and
geographic profiling which is revolutionizing the way police track and capture
serial killers. Forget Silence of the Lambs; Hannibal Lecters, and Clarice
Starlings do not exist. The public believes that the FBI is protecting us from
this most deadly of human predators, but the FBI profilers never caught a serial
killer. The profiles they turn out are based on interviews with thirty-six
convicted killers, out of which only twenty-five were serial killers. Conducted
in 1978, the study has since been condemned as statistically and demographically
invalid. Recently courts have begun throwing out some profilers' testimony,
with judges ruling that the profiles amount to little more than voodoo. In
contrast, Maurice Godwin uses inductive analysis, environmental psychology,
behavioral psychology, crime site information, and other factors to create
the most accurate psycho-geographical profiles available. In Tracker, we learn
that "[Godwin's] work is based on the collection and critical analysis of
over 100,000 data points and 200 different crime scene actions that could
be used to profile the killer." Godwin explains, "Instead of relying on interviews
with murderers, I studied specific pieces of behavioral information available
from the crime scene or case file to develop a psychological profile of the
killer and to pinpoint where he lives." Godwin further states, "I'm more interested
in getting in the killer's shoes rather than his mind."
True Tales of Terror in the Caves of the World by Paul Jay Steward, Cave Books
Under Oath by
Margaret McLean
The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators Among Us by Gregg O. McCrary From one of the country's most preeminent criminal profilers comes this gripping, behind-the-scenes account of America's most disturbing and complex serial killer and murder investigations. A former Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, Gregg McCrary takes us deep into the minds of the nation's shrewdest and most sinister predators. In The Unknown Darkness, he digs beneath the crime scene to examine in raw first-person detail the lethal competition between the country's deviously dangerous killers and the dedicated professionals who are determined to get them off the streets. In the basement offices of the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia -- now familiar from the books and films The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal -- McCrary served in one of the most elite forces for criminal investigation in the world, profiling criminals for over twenty-five years in more than a thousand cases involving homicide, serial murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. He takes us inside his process on some of his most fascinating cases, including: The Sam Sheppard case -- In revisiting this classic case, what new material did McCrary's analysis discover? The Poet's Shadow -- The strange story of Jack Unterweger and the hunt for an international serial killer that had a bizarre twist. The Buddhist Temple Massacre -- What did the crime scene reveal about the shocking evil that resulted in the deaths of nine gentle people? The Unknown Darkness also explores the strengths and pitfalls of modern criminal investigation and offers vivid details about what happens at a crime scene, what is actually involved in bringing a killer to justice, and finally what kind of a person is able to devote his or her life to grappling with the predators among us. Daring to relive the often harrowing experiences of his time with the FBI, McCrary has put together an eye-opening account of ten of America's most frightening and riveting manhunts. He has also written an engrossing narrative on our justice system -- from the perspective of someone who has lived it day to day.
Vanishing Point: The Disappearance Of Judge Crater, And The New York He Left Behind by Richard J. Tofel
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