Chilling True Crime

Growing up on Cape Cod in the 1960s, Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During the summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter-the kind, handsome handyman at the motel where her mother worked-took her and her sister on adventures in his truck. He bought them popsicles and together, they visited his "secret garden" in the Truro woods. To Liza, he was one of the few kind and understanding adults in her life. Everyone thought he was just a "great guy." But there was one thing she didn't know; their babysitter was a serial killer. Some of his victims were buried-in pieces-right there, in his garden in the woods. Though Tony Costa's gruesome case made screaming headlines in 1969 and beyond, Liza never made the connection between her friendly babysitter and the infamous killer of numerous women, including four in Massachusetts, until decades later. Haunted by nightmares and horrified by what she learned, Liza became obsessed with the case. Now, she and cowriter Jennifer Jordan reveal the chilling and unforgettable true story of a charming but brutal psychopath through the eyes of a young girl who once called him her friend.

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From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best - or worst. This book asks the provocative question: where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathology - and how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?

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"The story of Brian Bechtold, who killed his parents in 1992 at the age of twenty-two. Critically acclaimed author and psychoanalyst Mikita Brottman offers literary true crime writing at its best, taking us into the life of a murderer after his conviction-when most stories end but the defendant's life goes on."-- Provided by publisher.

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Join Mary Roach on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet. What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A grizzly bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? As author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology. Roach tags along with animal attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller-blasters. She travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the Pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. Along the way, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. Combining little- known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and mugging macaques, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.

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A work of investigative journalism, The Good Girls slips behind political maneuvering, caste systems and codes of honour in a village in northern India to tell the real story behind the tragic deaths of two teenage girls and an epidemic of violence against women.

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The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the '80s and '90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten. This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience"-- Provided by publisher.

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"For Laurah Norton, forensic science was always more of a passion than anything else. But after learning about a mishandled 1990s cold case involving missing twins, she was spurred to action, eventually creating a massively popular podcast and building a platform that helped bring widespread attention and resources to the case. And of course, this book asks why some cases go unsolved, highlighting the "missing missing," the sex workers, undocumented, the cases that so desperately need our attention, but so rarely get it. Engrossing, informative, heartbreaking, and hopeful, LAY THEM TO REST is a deep dive into the world of forensic science, showing readers how far we've come in cracking cases and catching killers, and illuminating just how far we have yet to go"-- Provided by publisher.

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In the early hours of July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive ex-boyfriend. With Liliana's case file abandoned by a corrupt criminal justice system, her family, including her older sister Cristina, was forced to process their grief and guilt in private, without any hope for justice. Cristina Rivera Garza returns to Mexico after decades of living in the United States to collect and curate evidence while confronting the trauma of losing her sister, and examine from multiple angles how this tragedy continues to shape who she is - and what she fights for - today.

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A true-crime thriller recounting the 1910 murder of ten-year-old Marie Smith, the dawn of modern criminal detection and the launch of the NAACP.

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"From the award-winning author comes a gripping account of one of the most scandalous murder in modern Irish history, at once a propulsive work of true crime and an act of literary subversion. Malcolm MacArthur was a well-known Dublin socialite and heir. Suave and urbane, he passed his days mingling with artists and aristocrats, reading philosophy, living a life of the mind. But by 1982, his inheritance had dwindled to almost nothing, a desperate threat to his lifestyle. MacArthur hastily conceived a plan: He would commit bank robbery, of the kind that had become frightfully common in Dublin at the time. But his plan spun swiftly out of control, and he needlessly killed two innocent people. The ensuing manhunt, arrest, and conviction amounted to one of the most infamous political scandals in modern Irish history, contributing to the eventual collapse of a government. Wellcome and Rooney Prize-winning author Mark O'Connell spent countless hours in conversation with MacArthur-interviews that veered from confession to evasion. Through their tense exchanges and O'Connell's independent reporting, a pair of narratives unspools: a riveting account of MacArthur's crimes and a study of the hazy line between truth and invention. We come to see not only the enormity of the murders but the damage that's inflicted when a life is rendered into story. At once propulsive and searching, A Thread of Violence is a hard look at a brutal act, its subterranean origins, and the long shadow it casts. It offers a haunting and insightful examination of the lies we tell ourselves--and the lengths we'll go to preserve them"-- Provided by publisher.

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"In 1990, Ellen McGarrahan was a young reporter for the Miami Herald when she covered the execution of Jesse Tafero, a man convicted of murdering two police officers. When it later emerged that Tafero may not have committed the murders, McGarrahan became haunted by that grisly execution--and appalled by her unquestioning acceptance of the state's version of events. Decades later, in the midst of her successful career as a private investigator, McGarrahan finally decides to find out the truth of what really happened. Her investigation takes her back to Florida, where she combs through court files and interviews everyone involved in the case, in. She plunges back into the Miami of the 1960s and 1970s, where gangsters and kingpins and beautiful women inhabit a dangerous world of nightclubs, speed boats, and drug cartels. Violence is everywhere. The murdered police officers, she discovers, are only one part of the picture. But even as McGarrahan circles closer to the truth, the story of guilt and innocence becomes more complex. She gradually discovers that she hasn't been alone in her search for closure, because whenever a human life is forcibly taken--by bullet, or by electric chair--the reckoning is long and difficult. Both a gripping true-crime narrative and a fascinating glimpse into the life of a private investigator, Two Truths and a Lie is ultimately a profound meditation on grief and complicity"-- Provided by publisher.

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"The remarkable true story of a modern-day Robin Hood: a British college student who started robbing banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis. When the global financial crisis of 2007 hit, British college student Stephen Jackley decided to become a bank robber, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Against all likelihood, his plan actually worked. Jackley used disguises, elaborate escape routes, and fake guns to hold up a string of banks, making off with thousands of pounds. He committed ten robberies in Southwest England over a six-month period. After Jackley successfully hid his loot high up in the trees of nearby parks, bank notes marked "RH"--For Robin Hood--began finding their way into the hands of the homeless. The police, despite their concerted efforts, had no idea what was going on or who was responsible. That is, until Jackley's ambition got the better of him. Eventually extradited from a U.S. prison after an arrest on American soil, and sent back to his native Britain, Jackley wrote of his fears for the world, humanity "standing on the brink of massive change," detailing his deeply revealing, morally complex motivations for the robberies. Resolving to rectify the damage he saw done at the hands of the world's richest people--one-fifth of the entire human population--he believed that our planet "could only endure so much destruction before being irreversibly destroyed." Woven throughout the narrative are entries from Jackley's many diaries, lending an intense intimacy and urgency to the story and shedding light on Stephen's mental state and the challenges he faced in his own mind and beyond"-- Provided by publisher.

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