House of Mystery True Crime History

Within the pages of THE TRAIL OF TED BUNDY:Digging Up the Untold Stories, you’ll hear the voices - many for the first time - of some of Ted Bundy’s friends, as they bring to light the secrets of what is was like to know him while he was actively involved in murder. The stories of his victims are here as well, as told by their friends, including the information and anecdotes that didn’t make it into the investigative files and are being published here for the first time. Two of the former detectives who worked with author Kevin Sullivan during the writing of his widely-acclaimed book, THE BUNDY MURDERS, return to aid readers in fully understanding Bundy’s murderous career; it’s ripple-effect impact on those who came into contact with him in one way or another, and dispelling commonly held myths. THE TRAIL OF TED BUNDY is a journey back in time, to when Ted Bundy was killing young woman and girls in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. It’s told by those who knew him, and you’ll hear their revealing stories, many being voiced and put to print for the very first time. The friends of the victims are here as well, and they too share their insights about the victims, and some of what they tell here had been held back from the investigators, such was their commitment to their deceased friends. It’s also the story of those who hunted Bundy; those who guarded him, and those who otherwise were a part of this strange case one way or another.

Michael Butterfield is a freelance artist and writer who has followed the Zodiac case since 1983 and conducted extensive research since 1991. As a recognized expert on the unsolved crimes he has served as a media source and consultant for news articles, television documentaries and feature films - including Paramount Picture's new film by director David Fincher, ZODIAC - and he has appeared on episodes of Cold Case Files on the A&E Network and Case Reopened for The Learning Channel. Michael is completing work on what will be the first thoroughly researched and factually accurate account of the case, written with the help of virtually every living person involved in the case and based on the official documents. In his research, he has interviewed the investigators, the families of the victims, the family of prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen, and other suspects, and even interviewed a surviving victim in his attempt to simply learn what actually happened and separate fact from fiction.

In August 2009, former madam Dalia Dippolito conspired with a hit man to arrange her ex-con husband’s murder. Days later, it seemed as if all had gone according to plan. The beautiful, young Dalia came home from her health club to an elaborate crime scene, complete with yellow tape outlining her townhome and police milling about. When Sgt. Frank Ranzie of the Boynton Beach, Florida, police informed her of her husband Michael’s apparent murder, the newlywed Dippolito can be seen on surveillance video collapsing into the cop’s arms, like any loving wife would—or any wife who was pretending to be loving would. The only thing missing from her performance were actual tears. ... And the only thing missing from the murder scene was an actual murder. Tipped off by one of Dalia’s lovers, an undercover detective posing as a hit man met with Dalia to plot her husband's murder while his team planned, then staged the murder scenario—brazenly inviting the reality TV show Cops along for the ride. The Cops video went viral, sparking a media frenzy: twisted tales of illicit drugs, secret boyfriends, sex-for-hire, a cuckolded former con man, and the defense’s ludicrous claim that the entire hit had been staged by the intended victim for reality TV fame.New York Times best selling author Mark Ebner is an award winning investigative journalist who has covered all aspects of celebrity and crime culture for Spy, Rolling Stone, Maxim, Details, Los Angeles, Premiere, Salon, Spin, Radar, Angeleno, The Daily Beast.com, Gawker.com, BoingBoing.net and New Times among other national and international and internet publications. He has repeatedly positioned himself in harm's way, conducting dozens of investigations into such subjects as Scientology, Pit Bull fighting in South Central Los Angeles, the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, celebrity stalkers, drug dealers, missing porn stars, sports groupies, mobsters, college suicides and Hepatitis C in Hollywood.

On the evening of December 3rd, 1957, seven year old Maria Ridulph and her eight year old friend, Kathy Sigman, were playing in the new fallen snow on a street corner in the sleepy town of Sycamore, Illinois. A stranger approached the girls, introduced himself as “Johnny” and offered them piggyback rides. When Kathy Sigman ran home to get her mittens, she left Maria and Johnny behind on the street corner. Little did she know that she would be the last person to see Maria Ridulph alive. The FBI was called in and the search for Maria and her kidnapper caught the nation’s attention. President Eisenhower and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover demanded daily reports from the field agents. Nearly six months later, Maria’s remains were discovered in a thicket 100 miles away. The search for Maria’s killer went on, but all leads were slowly exhausted and finally the case went cold. A series of events begun by a mother’s deathbed confession led to Jack D. McCullough being convicted for the murder of Maria Ridulph 55 years after the crime, making it the oldest cold case in U.S. history ever to be successfully prosecuted. Follow along with the author as he investigates this historic event to discover if justice was truly served, or was another tragedy piled on top of the first, riding piggyback?

I’m a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police homicide detective who went on to a second career as a forensic coroner for the Province of British Columbia. In my younger years, I served as a sniper on British Special Air Services (SAS) trained Emergency Response Teams and I’m also a recognized expert witness in Canadian courts on the identification and operation of firearms. garry-smaller2In my third retirement, I made #5 on the Amazon Best Seller list, sandwiched between the names Stephen King and Dean Koontz with my debut Crime Thriller novel No Witnesses To Nothing. It’s based on a true story where many believe paranormal intervention occurred. I’ve recently completed another novel, No Life Until Death, that involves international black market trafficking in human organs and I’m working on No God Without Gold in the Sharlene Bate series. It’s based on an actual cult. - See more at: http://dyingwords.net/about/#sthash.89NzgDlh.dpuf

The man convicted in the oldest cold case ever brought to court broke into a wide grin as a judge ordered him released from prison Friday and granted him a new trial. Jack McCullough, 75, was serving a life sentence for the 1957 murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph. Judge William P. Bradley threw out the conviction after a prosecutor found "clear and convincing evidence" that McCullough It was a shocking true crime that left two families shattered, and became the coldest case in U.S. history. Who really killed little Maria? The question fueled a real-life nightmare in Sycamore, Illinois... 1957. Sycamore, Illinois. Christmas was three weeks away, and seven-year-old Maria Ridulph went out to play. Soon after, a figure emerged out of the falling snow. He was very friendly. Minutes later, Maria vanished, leaving behind an abandoned doll and footsteps in the snow. In April, a spring thaw gave up Maria’s body in a nearby wooded area. The case attracted national attention, including that of the FBI and President Eisenhower. In all, seventy-four men and three women fell under suspicion. But no one was ever charged with the crime. Incredibly, fifty-five years later, the coldest case in the history of American jurisprudence would be reopened. It happened after a seventy-four-year-old former neighbor of the Ridulphs named Eileen Tessier made a stunning deathbed confession to her family about a dark past, and a darker secret they knew nothing about. Two families would be joined by despair and retribution, and in an astounding turn of events, Maria Ridulph’s killer would finally be brought to justice.

Kristi Belcamino is a crime fiction writer, cops beat reporter, and Italian mama who also bakes a tasty biscotti. In her former life, as an award-winning crime reporter at newspapers in California, she flew over Big Sur in an FA-18 jet with the Blue Angels, raced a Dodge Viper at Laguna Seca, watched autopsies, and conversed with serial killers. This is the story behind the Anthony and Macavity-award nominated book, Blessed are the Dead. Letters from a Serial Killer is a novella-length true crime/memoir about two women and their quest to find Xiana Fairchild, who was snatched off the streets of Vallejo on her way to the school bus stop and never seen again. It is about the mother who raised Xiana and the newspaper reporter who covered the story. In this book, Kristi Belcamino and Stephanie Kahalekulu share details of their jailhouse conversations with the man who took Xiana, the letters he sent from behind bars and how they are forever bonded by their dealings with a monster, but more than that—by their quest for justice for Xiana.

Michael Griesbach is a prosecuting attorney in the Wisconsin county where the events recounted in this book occurred. He wrote The Innocent Killer to challenge the system, to find out if we still believe in the long-cherished principle of American jurisprudence: “It’s better to let one hundred guilty persons go free than it is to convict one who is innocent.” Griesbach hopes to leave readers better informed about the inner workings of the criminal justice system and more concerned about those whose lives it deeply affects. He lives in East Central Wisconsin with his wife Jody and their four children.

Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker has written for major news organizations around the world, including the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Esquire, and has been a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. He is the author of a bestselling work of investigative history, Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. He is founder and editor-in-chief of the groundbreaking news site WhoWhatWhy.com, which specializes in digging into the stories the conventional media barely touches-- and in seeking answers to the question, "Why." WhoWhatWhy is nonpartisan and nonprofit, and receives all of its funding through public donations.

Most people became interested in the State of Arizona v. Jodi Arias January 2, 2013, when opening statements were delivered. Over time that interest became a media sensation and a world-wide phenomenon. However, as her attorney I know that what you saw at trial is only part of the story. Have you ever wondered what happened before the trial began, what it was like to deal with Ms. Arias when the cameras were not rolling? In this book I detail for the reader what happened before the case began, what happened before the cameras were on. I detail the things that you do not know, things that will describe my reality, the reality that I was "Trapped with Ms. Arias." Juan Martinez, the fiery prosecutor who convicted notorious murderess Jodi Arias for the disturbing killing of Travis Alexander, speaks for the first time about the shocking investigation and sensational trial that captivated the nation. Through two trials, America watched with baited breath as Juan Martinez fought relentlessly to convict Jodi Arias of Murder One for viciously stabbing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander to death. What emerged was a story wrought with sex, manipulation, and deceit that stunned the public at every turn. Arias, always playing the wronged and innocent woman, changed her story continually as her bizarre behavior surrounding the crime and its aftermath came to light. Unwavering, Arias and her defense team continued to play off the salacious details of the case, until she was finally found guilty and—controversially—sentenced to life behind bars.

A father’s last confession to his son about the CIA, Watergate, and the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, this is the remarkable true story of St. John Hunt and his father E. Howard Hunt, the infamous Watergate burglar and CIA spymaster. In Howard Hunt's near-death confession to his son St. John, he revealed that key figures in the CIA were responsible for the plot to assassinate JFK in Dallas, and that Hunt himself was approached by the plotters, among whom included the CIA’s David Atlee Phillips, Cord Meyer, Jr., and William Harvey, as well as future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis. An incredible true story told from an inside, authoritative source, this is also a personal account of a uniquely dysfunctional American family caught up in two of the biggest political scandals of the 20th century.

This is the shocking true story of one of the most successful and most despicable frauds ever committed on paper. A comparison of the actual law enforcement agency files related to the notorious "Zodiac Killer" murders and letters to the newspapers reveals that Robert Graysmith's bestselling 1986 true crime book, ZODIAC, is a hoax. Graysmith used these files to write his book, but extensively and repeatedly lied about the facts contained in the files. He lied about the evidence, the witness statements, the suspects—and he lied about the authenticity of the letters themselves. As a result, the real victims and their families never got any justice, and a man named Arthur Leigh Allen was effectively framed for being the "Zodiac Killer." Now, for the first, time, in this exhaustively researched and peer-reviewed book, the shocking truth is revealed: There was no "Zodiac Killer," only a myth perpetuated by a fraud. You can learn more here: http://zodiackillerhoax1986.freeforums.net

Bestselling author Michael Shermer's exploration of science and morality that demonstrates how the scientific way of thinking has made people, and society as a whole, more moral From Galileo and Newton to Thomas Hobbes and Martin Luther King, Jr., thinkers throughout history have consciously employed scientific techniques to better understand the non-physical world. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led theorists to apply scientific reasoning to the non-scientific disciplines of politics, economics, and moral philosophy. Instead of relying on the woodcuts of dissected bodies in old medical texts, physicians opened bodies themselves to see what was there; instead of divining truth through the authority of an ancient holy book or philosophical treatise, people began to explore the book of nature for themselves through travel and exploration; instead of the supernatural belief in the divine right of kings, people employed a natural belief in the right of democracy. In The Moral Arc, Shermer will explain how abstract reasoning, rationality, empiricism, skepticism--scientific ways of thinking--have profoundly changed the way we perceive morality and, indeed, move us ever closer to a more just world.

Millions in stolen property, revolting sex crimes and murder-for-hire were all in the mix for a Las Vegas police detective as he toiled to take Sin City’s most prolific criminal off the streets for good. Las Vegas Police Detective Bradley Nickell brings you the inside scoop on the investigation of the most prolific repeat offender Las Vegas has ever known. Daimon Monroe looked like an average guy raising a family with his diffident schoolteacher girlfriend. But just below the surface, you’ll learn he was an accomplished thief with an uncontrollable lust for excess. His criminal mind had no bounds—he was capable of anything given the proper circumstances. You will be revolted by Monroe’s amassed wealth through thievery, his plot to kill Detective Nickell, a judge and a prosecutor, and the physical and sexual abuse to which Monroe subjected his daughters.

Eleven children between the ages of nine and eighteen years old were abducted, raped, sodomized and either strangled or knifed to death. Clifford Olson was not only a serial killer, but a true psychopath. And once again, the Canadian government made a deal with the devil, as they did with Karla Homolka and Dr. Shirley Turner. Olson held the location of the bodies for ransom and was paid $10,000 for each burial site. This is a definitive, intense and 'graphic account of Clifford Olson, The Beast of British Columbia, and the eleven innocent children he murdered.'