House of Mystery True Crime History

In this clear-eyed, gritty, and enthralling narrative, Dr. Vincent DiMaio and veteran crime writer Ron Franscell guide us behind the morgue doors to tell a fascinating life story through the cases that have made DiMaio famous-from the exhumation of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to the complex issues in the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. Beginning with his street-smart Italian origins in Brooklyn, the book spans 40 years of work and more than 9,000 autopsies, and DiMaio's eventual rise into the pantheon of forensic scientists. One of the country's most methodical and intuitive criminal pathologists will dissect himself, maintaining a nearly continuous flow of suspenseful stories, revealing anecdotes, and enough macabre insider details to rivet the most fervent crime fans

John George Haigh found the way to commit the perfect murder—five of them in fact—by dissolving his wealthy victims in sulfuric acid to avoid detection on a "no body, no murder" principle, before taking their property to fund his luxury lifestyle. But victim number six presented a problem. When a guest in Haigh’s own hotel disappeared, the police found half dissolved body parts carelessly thrown into the yard outside his secluded workshop. But was the urbane Mr. Haigh, the man brought up by strict Plymouth Brethren parents in Yorkshire and dressed like a city stockbroker, really the monster he said he was—the killer of six innocent people with the sole motive of drinking their blood? Benefiting from unpublished archive papers, including recently released letters Haigh wrote from prison while awaiting execution, author Gordon Lowe sheds light on whether this was a cynical ploy for a ticket into Broadmoor Hospital, or if he was in fact a psychopathic vampire with a penchant for disposing of his victims in acid

7-year-old Maria Ridulph in Sycamore, Illinois -- the coldest murder case ever tried -- to the unsolved case files. "Based on the changes in the law and the consideration of the additional evidence now available to this court that may not have been available to the trier of fact ... Mr. McCullough's petition is granted," Brady said in issuing his ruling. When McCullough was found guilty in 2012, spectators who filled the courtroom raised a boisterous cheer. But just a year ago, Brady overturned the conviction and freed McCullough after new evidence surfaced supporting his alibi. At the time, Brady left the door open for a new prosecutor to refile the charges. Wednesday's ruling firmly shuts that door -- and makes it easier for McCullough to seek compensation for his false conviction and five years behind bars. "I'm innocent and I didn't want there to be any doubt," McCullough said, explaining why he asked the court to declare him innocent. "What was done to me was criminal. They knew I was innocent and they put me in prison anyway."

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.

Unnatural celebrity deaths and unnaturally celebrated murders pockmark the history of Los Angeles, looming as large in the public imagination as the Hollywood stars themselves. Death in Paradise is the first authorized history of the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office, revisiting the most culturally significant and forensically complex cases of accidental death, suicide or murder of the famous. It documents the notorious deaths of Senator Robert Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Tate, Janis Joplin and many others, providing an unflinching view of Tinseltown’s dark, even perverse underbelly. Brad Schreiber, who wrote the original hardcover for book packager Tony Blanche, has updated many of the fascinating cases in Death in Paradise and added new photographs for this e-book edition. Schreiber, who created the truTV series North Mission Road inspired by this book, also presents some of the lesser-known but most puzzling deaths in the history of Hollywood. Did 1930s comedy film star Thelma Todd accidentally die of carbon monoxide poisoning in her own garage, commit suicide or was she killed by the jealous lover who locked her out of her own house? Death in Paradise highlights the bizarre as well as the renowned. There’s the story of a funhouse dummy that got broken during a TV show filming, only to reveal the mummy of a Wild West gunslinger underneath. Or how about the murderer of a woman who was caught, based upon the ingredients in the exotic cocktail found in his victim’s stomach? In addition to these mind-bending investigations, Death in Paradise summarizes the surprising origins of early historical medical examiners, the development of forensic science and, of course, the rise of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner, the most technologically advanced in the world…and the only one with its own gift shop.

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 real, long-promised, complete, fully documented, peer-reviewed edition of the book. If you already bought a Kindle copy of the first edition, Amazon has promised me that you will NOT have to buy a copy of this second edition. You should received an email from Amazon notifying you to download the revised edition. The second edition should be "live" on the Kindle store on or before June 1, 2015, as soon as I finish the final proofread. Thank you for your patience! An exhaustive analysis of the "Zodiac Killer" letters of 1969 reveals the shocking truth that they were a cruel hoax intended to terrorize the public with a fictitious "deranged killer" who took "credit" for the otherwise unrelated murders of five young people in the San Francisco Bay area. The letters are compared, sentence by sentence, with the actual evidence in each crime, which reveals not only that the letters were a hoax, but also reveals the exact sources of the hoaxer's information. This research also reveals, for the first time, that two infamous phone calls from the supposed "Zodiac Killer" were also hoaxes

Just days before Kurt Cobain's body was discovered on April 8, 1994, Courtney Love hired private investigator Tom Grant to locate him. In The Mysterious Death of Kurt Cobain Tom Grant takes readers behind the scenes of the investigation. Here, you can read a day by day account of Grant's investigation and learn about the evidence for murder regarding Kurt Cobain's death. There are many new details contained in The Mysterious Death of Kurt Cobain, including new transcripts of recorded telephone conversations with Courtney Love and others, as well as an updated list of "persons of interest" in the crime. In this book, you will get a clear picture of 1) Why Kurt Cobain was killed and 2) Who is responsible for his death. The book also contains a compelling account of Tom Grant's struggles to blow the whistle on the botched investigation into Cobain's death. Did Kurt Cobain really commit suicide? Or was he murdered? You won’t be able to honestly answer that question until you read The Mysterious Death of Kurt Cobain

Set in the rowdy, often lawless town of Texarkana shortly after WWII, The Phantom Killer is the history of the most puzzling unsolved cases in the United States The salacious and scandalous murders of a series of couples on Texarkana's "lovers lanes" in seemingly idyllic post-WWII America created a media maelstrom and cast a pall of fear over an entire region. What is even more surprising is that the case has remained cold for decades. Combining archival research and investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize nominated historian James Presley reveals evidence that provides crucial keys to unlocking this decades-old puzzle. Dubbed "the Phantom murders" by the press, these grisly crimes took place in an America before dial telephones, DNA science, and criminal profiling. Even pre-television, print and radio media stirred emotions to a fever pitch. The Phantom Killer, exhaustively researched, is the only definitive nonfiction book on the case, and includes details from an unpublished account by a survivor, and rare, never-before-published photographs. Although the case lives on today on television, the Internet, a revived fictional movie and even an off-Broadway play, with so much of the investigation shrouded in mystery since 1946, rumors and fractured facts have distorted the reality. Now, for the first time, a careful examination of the archival record, personal interviews, and stubborn fact checking come together to produce new insights and revelations on the old slayings

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.

No outlaw typifies America’s mythic Wild West more than Billy the Kid. To Hell on a Fast Horse by Mark Lee Gardner is the riveting true tale of Sheriff Pat Garrett’s thrilling, break-neck chase in pursuit of the notorious bandit. David Dary calls To Hell on a Fast Horse, “A masterpiece,” and Robert M. Utley calls it, “Superb narrative history.” This is spellbinding historical adventure at its very best, recalling James Swanson’s New York Times bestseller Manhunt—about the search for Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth—as it fills in with fascinating detail the story director Sam Peckinpah brought to the screen in his classic film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

In 1985, Steven Avery went to prison for the brutal sexual assault of a female jogger on the shores of Lake Michigan. Eighteen years later, DNA evidence proved his innocence. But in 2005 Avery was arrested again—this time for the murder of Teresa Halbach, a young freelance photographer. Proof that Steven Avery was rightfully convicted of murder. Prosecutor Michael Griesbach played a central role in overturning Avery’s initial conviction. But he believes Avery is guilty of Teresa Halbach’s murder. He also believes the producers of Making a Murderer have clouded the truth about the explosive case. With meticulous care, Griesbach reviews the evidence to set the record straight at last.

Meet Edward Wayne Edwards, the most evil serial killer you've never heard of. In this chilling case-by-case analysis and story of the killer's life, former detective John A. Cameron argues that Edwards was not only responsible for the five torture-murders he confessed to and was eventually convicted for, but for dozens more across the U.S., over decades. Tracing the murderer's life from his beginnings as a misguided boy who witnessed his mother's suicide, Cameron conducted hundreds of interviews, including exchanging phone calls and letters with the killer and interviewing his family. The result is a complex, terrifying, and fascinating analysis of Edwards' travels across the U.S. in the periods of his life: as a young itinerant handy man, an escaped fugitive on the run after a jailbreak, and of all things, an author on tour to promote a book about his life as a reformed criminal, followed years later by his arrest and confession. Each part of this haunting timeline is tied by Cameron to murder cases in the areas Edwards lived, based on his MO and his sick joy in taunting police, attending trials on the cases, and getting people wrongfully convicted for the murders he claims he did. These cases and ties include links to the famed Zodiac Killer, and more.

Dorothy Hunt, “An Amoral and Dangerous Woman” tells the life story of ex-CIA agent Dorothy Hunt, who married Watergate mastermind and confessed contributor to the assassination of JFK. The book chronicles her rise in the intelligence field after World War II, as well as her experiences in Shanghai, Calcutta, Mexico, and Washington, DC. It reveals her war with President Nixon and asserts that she was killed by the CIA in the crash of Flight 553. Written by the only person who was privy to the behind-the-scenes details of the Hunt family during Watergate, this book sheds light on a dark secret of the scandal.

This is the revised edition, March 2015. The untold story from inside his family. Dramatic, unyielding, and provocative, Uncle Al Capone by Deirdre Marie Capone, Al Capone's grandniece, is a fascinating memoir and engaging biography. This moving, highly readable portrait of the Capone family and its mob trade examines what it has meant to survive the storied legacy of the family's forbearers. As Capone traces the arc of regret and what fuels the Capone myth, she finds redemption and a way to coexist with her legacy. In seventeen chapters with titles like "The Making of the Mafioso," "Trading the Chicago Outfit for the Chicago Cubs," and "The Saint Valentine's Day Truth," Capone outlines organized crime in Chicago and offers vignettes of American history during the early and mid-twentieth century. Using years of research and exhaustive interviews with her aunts, uncles, and cousins, she weaves an engaging anecdotal narrative of what it meant to be a Capone, what it meant to lose her father to suicide, and what it meant to have a mother who lived in constant fear. She offers compelling evidence that Al Capone was specifically targeted for prosecution by law enforcement agencies assisted by the media, which made gross exaggerations of her uncle's exploits and fueled a phenomenon of half-truths and utter falsehoods. From the family's roots in Angri, Italy to the author's ongoing investigations today, this debut offers a comprehensive and moving portrait of an iconic American family and one woman's efforts to make peace with the past.