True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

On Thursday, June 30 at 7:00 p.m. CST I will appear on CRIME BEAT on the ARTISTFIRST RADIO NETWORK with hosts Will Hyrb and true crime bestselling author Ron Chepesiuk. The title of the program is THE SERIAL KILLER where we will be discussing my book TROPHY KILL-THE SHALL WE DANCE MURDER and the mind of the serial killer. On the eve of the CRIME BEAT program I hope you will tune in for, for the ve...

  First, he bound and beat his girlfriend, a 43-year-old librarian. Then he went after her teenaged daughter - warning her, 'Scream and I will kill you both' - before knocking her unconscious. When the teenager awoke, he proceeded to rape her. And in a final horrifying act of depravity, he forced the girl to watch as he slit her mother's throat. But the killing didn't stop there...Stephen Stanko w...

After years of hard work, Brian and Jeannie Legg has earned a well deserved life of leisure in their picture-perfect Phoenix mansion. Until their troubled son showed up with a need for cash - and a thirst for murder...David Legg was an obsessive control freak and an army deserter. After fathering an illegitimate child, he wooed and wed a trusting young woman - only to destroy his marriage with lie...

Jimmy Joste was a powerhouse in the oil and gas industry, but he was a weakling when it came to his gorgeous, athletic, longtime lover, Rhonda Glover. Addicted to her sexual prowess and madly in love, Joste gave her homes, cars, cash, and a $350,000 engagement ring.  Their fifteen years of passion and excess ended the day Rhonda drove directly from a shooting range to the Austin home they once sha...

Michael Griesbach had been a prosecutor for 22 years and thought he had seen it all. But nothing prepared him for the case of Steven Avery-a true crime story, where the good guys are sometimes the bad guys and the bad guys the good. It is case of violent crime with a mind-numbing twist, but mostly, it's a case about innocence and guilt. On July 29, 1985, Penny Beernsten set out for a late afternoo...

Adam Leroy Lane was a trucker with a passion for morbid side trips. At random truck stops along the interstates in America's Northeastern states, Lane would leave his truck and, under the cover of darkness, prowl nearby neighborhoods in search of an unlocked door and a vulnerable woman. His first known victim would be Darlene Ewalt, who was murdered on the back deck of her Pennsylvania home as she...

THE LAST OF THE OLD-WORLD MOB BOSSES AND THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL-For more than twenty years, Joseph "Big Joey" Massino ran what was called the largest criminal network in the U.S., employing over two hundred and fifty made men and untold numbers of associates. The Bonanno family was responsible for over thirty murders, even killing a dozen of its own members to enforce discipline and settle scores....

Theodore Bundy was one of the more infamous, and flamboyant, American serial killers on record, and his story is a complex mix of psychopathology, criminal investigation, and the U.S. legal system. This in-depth examination of Bundy's life and his killing spree that totaled dozens of victims is drawn from legal transcripts, correspondence and interviews with detectives and prosecutors. Using these...

  A 12-year-old boy cowers in his closet while a lunatic killer slaughters his family . . . a nursing student unwittingly opens her home to the serial killer on her front porch . . . an 11-year-old girl drifts alone at sea on a flimsy cork raft for almost four days after a mass murderer kills her vacationing family aboard a chartered yacht . . . a brave firefighter suddenly finds himself in the cr...

Richard and Victoria Tinyes feared the worst when their thirteen-year-old daughter Kelly Ann vanished from their quiet suburban community of Valley Stream, New York on March 3, 1989. But the nightmare to come was worse than they could ever imagine. Only five doors away, in the home of John and Elizabeth Golub, police found Kelly Ann's body stuffed in a plastic garbage bag. She'd been brutally beat...

Sheila LaBarre liked to troll the personal ads and homeless shelters, looking for men whom society had rejected for one reason or another - men she could easily dominate both verbally and sexually. One by one, she invited them to her remote New Hampshire farmhouse, where she engaged them in S&M. But over time, sex gave way to brutal acts of torture as she mercilessly flogged and beat her capti...

In the midst of Pennsylvania's Amish country, on a peaceful summer night in 2008, the body of 45-year-old Jan Roseboro was found at the bottom of her backyard pool. Her husband Michael, a successful businessman and a member of a prominent family, showed no emotion as he learned of her death. But the next day an autopsy revealed Jan had been savagely beaten and strangled before being tossed in the...

Mary Jean Pearle and John Battaglia's marriage seemed picture perfect from the outside. With their two young daughters, Faith and Liberty, they made their home in a wealthy Dallas suburb. John was handsome, charming, and successful - but behind his mask of normality lay a vicious, violent abuser who'd brutally beaten his first wife - and who made Mary Jean the new target of his irrational rages. A...

On January 11, 1995, deputies outside Austin, Texas, found a mutilated body laid across a cold campfire—head destroyed, hands cut off, skin singed by fire. In less than three days, they had the kill zone: a small apartment, where shy Christopher Hatton was shot at point blank range in his bed. Stephanie Lynn Martin, despite her devout Southern Baptist upbringing, was reborn as a sultry stripper an...

It took almost 10 years for investigators to arrest two men for the brutal murders of seven workers in a fast-food restaurant in suburban Chicago. The tragic events captured headlines nationwide. When the arrests finally were made, the evidence against one man was virtually irrefutable. His DNA was found on chicken bones recovered from a trash bin at Brown's Chicken and Pasta; investigators conten...

In November 1970, Charles Manson was sentenced to death for the horrifying and cold-blooded murders of seven people near Los Angeles. His sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment after California abolished its death penalty. At Manson's trial, lead prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi spun the story of a demonic cult leader who hypnotized people to commit murder. He published his theory in Helter Sk...

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their plan was staggering: to blow up their school, surpass Oklahoma City in horror, and leave "a lasting impression on the world." The bombs failed. But the unprecedented attack unleashed a new era of violence in schools—branding every future shooting "another Columbine." When we think of Columbine, w...

A True Crime Story and The Birth of Forensic Science. Starr eloquently juxtaposes the crimes of French serial killer Joseph Vacher and the achievements of famed criminologist Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne during France's belle époque. From 1894 to 1897, Vacher is thought to have raped, killed, and mutilated at least 25 people, though he would confess to only 11 murders. Lacassagne, who headed the depar...

The Last Six Minutes is the true account of the random and violent murder of 16 year-old Matthew Martins, and his family's journey through the Canadian Criminal Justice System. On July 2, 2005 Matthew Martins, while waiting near a Sky Train Station for a friend was approached by a woman named Katherine Quinn. Quinn wanted Matthew's crucifix and jumped him trying to get it from him. In the scuffle...

In this account of the trial of controversial death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, O'Connor, editor and publisher of crimemagazine.com, clearly lays out his case that Abu-Jamal should receive at least a new trial, if not complete exoneration. O'Connor asserts that Abu-Jamal was framed for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner because of a vendetta by Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo and the...

On May 21, 2002, twenty-three-year-old Raleigh, North Carolina resident Stephanie Bennett was found murdered in her apartment. Despite ample DNA evidence at the scene, investigators could find no matches in their criminal databases. Two years into the investigation, Detective Ken Copeland-known as "the garbage man" for leaving no stone unturned in his search for evidence-and his partner, Jackie Ta...

It's Christmas time and the perfect opportunity to recap the first year almost of True Murder and great interviews with great authors discussing their fine books. I'll be speaking about a few things of interest, the latest update on the Sidney Teerhuis appeal and the very best books and interviews I've had the pleasure to do. A big thank you for all the listeners-over 75,000 in the last 3 months a...

The affluent suburb of Cheshire, Connecticut, seemed like the perfect place for Dr. William Petit and his wife Jennifer-Hawke-Petit to raise their two lovely daughters...Until July 23, 2007, when according to police, two ex-cons invaded the Petit home hoping to embark on a routine robbery-one that would ultimately prove deadly. What unfolded at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive was a tragic and horrifying se...

In 1990, a young woman was strangled on a jogging path near the home of Pat Brown and her family. Brown suspected the young man who was renting a room in her house and quickly uncovered strong evidence that pointed to him-but the police dismissed her as merely a housewife with an overactive imagination. It would be six years before her former boarder would be brought in for questioning but the nig...

When the urge took hold, serial killer Larry Bright brought women back to his home. After raping and murdering his victims, he brutally disposed of their bodies. Sometimes he built a white-hot fire and burned them in his backyard. Other times he dumped them along nearby roads and fields. For years, Bright had trolled the roads and back streets of Illinois for the most helpless, desperate women he...