True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

On April 15, 1973, two high school students discovered Virginia Marie Olson’s body near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Olson’s murder was horrifically violent—she had been bound, raped, and stabbed to death, leaving the Asheville community in shock. The cold case that followed would span over 50 years, involving three generations of detectives and the Asheville Police...

An eight part miniseries, The John Wayne Gacy Murders: Life and Death in Chicago (2024) is the first ever historical, comprehensive and chronological miniseries to study the life and crimes of the infamous serial killer. From his birth to the ongoing investigation of identifying unknown victims, this is the groundbreaking documentary project that filmmaker John Borowski has dedicatedly worked on f...

In the tranquil towns of New England during the 1970s, a sinister mystery unfolded when several boys vanished without a trace and the community’s peace was shattered. With law enforcement stymied in its search for answers, whispers of a possible serial killer surfaced, especially after one boy’s body was found years after his disappearance. But what happened to the others remained a heart-wrenchin...

Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true - crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s  The Scarlet Letter  and the first true-crime book published in America. On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troub...

M'Linda Kula is very familiar with this SECRET SANTA and the many links that tie him to JonBenet Ramsey. Each link is carefully explained within this book, to lead from one connection to the next between JonBenet and the SECRET SANTA. Find out who this SECRET SANTA is and how this chameleon was able to evade the authorities. This same individual also used a term of endearment common to the Ramsey...

On Christmas Night 1996, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado. A ransom note was found in the home, but it was hours before her father, John, found her body in the basement. She had been strangled with a garrote and her skull was fractured. The media sensationalized the tragic death of the “child beauty queen” and public speculation and rumors ran ram...

On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O’Neil’s mother, teenaged Kim Byers, saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. At the end of his shift at the pharmacy where they both worked, fifteen-year-old Rob went outside to speak to a contractor named John Wayne Gacy about a possible job. That night Rob became Gacy’s final victim; his body was later found in the Des Plaines River. Kim’s tes...

The untold story behind the hit true crime podcast  The Clearing,  this unforgettable memoir traces one daughter’s moving quest to understand her larger-than-life childhood as she searches for the truth about her father, the serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards. One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had liv...

In this dramatic true account about the power of sensationalized crime, one woman’s case is exposed for its sexism, flagrant disregard for the truth, and, ultimately, the dangers posed by an unbridled prosecution.  Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse―offering her too many options of all the wrong kin...

Long before Brooklyn was known as the world’s hippest neighborhood, it was the  deadliest  - the seedy, dangerous underbelly of New York City, where mobsters and gangs could commit murder and dump dead bodies without getting caught. For more than a hundred years, the Red Hook section of Brooklyn was Ground Zero for organized crime. Whoever controlled the piers controlled everything. From the infam...

After three years in Europe, former journalist Carla Conti just wanted to settle her family into the suburbs of Philadelphia. But her high school friend Scott Powell, a lawyer handling a brutal prison stabbing case, needed a favor. Before she knew it, Carla became part of the defense team and mired in the terrifying world of federal prison gangs, penal abuse, and corruption. Then, when she agreed...

He was unassuming, sweet, and friendly. “Saved” in church as a teen, he never caused trouble. In the Navy, they called him Opie. Though he was a big guy, he had a soft, boyish demeanor. “The boy next door,” said those who worked with and knew him. But John Eric Armstrong had a dark secret—hidden even from those closest to him. Prowling Detroit's well-known pocket of prostitution on historic Michig...

Including never-before-seen photos and handwritten letters from Ted Bundy, Dark Tide’s message is as gut-wrenching as it is clear, asking the question: how well do we know those we trust most? Edna’s world turned upside down when her close cousin, Ted Bundy, was linked to the gruesome murders that had plagued her hometown of Seattle. Both devastating and dangerous, she reveals her journey of disco...

Murder! Molly And The Mob: A (1950's) Shocking True Crime Story  by Rod Kackley delves into one of the most chilling unsolved mysteries from the heart of 1950s America. Set against the gritty backdrop of Joliet, Illinois—a suburban outpost of Chicago’s criminal underworld—this true crime narrative follows the life and sudden disappearance of Molly Zelko, a fearless journalist whose scathing pen be...

After retiring from twenty-five years on the bench, former chief judge, Belvin Perry Jr., reveals a rare and disturbingly vivid first-hand perspective of the most gruesome death penalty cases in which he played a key role, including the infamous Casey Marie Anthony, who was dubbed “America’s Most Hated Mom” after her shocking acquittal. The Velvet Hammer  is the gripping, true crime memoir of form...

In the depths of the dark net, tech journalist Carl Miller makes a disturbing discovery: a secret Kill List targeting hundreds of innocent people on a murder for hire website. When the police decide not to investigate, Carl is thrown into a race against time to warn those in danger and uncover the truth about the people who want them dead. From Wondery and Novel, comes a true story about obsession...

Listen to Robert Rand, the investigative journalist and author of the definitive book on the Menendez case—and the disquieting true story behind Netflix’s  Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. A successful entertainment executive making $2 million a year. His former beauty queen wife. Their two sons on the fast track to success. But it was all a façade. The Menendez saga has captivated the...

At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for scientific research. On one trip to the Galápagos, Han...

In  Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer , Dr. Mark Hewitt invites readers into his gripping journey of unraveling one of America's most enduring mysteries. Dr. Hewitt, an expert on the Zodiac case, and author of the acclaimed Zodiac Serial Killer Trilogy, shares his transformation from a pastor to a dedicated true crime investigator. This memoir details Dr. Hewitt's meticulous res...

Examining murder from an insider’s perspective, Matt Murphy—a former senior deputy district attorney and current ABC News Legal Analyst—discusses cases from his career, how they strained his personal life, and how he found peace seeking justice for victims and their families. Part taxonomy of murder, part prosecutor’s handbook, and part personal memoir,  The Book of Murder  goes through a dozen ca...

October 25, 2023 was just an ordinary night in Lewiston, a small, working class city of 37,000 in central Maine. Friends and families had gathered to do what they loved to do with the people they wanted to be with at a bowling alley called Just-in-Time Recreation Center and Schemengees, a popular sports bar and restaurant. They felt immune from the violent crime that seemed to wrack the rest of th...

In September 1943, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, prominent citizen and attorney John Noxon Jr. was arrested for the murder of his 6-month-old Down Syndrome baby Lawrence. Baby Lawrence, according to Noxon, was accidentally electrocuted. Authorities initially accepted Noxon's account but grew suspicious when they discovered he had burned evidence before police could examine it. District Attorney Ch...

In 1975, after Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme’s attempt to kill President Gerald Ford, the FBI found a cache of letters in the would-be assassin’s Sacramento apartment. The return address belonged to future forensic psychologist Jeffrey Smalldon, then a young undergraduate. A decade later, after the shocking murders of two co-workers, Smalldon’s quest to understand the twisted minds...

Power, privilege, and blood—this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case.  Alex Murdaugh was a benevolent dictator—the president of the South Carolina trial lawyers’ association, a political boss, a part-time prosecutor, and a partner in his family’s law firm. He was always r...

The true story of a trailblazing detective’s search for a beautiful college coed who vanished without a trace. In 1981, detective Kay Schucker was the lead investigator in the high-profile missing persons case of Old Dominion University student Janice Starr. The beautiful co-ed disappeared without a trace from ODU’s Norfolk, Virginia campus. Among the only leads was Janice’s diary, which included...