True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers

A day celebrating the beauty of God's handiwork turns into a father's worst nightmare as the sun sets on his only son, Jaryd Atadero, lost in the Colorado Mountains. A highly publicized search breaks into a national story as reports surfaced concerning Jaryd's whereabouts. Did Jaryd fall prey to a territorial mountain lion? Was he a victim of the elements? Did someone take Jaryd off the mountain? Is Jaryd alive, or did he become the victim of a notorious serial killer? The second edition includes new theories and thoughts provided by experts in the field of criminal investigation. Missing: When the Son Sets---The Jaryd Atadero Story is the personal account of a father's painful search to discover the truth. MISSING: WHEN THE SON SETS-Allyn Atadero

Tim McLean left Edmonton at 12 a.m. on July 30, 2008, on board a Greyhound Bus, destined for Winnipeg. At 7 p.m. the bus left one of the scheduled stops with a new passenger, Vincent Weiguang Li. Li, a tall man, with shaved head and sunglasses, sat near the front of the bus but moved next to McLean following a scheduled rest stop. McLean proceeded to fall asleep with his headphones on. Suddenly there was a blood-curdling scream and Li was standing over McLean stabbing him repeatedly in the neck with a huge knife. McLean struggled and tried to escape but couldn't as Li was blocking the aisle. The bus driver pulled to the side of the road as screaming, panicked passengers fled the bus. The driver and two other men tried to rescue McLean but were chased away by Li, who slashed wildly at them from behind the locked bus doors. Li then decapitated McLean and displayed his severed head to passengers outside. Li began severing body parts and eating McLean's flesh. By 9 p.m. Police were in a stand-off with Li, who taunted police, continuing cannibalizing and defiling the corpse. At 1:30 a.m. Li tried to escape out a window and was tasered and arrested. Body parts of the victim were found in plastic bags on the bus while one ear, the nose and the tongue were found in Li's pockets. McLean's eyes and part of his heart were missing.  Li, his face bloody, pleaded with officers, "I'm sorry. I'm guilty. Please kill me!"In March 2009 Vincent Li was found Not Criminally Responsible for the gruesome murder of Tim McLean in 2008. In May 2015 Vincent Li was released from custody from the Selkirk Mental Health Centre and is now a free man living in a group home. THE GREYHOUND BUS CANNIBAL KILLER-The Definition of Insanity-Dan Zupansky 

Invisible Darkness is the story of one of the more bizarre cases in recent memory--killings so sensational that they prompted the Canadian government, in the interests of justice, to silence its national press and to lock foreign journalists out of the courts.To all appearances, Paul and Karla Bernardo had a fairytale marriage--beautiful working-class girl weds bright upper-middle-class guy and they buy a fashionable dream house in the suburbs. But, bored with his straight, prestigious accounting job, Paul soon went freelance as an international smuggler. He also revealed his boredom with conventional sex--enough so that, one Christmas Eve, he persuaded his wife to drug her own sister and engage in a menage a trois, during which the sister died (a bungling coroner ruled her death accidental).The couple then upped the ante, kidnapping and imprisoning several high school girls for sexual marathons, which they videotaped before savagely murdering their captives. When the girls' bodies were found, the police were stymied (although Paul had been accused of rape and given a DNA test that vanished for two years and only recently was linked to some fifty sexual-assault cases) until Karla tried to have her husband arrested for wife beating. During questioning, she confessed to the crimes and is now serving two concurrent twelve-year sentences for manslaughter in exchange for testifying against her husband who was jailed for life. INVISIBLE DARKNESS-The Strange Case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka-Stephen Williams

The author of the true crime classic Lobster Boy now turns his investigative skills to the chilling true story of Kendall Francois, one of the most bizarre serial sex-killers of modern times. In October, 1996, young, pretty, and petite women began vanishing off the streets of Poughkeepsie, New York. Most were prostitutes and some were addicts. By August, 1998, the toll had reached eight, when a prostitute told police she had barely escaped being strangled by Kendall Francois, 27, a 6'4", 300-lb. middle school hall monitor whose slovenly personal hygiene had earned him the nickname "Stinky." Inside his house, the smell was worse, as investigators discovered a tangle of rotting flesh and bones - eight female corpses, almost all decomposed. Francois was sentenced to life in prison without parole. BODY DUMP-Fred Rosen

With details about grim and grisly fatalities, this history of California's arcane deaths encompasses the murders and accidents that at one time shocked the West Coast. The stories of hangings, gun accidents, suicides, crashes, and overdoses of both the famous and obscure offer a bizarre, if sometimes perverse, glimpse into the Golden State's strange past. Including frightening murder tales like the rape,torture and child murder in The Ape Boy; a doctor slaughters his family in Death in Davis House; the unsolved savage murder of an entire family in The Keddie Murders and a young  female psychopath in Penny For Her Thoughts. DEATH IN CALIFORNIA-The Bizarre, Freakish and Just Curious Ways People Die in the Golden State-David Kulczyk

Karla picks up where Williams's first book on the case, Invisible Darkness, left her, painting her nails in her cell in solitary confinement in the gothic tower of Kingston's Prison for Women. After testifying against her ex-husband in 1995, Karla's life in prison was soon going to take a very different, dramatic turn. With a thriller's pace, Karla: A Pact with the Devil charts the inner life of the world's most notorious female prisoner. In Karla, Williams lets Karla and the other key players speak for themselves. And what they have to say will surprise, horrify and enlighten. KARLA: A Pact With The Devil-Stephen Williams

Introducing the victims and perpetrators responsible for California's most notorious shootouts, lynchings, and assassinations, this account shows how homemade justice is never black-and-white. In relating these histories, this discussion also analyzes how and why Hollywood storylines almost always follow the same skewed and unrealistic arc in which the bad guys abuse the good guys, the good guy take the high road until the bad guy has gone too far, and the good guy picks off the bad guys, one by one, in an increasingly dramatic fashion. CALIFORNIA JUSTICE: Shootouts, Lynchings and Assassinations in the Golden State-David Kulczyk

On a cool, spring day in 1897, Alfred Haney left his Williamston, Michigan home to earn a day's wage. He knew his wife's peculiar behavior had become more frequent, and he had planned on her seeing the town doctor, but she assured him she was feeling much better. They would go the following day instead. When he returned home later that day, he discovered a macabre murder so bizarre that it shook the entire community to its core. His mother's severed head was set on the dinner table, adorned with a knife and fork on either side. Lying nearby was the old woman's body, soaked in kerosene and set ablaze. Screaming, Alfred Haney ran from the house in search of the law, and while neighbors tried to extinguish the smoldering, beheaded corpse, Haney's wife, Martha, removed herself to the back yard and began digging wildly with her hands. Shortly after the discovery, a sheriff's deputy arrived, taking Martha into custody and lodging her in the local jail at the village hall. Ingham County Sheriff John Rehle, known as J. J. among his constituents, arrived by train and surveyed the carnage. He and his deputy discovered the murder weapon, an axe, hidden behind some boards under the rear stoop. Rehle organized a Coroner's Inquest that was held inside the house where the old woman's body lay. In an attempt to determine her state of mind at the time of the crime, local doctors interviewed the murderess. She told them she spoke frequently with her own dead mother, and her mother had told her to kill the old woman. Over the next several days, court hearings decided her ultimate fate. A panel of three doctors was commissioned to determine her sanity. In the end, there would be no prosecution. Deemed insane, she was sentenced to the Michigan Home for the Dangerous and Criminally Insane in Ionia. What made Martha Haney snap and behead her mother-in-law? TO HELL I MUST GO: The True Story of Michigan's Lizzie Borden-Rod Sadler

The gray ranch along Third Avenue in the sleepy Midwestern town of less than 400 people was the recurring site of screaming, mad chaos and horrific domestic violence. Then one day, abusive husband Scott Shanahan was gone. Some thought he packed his bags and left town. Weeks passed. Months went by. Still no sign of the volatile wife beater. But what really happened to him was so shocking and so unbelievable that even grizzled, long-time law enforcement officials were aghast by the sight and awful smell. The town wondered why Dixie Shanahan managed to live with her husband’s rotting body inside her master bedroom — for fourteen months. "This fascinating story will leave you asking yourself one question, was the punishment that Dixie received in her case justified?  DIXIE'S LAST STAND-Was It Murder or Self-Defense?-John Ferak

To his neighbors, Anthony Sowell was a friendly and helpful former Marine. But they didn't know about his dark side -- or the gruesome secret inside his house. Sowell's secret life was revealed to the nation on Oct. 29, 2009 when a Cleveland Police SWAT team entered his house to arrest him for an alleged rape. They didn't find Sowell, but they encountered a nightmarish scene -- two decomposed bodies in his third-floor living room. Eight more bodies were hidden throughout the house and buried in the back yard. In the basement, they discovered a human skull. All of the bodies were female and all appeared to have been bound and strangled.    Two days later, police captured Sowell, a sexual sadist who had served a 15-year prison sentence for kidnapping, raping and torturing a 21-year-old pregnant woman. House of Horrors exposes the shocking details of Sowell's depraved crimes and twisted psyche. He preyed on neighborhood women, luring them to his home with alcohol and drugs. Sowell then murdered the women and lived among their corpses. At least five other women were attacked by Sowell, but managed to escape. After a dramatic trial in the summer of 2011, Sowell was convicted and sentenced to death. In House of Horrors, readers are given a rare glimpse inside the mind of a serial killer -- through interviews with Sowell's neighbors and relatives, his surviving victims, and exlusive interviews with Sowell himself. HOUSE OF HORRORS-The Shocking True Story of Anthony Sowell, The Cleveland Strangler-Rob Sberna

Lance Herndon was at the top of his game in 1996. At age forty-one he was a self-made millionaire, the owner of Access, Inc., a successful information-systems consulting company. As a prominent member of Atlanta's young, wealthy, and powerful set, he was surrounded by black Atlanta's "beautiful people." But when he failed to show up for work one day, friends and family started to worry. Their worry soon turned to horror when he was found murdered in his own home, his head smashed in—in what appeared to be either an act of jealousy-fueled rage or a seedier sex crime. With a laundry list of ex-wives and lovers, competitors, critics, and admirers in hand, detectives had to break through the city's upper crust to discover his killer. Journalist Ron Stodghill tells the riveting, true story of this investigation.Part investigative thriller, part sociological commentary, Redbone offers a truly intriguing story that channels insight into one of America's great metropolises. REDBONE: The Millionaire and the Gold Digger-Ron Stodghill

 From the author of VAMPIRE: The Richard Chase Murders  and The Bundy Murders comes an excursion into the truly weird and the bizarre: from a medieval-esque murder in a small town museum to the jilted boyfriend who decided that his former girlfriend needed to die on her twenty-first birthday.  And then there’s the demented son who returns home to live with his mother and stepfather, and one night in their beautiful mansion sitting atop a high bluff overlooking the Ohio River, slaughters them. KENTUCKY BLOODBATH: Ten Bizarre Tales of Murder from the Bluegrass State

Hitchhiking from Eugene, Ore., through northern California in 1977, 20-year-old Colleen Stan thumbed a ride into hell. Her kidnappers a sadistic lumber mill worker, Cameron Hooker, and his battered wife Janice subjected her to seven years of torture and sensory deprivation. She was made a sex slave, kept locked in a wooden box and brainwashed into believing that an underground network of sadists would recapture her if she attempted to escape. Did Colleen fall in love with Cameron and make herself a willing partner in a love triangle, as the Hookers' defense lawyer asserted? The jury found otherwise, convinced by the evidence marshalled by coauthor McGuire, state prosecutor in the case, a trial that journalist Norton attended in 1984. Not for the squeamish, this harrowing tale shuttles between the courtroom and the grisly doings in the Hookers' basement. PERFECT VICTIM-The True Story of "The Girl In The Box" by the D.A. Who Prosecuted Her Captor-Carla Norton

A survivor's firsthand account of attempted murder in St. Francisville, Louisiana. A former warden of Angola Prison shoots his wife five times with a pistol, then sits down to watch her die on her plantation home porch. The victim, author Anne Butler, survives to tell this true crime story, detailing the unraveling of her seven-year marriage and how it led to her near-murder. Interspersed with simple black and white snapshots, this stranger-than-fiction story of murder, survival, and forgiveness offers keen insights into the mind of both victim and criminal. WEEP FOR THE LIVING-Anne Butler

First came the unsettling Ouija board prophesy that Robin Adams would die before her 17th birthday. When a minister was summoned to rid the house of frightening phenomena blamed on the Ouija board, he was taunted and denounced by a neighbor and suspected Satanist. Thus, the die was cast for one of the most bizarre murder cases in Michigan history. In 1976, when Robin vanished without a trace from the village of Caro, police were left without a body, witnesses or anything remotely resembling a crime scene. The case went cold for six years. Then, when a rookie state police detective was assigned to reopen the investigation, what followed reads like chapters from a Stephen King novel -- right down to the claim that the killer's grandmother was practicing black magic to avenge efforts to bring him to justice. FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE-Richard Carson