In his own words, Tommy Lynn Sells describes his life a life that began with rape and sexual abuse. Author Tori Rivers worked for four years to hear these stories and the descriptions of murders, rapes, marriages, travels and Tommys views about America and the justice system as they have never been heard before. 13 1/2: Twelve Jurors, One Judge and a Half Ass Chance is a unique book which delves deeply into the mind of a serial killer in a way no other book ever has.
The New York Times–bestselling author’s “haunting, compassionate, and terrifyingly true” story of a man breaking free from his notorious past (Gregg Olson, New York Times–bestselling author of Starvation Heights). From 1926 to 1928, Gordon Stewart Northcott committed at least twenty murders on a chicken ranch outside of Los Angeles. He held his nephew, Sanford Clark, captive there from the age of thirteen to fifteen. Sanford would be Northcott’s sole surviving victim. Forced by Northcott to take part in the murders, he carried tremendous guilt all his life. Yet despite his youth and the trauma he endured, Sanford helped gain justice for the dead and their families by testifying at the trial that led to Northcott’s execution. These shocking events inspired Clint Eastwood’s film The Changeling. But in The Road Out of Hell, acclaimed crime writer Anthony Flacco uses revelatory new accounts from Sanford’s son to tell the complete, true story. Going beyond the film’s narrative, Flacco recounts not only Sanford’s nightmarish captivity, but also the inspiring life he led afterward. In dramatizing one of the darkest cases in American crime, Flacco constructs a riveting psychological drama about how Sanford was able to detoxify himself from the evil he’d encountered, offering the ultimately redemptive story of one man’s remarkable ability to survive hell on earth and emerge intact.
This unique history of the last 100 years of criminal psychology shares insights about infamous murderers from the psychiatrists and other trained psychological professionals who analyzed and treated them. The Mind of a Murderer: Privileged Access to the Demons That Drive Extreme Violence presents a series of cases in which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or counselor gained privileged access to a mass or serial murderer, going beyond the typical mental assessment to learn more about criminal behavior. Through their work, readers are granted a unique view of criminology and a better understanding of the criminal mind. The book opens with the earliest professional observations of criminals in the late 19th century and goes on to explore the rudimentary behavioral profiling and case analysis of the early 20th century. It shows how, by the 1960s and 1970s, behavioral professionals recognized the need for intense study of extreme offenders and got close to the likes of Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy to gain a fuller picture of their psychological development. Finally, readers learn how today's behavioral professionals rely on neurobiological correlates to assess predatory, impulsive, and addictive behavior.
Mock trials help students gain a basic understanding of the legal mechanism through which society chooses to resolve many of its disputes. Participation in mock trials helps students to understand better the roles that the various actors play in the justice system. This handbook explains how to prepare for and conduct mock trials in the classroom and introduces simplified rules of evidence and includes a sample judging form.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A legal thriller that’s comparable to classics such as Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent . . . tragic and shocking.”—Associated Press NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED ORIGINAL STREAMING SERIES • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • Boston Globe • Kansas City Star Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney for two decades. He is respected. Admired in the courtroom. Happy at home with the loves of his life: his wife, Laurie, and their teenage son, Jacob. Then Andy’s quiet suburb is stunned by a shocking crime: a young boy stabbed to death in a leafy park. And an even greater shock: The accused is Andy’s own son—shy, awkward, mysterious Jacob. Andy believes in Jacob’s innocence. Any parent would. But the pressure mounts. Damning evidence. Doubt. A faltering marriage. The neighbors’ contempt. A murder trial that threatens to obliterate Andy’s family. It is the ultimate test for any parent: How far would you go to protect your child? It is a test of devotion. A test of how well a parent can know a child. For Andy Barber, a man with an iron will and a dark secret, it is a test of guilt and innocence in the deepest sense. How far would you go? Praise for Defending Jacob “A novel like this comes along maybe once a decade . . . a tour de force, a full-blooded legal thriller about a murder trial and the way it shatters a family. With its relentless suspense, its mesmerizing prose, and a shocking twist at the end, it’s every bit as good as Scott Turow’s great Presumed Innocent. But it’s also something more: an indelible domestic drama that calls to mind Ordinary People and We Need to Talk About Kevin. A spellbinding and unforgettable literary crime novel.”—Joseph Finder “Defending Jacob is smart, sophisticated, and suspenseful—capturing both the complexity and stunning fragility of family life.”—Lee Child “Powerful . . . leaves you gasping breathlessly at each shocking revelation.”—Lisa Gardner “Disturbing, complex, and gripping, Defending Jacob is impossible to put down. William Landay is a stunning talent.”—Carla Neggers “Riveting, suspenseful, and emotionally searing.”—Linwood Barclay
A seminal work and examination of the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit by a convicted murder againt the journalist who wrote a book about his crime, Malcolm delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung. Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case -- the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial -- Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative -- and always on the edge of the reader's consciousness -- is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.
