On 2 March 1998 ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch was snatched off the street by a stranger and bundled into a white van. Hours later she found herself in a dark cellar. When she emerged eight years later, her childhood had gone. In 3,096 Days Natascha tells her incredible story for the first time: her difficult childhood, what exactly happened on the day of her abduction, her imprisonment and the mental and physical abuse she suffered from her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil. 3,096 Days is a story about the triumph of the human spirit and how, against inconceivable odds, Natascha managed to escape unbroken.
On March 2, 1998, ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped, and found herself locked in a house that would be her home for the next eight years. She was starved, beaten, treated as a slave, and forced to work for her deranged captor. But she never forgot who she was-and she never gave up hope of returning to the world. This is her story.
In late October 2006, one of the most spectacular kidnapping cases of the younger past had come to end, when Natascha Kampusch freed herself after being held captive in a hidden cellar (near Vienna, Austria) for more than eight years. Media companies from all over the world came to cover her life story, which has taken quite some twists since then. The result: two autobiographies, a feature film, several documentaries and hundreds of interviews – all within a decade. "10 Years of Freedom" offers us an insight into the impact such a nightmarish captivity has on a young woman's life. It tells the story of a naive victim, that had to learn to cope with the real world after being locked away for her whole youth. The author spans a wide range of themes from her first days in freedom and the turbulent times after gaining it again to a never-ending trauma, which she will have to deal with for the rest of her life. Natascha declares that she wasn't prepared to be a public figure after all, but was suddenly confronted with a heavy and controversial media coverage (including speculations by reporters regarding Stockholm syndrome and roleplaying, along with being labelled "cellar girl" and "sex slave"). Also, wild conspiracy theories gained popularity, resulting in several trials and review boards (including police and FBI investigations). Despite everything, she found certain ways to reconnect with her family and even founded/initiated several charity projects (e.g. the creation of a children's ward in Sri Lanka or the support of PETA, an organisation for animal rights). "Your book is remarkable. 10 Years of Freedom, I urge everyone to read it." - Piers Morgan, ITV "It's a very powerful read." - Huw Edwards, BBC "Very brave." - Emma Barnett, BBC
In the mountains of Guanajuato, Mexico sits a picturesque community favored by artists and tourists. But for American-born Jayne Valseca and her husband Eduardo, son of a legendary Mexican newspaper publisher, it became a hell on earth when Eduardo was ambushed by strangers and kidnapped in the summer of 2007. Jayne knew that in Mexico kidnapping was a pervasive and lucrative business-a burgeoning criminal industry with few happy endings. This time the merchandise was her husband. Sealed in a dark seven-by-six, two-feet-wide box, Eduardo lived for seven months on little more than eggshells and chicken bones. He was subjected to the most cruel and humiliating mental and physical torture imaginable. He had no reason to believe he'd ever be found alive. As the ransom escalated, so did the stakes. But Jayne refused to be a pawn in the kidnappers' sick game. She decided to become a player. If she was to get her husband back alive, she'd have to be more cunning than the kidnappers and be cool, calculated and determined...
When Natascha Kampusch made her bid for freedom on 23 August 2006 after eight years held captive in a seemingly ordinary Austrian suburban house, her story horrified and astonished the entire world. How did she survive a childhood locked in a cellar What sort of young woman had emerged What kind of man was Wolfgang Priklopil, her abductor - and what demands had he made of her As the days and weeks passed and Natascha's TV interview failed to quell the curiosity, so the questions began to change. What exactly was the relationship between abductor and hostage Why had Natascha waited so long to escape when it seemed there had been other, earlier opportunities Did Natascha's parents know Priklopil before he kidnapped their daughter Allan Hall and Michael Leidig have tracked the story from the days of the 10-year-old's disappearance. They have spoken to police investigators, lawyers, psychiatrists, and to the family members closest to Natascha. They have come as close as possible to uncovering the full, shocking story. It is a story that tests the limits of our understanding of how human beings behave - and makes our hearts bleed for the plight of an innocent child caught up in a horror story almost beyond our imagining.
The harrowing true story of abduction and survival from the courageous young woman who lived it—now the subject of a Lifetime original movie, I Am Elizabeth Smart. In this memoir, Elizabeth Smart reveals how she survived and the secret to forging a new life in the wake of a brutal crime. On June 5, 2002, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, was taken from her home in the middle of the night by religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. Elizabeth was kept chained, dressed in disguise, repeatedly raped, and told she and her family would be killed if she tried to escape. After her rescue on March 12, 2003, she rejoined her family and worked to pick up the pieces of her life. With My Story, Elizabeth tells of the constant fear she endured every hour, her courageous determination to maintain hope, and how she devised a plan to manipulate her captors and convinced them to return to Utah, where she was rescued minutes after arriving. Smart explains how her faith helped her stay sane in the midst of a nightmare and how she found the strength to confront her captors at their trial and see that justice was served. In the years after her rescue, Smart transformed from victim to advocate, traveling the country and working to educate, inspire and foster change. She has created a foundation to help prevent crimes against children and is a frequent public speaker. She and her husband, Matthew Gilmour, now have two children.
Recounts the seventeen days the author spent locked in a underground bunker after being kidnapped and sexually abused by a family friend in 1992, looking at her tumultuous pre-kidnapping life and how she has dealt with the trauma.
The bizarre, true story of a robbery gone wrong and the explosive murder that shocked the nation—as seen on Netflix’s docuseries Evil Genius. For the first time, two of the people who followed the story from the beginning—Jerry Clark, the lead FBI Special Agent who cracked what became known as the Pizza Bomber case, and investigative reporter Ed Palattella—tell the complete story of what happened on August 28, 2003. In the suburbs of Erie, Pennsylvania, a pizza delivery man named Brian Wells was accosted by several men who locked a time bomb around his neck. They then ordered him to rob a bank. After delivering the money, he would receive clues to help him disarm the bomb. It was one of the most ingenious bank robbery schemes in history, known as Collarbomb by the FBI. It did not go according to plan. Wells, picked up by police shortly after the robbery, never found the clues he needed. Investigating the crime after his grisly death, the FBI soon discovered that Wells was not, in fact, an innocent victim. He was merely the first co-conspirator to fall in a bizarre trail of death following the crime... INCLUDES PHOTOS
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Stranger Beside Me comes a true crime story of a serial killer who was sentenced to die—yet lived to murder again....and again.... After committing his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death, using want ads to lure his young female victims. And time after time, justice was thwarted by a killer whose twisted legal genius was matched only by his sick savagery. Complete with the testimony of the officers who put him behind bars and the women who barely escaped with their lives, The Want-Ad Killer is one of the most shattering and thought-provoking true-crime stories of our time.
Josef Fritzl was a 73-year-old retired engineer in Austria. He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family—though one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been "lost" to a religious cult. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth's children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls' doorstep; Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth's disappearance... For twenty-seven years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon, complete with sound-proof paneling and code-protected electric locks. There, she would eventually give birth to a total of seven of Josef's children. One died in infancy—and the other three were raised alongside Elisabeth, never to see the light of day. Then, in 2008, one of Elisabeth's children became seriously ill, and was taken to the hospital. It was the first time the nineteen-year-old girl had ever gone outside—and soon, the truth about her background, her family's captivity, and Josef's unspeakable crimes would come to light. John Glatt's Secrets in the Cellar is the true story of a crime that shocked the world.
