Going behind bars to get the last word from some of the world's worst criminals, this book features a collection of interviews which describe lives that demonstrate the worst side of human nature.
In 1994, Robert Black was convicted of the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of three young girls, and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of thirty-five years; in 2011 he was convicted of a fourth such killing. He died in HMP Maghaberry, Northern Ireland, in January 2016, aged sixty-eight, unmourned, and entirely unrepentant of his repellent crimes. These bald facts, horrific as they are, do not begin to scratch the surface of the truth about Robert Black, a Scottish-born serial killer who undoubtedly committed further murders for which he was never tried, both in this country and on the Continent. In this ground-breaking account, Robert Giles, who has spent years tracing the killer's movements and sifting through all the evidence, including transcripts of the trials, convincingly argues that Black was an habitual serial killer over many years, and quite certainly responsible for more than the four child murders for which he was convicted. Co-written with Chris Clark, a former police intelligence officer whose tireless work into the Yorkshire Ripper produced convincing new evidence of other murders that went unnoticed or unrecorded, The Face of Evil shows once and for all that Robert Black was a serial killer whose crimes went far beyond what is generally believed. In doing so, it paints a portrait of human cruelty at its worst.
ON 15 MAY 2017, IAN BRADY DIED IN HOSPITAL, ENTIRELY UNREPENTANT OF HIS EVIL CRIMES. WITH HIM ALMOST CERTAINLY DIED THE SECRET OF WHERE THE BODY OF TWELVE-YEAR-OLD KEITH BENNETT, THE LAST OF HIS AND MYRA HINDLEY'S YOUNG VICTIMS, LIES. Ian Brady was one of the most notorious and reviled serial killers in Britain. With his co-conspirator, Myra Hindley, he committed what became known as 'the Moors Murders' in which five children were abducted, assaulted and murdered. Dr Chris Cowley has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and lectures in Forensic Criminology. He is in the unique position of having had exclusive access to Brady and, for six years, conducted groundbreaking research by corresponding with Brady and visiting him in prison. By gaining his trust, Cowley was able to take an unrivalled look inside the mind of a serial killer. This in-depth and revealing book reproduces letters and transcripts of conversations with Brady which, until the first edition came out, had never been published before. Using this fresh perspective and original material, Dr Cowley sheds new light on what went wrong in Brady's formative years to set him on a path of crime, and how Hindley became the lethal factor that started Brady's murder cycle. It also reveals Brady's unflinching account of being caught and convicted of serial murder, and his thoughts and emotions concerning Hindley, recorded as he moved into his second decade on hunger strike. This important study provides information that is essential to our understanding of the psychology of serial killers. By broadening our knowledge of these complex issues, we can increase the likelihood of catching murderers, and perhaps even prevent their terrible crimes from taking place.
After twenty-five years of investigating, analyzing, and interviewing serial killers, their family members, neighbors, and even surviving victims, Jack Levin has become one of the world''s most respected experts on the motivations and modus operandi of dangerous criminals. In this gripping book, he taps his wealth of experience with the criminal mind to offer lessons for law enforcement and the general public about how serial killers think, as well as the conditions under which hideous murders typically occur. These lessons, he hopes, will lead to more effective ways to thwart such crimes in the future. Levin''s face-to-face meetings and correspondence with such notorious murderers as the Hillside strangler (Kenneth Bianchi) and Orville Lynn Majors (the male nurse who was convicted of killing numerous patients in his charge) reveal that these types of killers are not motivated by money, revenge, or rage. In fact, the only motivation seems to be a sadistic craving for power and a need to feel in control. Levin also, for the first time, lets down his guard and reveals what it feels like to be seated so close to such cold-blooded killers.Many killers, as Levin points out, are meticulous planners. Levin has found that even in situations that appear spontaneous, for instance a workplace shooting by a disgruntled employee, the deed is carefully thought out and prepared for in advance. Another factor that consistently emerges in conversations with killers who have committed the most heinous of acts is the total absence of remorse or any notion of moral responsibility. Murder appears to be easy for these criminals and they kill with a feeling of complete impunity. Levin also notes the skillfully deceptive facades that such murderers are able to affect. They are extremely adept liars (he admits to having been fooled!), who enjoy playing mind games, even though outwardly they seem above suspicion. This is one reason they are so dangerous and difficult for investigators to track down and prosecute. This chilling glimpse into the minds of some of the worst criminals makes a valuable contribution to criminology and is a must-read for both true-crime buffs and law enforcement professionals.
Keith Hunter Jesperson, The Sad Story of the Happy Face Killer Stories about serial killers are incredibly popular. Tracking down a mass murderer is a constant plot line in films, television, and literature. But these stories are so often based on real life. In certain circumstances, however, real life goes a step beyond what we could imagine happening in fiction. Sometimes, the actions of a serial killer can seem so extreme and strange, their motivations so twisted and evil, that we struggle to comprehend exactly how they fit into the modern world. In the case of Keith Hunter Jesperson, the truth behind his murder spree is more horrific than anything dreamt up by Hollywood's best screenwriters. After a disturbing childhood left the giant of a man riddled with emotional and psychological scars, Jesperson travelled across Canada and spent time strangling and killing women whom he met along the way. While he was only convicted of eight murders, his own boasts suggest that total could have reached as high as 160. As a truck driver, he had the perfect cover story for travelling from town to town without having to put down roots. Often leaving an unsuspecting family at home, he was out in the wilderness committing heinous acts without anyone from the authorities coming close to suspecting his guilt. Jesperson, annoyed by the lack of attention he was receiving, began to leave messages to the public. Scrawled onto the walls of truck stop bathrooms, he signed each confession with a happy, smiley face. This led the media to christening him the Happy Face Killer. It was decades before the investigators came close to catching the killer, so read on to discover just how Keith Hunter Jesperson managed to get away with numerous horrific murders. This is the story of the Happy Face Killer. Scroll back up and grab your copy today!
When a corpse is found in a body of water, authorities generally presume that the manner of death was either an accident or a suicide. They do not treat the recovery site as a potential crime scene or homicide, so many cases remain unsolved. Case Studies in Drowning Forensics investigates the cases of 13 bodies recovered from water in similar circu
In this memoir, a forensic psychiatrist chronicles her work with more than 80 serial killers and her thoughts on what compels them. Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life in the suburbs of a major city. She has a physician husband, two children, and a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is more than that. She is one of the world’s leading experts on serial killers, and has spent as many as four hundred hours alone in rooms with depraved murderers, digging deep into killers’ psyches in ways no profiler ever has before. In My Life among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled the Mad Biter, Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims’ body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She did the last interview with Ed Gein, who was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards and gave her his paintings as presents. Then there was Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams; rapist turned murderer Bobby Joe Long; Fred and Rosemary West, who killed girls and women in their Gloucester “House of Horrors”; and Brazil’s deadliest killer of children, Marcelo Costa de Andrade. Dr. Morrison has received hundreds of letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, and studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims—and the spouses and parents of the killers—to gain a deeper understanding of the killer’s environment and the public persona they adopt. She has also studied serial killers throughout history and shows how this is not a recent phenomenon with psychological autopsies of the fifteenth-century French war hero Gilles de Rais, the sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Bathory, H.H. Holmes of the late nineteenth-century, and Albert Fish of the Roaring Twenties. Through it all, Dr. Morrison’s goal has been to discover the reasons serial killers are compelled to murder, how they choose their victims, and what we can do to prevent their crimes in the future. Her provocative conclusions will stun you. Praise for My Life Among the Serial Killers “A scary piece of work, with even scarier implications.” —Kirkus Reviews “A profoundly enlightening book. Morrison provides startling insights into what factors breed serial killers, and she avoids the broad generalizations that make other books of the topic seem slick and superficial. . . . This is an absorbing, disturbing book that makes it clear just how much we have yet to learn.” —Booklist
From Bestselling author Steph Young; An investigation into the Horrifying Case of ' The Smiley Face Killers.' For the past 20 years, hundreds of college-aged men have disappeared, silently, soundlessly, vanishing without trace, only to be found some time later, dead in the water, but with no water in their lungs. They did not drown. Some are still missing. They usually have no wounds, no trauma, so how did they die? As we delve into many of these cases, who are these sinister & highly disturbing group of killers called 'The Smiley Face Killers'? What is 'The Smiley Face Murder Theory.' A breed of Serial Killers you have never met before. Well- organised, very successful, and never seen, they prey on young men, selecting them, hunting them, abducting them, holding them and killing them. They are never caught. They are silent, invisible predators who always get away. How are they doing this? Who are they? Why are they doing this? - This book will share with you some disturbing & terrifying evidence which will fill you with a terrible sense of dread, an escalating fear, and an overwhelming sense of horror. It is all true. It is still happening. And no-one is safe. "I couldn't get through to him. He couldn't talk. He couldn't tell me where he was. A good 7-8 minutes into the call there was suddenly this ghastly screaming. I started crying." On the night he disappeared he left what can only be described as the most haunting, most chilling, and most harrowing voicemail. He is screaming, pleading and growling in raw, animalistic agony. Disturbingly, in the background, is something that sounds mechanical. Even more horrific, a voice then interrupts his screams and calmly tells him, in a cold, emotionless, detached voice, "Stop it." It isn't stopping; it appears to be escalating... 'The Smile Face Killers' continue.' The world's worst Serial Killers? Here follows a chilling investigation..