On November 5, 1999, 14-year-old Camille Arfmann stepped off a school bus in the small Kansas town of Oskaloosa and was never again seen alive. A few days later, Tom Bledsoe led the police to her body, handed over his murder weapon, and confessed to killing Camille, a quiet high school freshman. The case that outraged Oskaloosa was seemingly solved. Yet the prosecutor and police soon released Bledsoe and pinned the murder on his brother, Floyd, an innocent farmhand who was Camille's brother-in-law. Reporter Justin Wingerter followed the case for the Topeka Capital-Journaland continued to investigate for years afterward. He now brings you the full story of how Floyd Bledsoe was unjustly convicted. How and why this injustice - perpetrated by a powerful few in a small town - occurred continues to confound Oskaloosa's detectives and attorneys decades later. Told through dozens of interviews with those closest to the crime, extensive court documents, and confidential police reports, this strange story is sure to engage and enrage.
Dive into two dark stories of crime and murder from a New York Times bestselling author, inspired by true crime horrors where murder isn't always the worst thing that can happen to you . . . Murder of Innocence: It's impossible to resist Andrew Luster. He's rich, charming, and good-looking, and dozens of women have fallen under his spell. But Andrew is no mere womanizer. He's a predator, and it'll take a global effort to put him behind bars. (with Max DiLallo) A Murderous Affair: Mark Putnam is a rookie FBI agent given his first assignment in a remote part of Kentucky, a land of coal miners and meth dealers. Within his first months on the job, a young female informant named Susan Smith helps him make a big break in an important case. Rumors begin circulating that the agent and his informant are having an affair. After Susan starts telling people that she is pregnant with the FBI agent's baby, she suddenly disappears. (with Andrew Bourelle)
Trophy Kill: the Shall We Dance Murder. The Trial and Revelations of a Psychopathic Killer On July 1st, 2003 Susan Sarandon called police from the set of the Miramax movie Shall We Dance to report the theft of some of her jewelry, including a gold necklace. The next day Sidney Teerhuis calmly walked into a police station to report waking from a drunken blackout to find his acquantance dead in the bathtub. At the rented room police found the victim dismembered, beheaded, sawn in half, disemboweled and castrated with the chest sliced open and all of the internal organs gone! One eye had been removed and the body posed, crudely reassembled. Susan Sarandon's stolen gold necklace was found a few feet away from the murder-horror spectacle. Obsessed with celebrity, his role models-serial killers, with Susan Sarandon's stolen jewelry, Sidney hatches a diabolical plan to achieve his ultimate fantasy...
From the time I was old enough to form my first memory, my childhood was already headed down the inevitable path of dysfunction. With divorce in the books and a new man in the house, these events actually turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was absolutely everything else that followed. From the depths of addiction to the height of recovery. From a life-threatening diagnosis to the ultimate loss of a lifetime, my story will take you through a journey of one mother's love for her two young boys and the relentless courage to protect us, at any cost, from the very danger that she unwittingly had a hand in creating. It was a danger that would force us to disappear without a trace, from the only home we ever knew to a small town that no one could even pronounce. And as our lives were so quickly being turned upside down, all reasons for this upheaval could only point to one thing: the new man in the house. As the secrets began to pile up, there seemed to be far more questions than answers. The pressure to keep these secrets from us would inevitably take its toll, and by the time the truth was finally revealed, the emotional damage had already been done. No matter what degree of dysfunction that was dealt us, as two innocent boys from Chicago, thanks to our mother's unwavering love, we always had one thing to hold on to-hope. Hope of a second chance. Hope of a fresh start. The hope of a better ending to our story than the tragic beginning we were so unfairly given. From a very young age, I always knew my life was far from normal. There was just something about it that stood out, something that always had me wondering if everything I was experiencing was really what it seemed. And it was that mysterious "something" that would eventually reveal itself and change the course of my life forever.
"Dr. Death" Steve Williams was given a second chance. In the prime of his life, Steve was diagnosed with T-4 throat cancer. With God by his side, Steve overcame all odds and survived this deadly disease. Now, Steve is committed to giving his testimony to the people from the wrestling ring. As an athlete, Steve has "done it all." In 1978, he graduated from Lakewood High in Colorado. Recruited heavily by many major colleges, the star athlete eventually accepted an athletic scholarship to the University of Oklahoma. Steve is one of very few legitimate wrestlers to make the transition from the amateur ranks to the professional wrestling ring. While at the University of Oklahoma, he was a two-time Big Eight free-style wrestling champion. As a collegiate football player, he was also a two-time Big Eight champion. Under legendary coach Barry Switzer, Steve went to three major Orange Bowls, the Sun Bowl, and the Fiesta Bowl. He also played professional football as a defensive nose guard for the New Jersey Generals in the United States Football League (USFL). Because of his amateur wrestling background, Steve was generally regarded as one of the most dangerous "shooters" in the business. This tough reputation earned him the nickname "Dr. Death." For the past 20-plus years, he has worked for all major wrestling promotions throughout the world, including World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Steve has held numerous titles and received a plethora of accolades during his career. In 1985, he was named Most Improved Wrestler and First Runner-Up, Tag Team of the Year (with Ted DiBiase). One year later, he defeated the One Man Gang at the 21:43 mark in Houston, Texas, to become the winner of the $50,000 Pro Wrestling Illustrated/UWF Challenge Cup Tournament. In 1991, Steve and his partner, Terry Gordy, became the first American tag team to win All Japan's annual tag-team tournament in consecutive years. Most recently, in 2003, Steve won the NWA Heavyweight title from Terry Taylor in China. Steve is also an Asian wrestling icon, for he is the only American who has ever worked for two major companies at the same time in Japan--New Japan and All Japan. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
On a peaceful August morning in 1985, grim-face FBI agents led a dawn raid on an eighty-acre farm outside Rulo, Nebraska, said to be occupied by a gorup of religious survivalists led by the charismatic Mike Ryan. What they found on the farm shocked even experience investigators. For months Ryan's Nebraska neighbors spoke in whispers of gunfire in the night, the disappearance of women and children, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. But little did the locals know what was happening to those Mike Ryan decided to punish for their &“sins.&” In Evil Harvest, Rod Colvin re-creates a chilling story of torture, hate, and perversion, and how good, ordinary people could be pulled into a destructive, religious cult—a cult that committed unthinkable acts in the name of God.
