The book is called Tommy the Killer. It is about a legendary serial killer from the 1800s that killed more than three hundred people by taking them up an old lighthouse in the woods. It takes place at Bowling Green, Kentucky. The townspeople get tired of him and kill him by burning the lighthouse down with him in it, but before he dies, he swears revenge on them and the generation to come.
A compelling and detailed account of the search for the Oakland County child killer. A story of tragedy and grief, dead-ends and disappointments. In 1976 and 1977, over the course of a thirteen-month period, two boys and two girls, ages ten through twelve, were brutally murdered in Michigan's Oakland County. Their violent deaths triggered the largest murder investigation the state had seen. In Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, Tommy McIntyre provides a compelling and detailed account of the search for the Oakland County child killer. This is a story of tragedy and grief, dead-ends and disappointments.
Diane Fanning's Through The Window is more than an investigation into a crime spree that stunned a nation. It's an utterly terrifying plunge into the unfathomable dark mind of a serial killer, and the heart-wrenching story of the brave child who finally brought him to justice. Ten-year-old Krystal Surles watched in horror as her best friend was murdered at the hands of an intruder. Then with cold-blooded precision he brought a twelve-inch boning knife to Krystal's throat. With a single, violent slash, he severed her windpipe and left her for dead. Miraculously, she survived and would lead authorities to the arrest of 35-year-old Tommy Lynn Sells, a former truck driver, carnival worker, and cross-country drifter... He aspired to become "The Worst Serial Killer of all Time." With no apparent motive and no common pattern to his inconceivable bloodshed, the elusive Sells had carved his way across the country for two decades slaughtering women, men, transients, entire families, teenagers, and even infants with ghoulish abandon.
The Bully Killer describes the life of Big Bull Chaney, the worst bully in Texas/New Mexico history, his upbringing and his lowlife associates who raise hell at a nightclub in El Paso called Wild Eyes. Bull Chaney started with bad genetics-his vicious parents, and began his criminal hobby of bullying in elementary school. Raised in an atmosphere of outrageous cruelty against animals, with his uncle Jeeter running an organized dog fighting ring, Big Bull Chaney grows to be close to seven feet tall and over 300 pounds. He inherits a beer distributorship from his father who bought it with pirated funds, and who is unexpectedly killed while choking an outlaw biker at Wild Eyes. Bull has many successes in bullying other men; however, his luck turns bad when, at an international festival in El Paso, he confronts a giant Viking strongman and a Kung Fu expert from Asia, and he realizes that either of these men could easily destroy him! His ego having suffered major damage, he resolves to find someone that very day on whom he can take out his rage and wrath. While still at the festival, he sees Nikos Diamantopoulos, a 14-year old boy, dressed in an ethnic Greek costume from a closed era, something like a Scottish kilt. The costume infuriates Bull who, with his cowboy, blue jeans, and monster truck mentality, vows to catch Nikos and deal him a severe lesson. Bull finds Nikos walking home through a dark neighborhood and sets two of his killer dogs on the boy, who is badly injured, yet saved from death by his brave dog Rocket, who arrived and diverted the violence to himself. Bull leaves Nikos atop a fire ant mound, worsening his injuries. By means of a fortunate chain of events, a high tech medicine man, Ray Singing Fire, who has boyhood debts to two Greeks, enters the picture and vows to right things for Nikos. Unfortunately for Big Bull Chaney, Singing Fire has many of the same Kung Fu skills as Chang Tien Ming, one of the men who made Bull back away at the El Paso festival. Singing Fire corners Bull at Wild Eyes and, in front of his own criminal associates, gives Bull a gut wrenching lesson about stinging insects, feeling this appropriate retribution for the many fire ant stings Nikos took. Additionally, Singing Fire does major damage to Bull's beer distributorship, causing a steep decline in sales through a clandestine mailing to its customers. Now the angriest man on earth, Bull plans revenge on the Indian medicine man, but cannot locate him. An effort to find Nikos also failed. In frustration, Bull journeys to Eagle Pass, Texas, to visit uncle Jeeter about the problem, who then consults with the Chaney family attorney, Wade Blankenship. The lawyer calls a Mafia phone number, and arranges to bring in a Greek speaking gangster to act as a spy to locate Nikos. With the confidence of Nikos clergyman gained, the spy locates Nikos, who is then kidnapped, along with his doctor and his parents. A video of the victims being menaced by Bull's killer dogs is sent to the Greek Orthodox priest, who then contacts Singing Fire at his reclusive New Mexico home. The medicine man must devise a way to save the victims from Big Bull Chaney, who plans to execute them by dog mauling at a secretive dog fighting site in remote West Texas, in full view of around 100 criminals invited from all over the United States. The climax of chapter 5 illustrates that those who are wantonly violent usually encounter someone they cannot face, as Bull dies under the claws and teeth of the medicine man's wolverine, a weapon he desperately tries to avoid using. Chapter 6 depicts Bull suffering in hell, the fate unquestionably awaiting all bullies, but it also details the restoration of Nikos to a normal life through regenerative medicine; portrays his dog Rocket at the gates of heaven; and his new companion dog, Rocket II, graciously arranged for his by the veterinarian, Ed Landerholme, who was able to salva
New York Times Bestseller: This in-depth account of Charles Sobhraj, the serial killer portrayed in Netflix miniseries The Serpent, is “compulsive reading” (The Plain Dealer). There was no pattern to the murders, no common thread other than the fact that the victims were all vacationers, robbed of their possessions and slain in seemingly random crimes. Authorities across three continents and a dozen nations had no idea they were all looking for same man: Charles Sobhraj, aka “The Serpent.” A handsome Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian origin, Sobhraj targeted backpackers on the “hippie trail” between Europe and South Asia. A master of deception, he used his powerful intellect and considerable sex appeal to lure naïve travelers into a life of crime. When they threatened to turn on him, Sobhraj murdered his acolytes in cold blood. Between late 1975 and early 1976, a dozen corpses were found everywhere from the boulevards of Paris to the slopes of the Himalayas to the back alleys of Bangkok and Hong Kong. Some police experts believe the true number of Sobhraj’s victims may be more than twice that amount. Serpentine is the “grotesque, baffling, and hypnotic” true story of one of the most bizarre killing sprees in modern history (San Francisco Chronicle). Edgar Award–winning author Thomas Thompson’s mesmerizing portrait of a notorious sociopath and his helpless prey “unravels like fiction, but afterwards haunts the reader like the document it is” (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland).
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LOOK FOR THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES • “Both an American tragedy and [Grisham’s] strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true.”—Entertainment Weekly John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime masterpiece that tells the story of small town justice gone terribly awry. In the Major League draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the state of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A’s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa. In 1982, a twenty-one-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder. With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row. If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you. Don’t miss Framed, John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, co-authored with Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey.
For 20 years, Tommy Lynn Sells killed without remorse. This horrific crime spree stunned the nation and goes beyond the typical psychopath behavior of serial killers. Some serial killers seem to have such ideal lives that it's almost impossible to understand the motivation for their crimes. Then there are killers who had such rough childhoods that it's easy to see why they turned out the way they did... Killers like Tommy Lynn Sells. Having hit the road to live his life how he wanted when he was just fourteen years old, Sells had vivid memories of the places he'd visited, such as the Grand Canyon, Vegas, and Niagara Falls but vaguely remembers his first murder. He wasn't sure who the victim was or what state the killing occurred in. He did recall that the first life he took was in self-defense, but that was never proven... Wherever it started, his murder spree would last for decades and it would cause enormous harm to his victims and their families. Scroll back up and order your copy today!
The Brutal Texan: The Shocking True Story of Serial Killer Tommy Lynn SellsThe name Tommy Lynn Sells doesn't strike fear in hearts like the names Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy, nor does it ring too many bells with the media-savvy and the true crime aficionados. Sells was one of the most horrific, violent, and active serial killers in recent history. With the influx of mass shootings and terrorist attacks plaguing modern society, the concept of a serial killer seems only to exist in true crime books, documentaries, and podcasts. Having been executed only in2014, Sells is a grim reminder that the serial killers of our society's and history's criminal past are still much active. Sells's decades-long reign of murderous terror spanned eight states earning him the nickname the "Coast to Coast Killer" or the "Cross Country Killer". Law enforcement along with Sells's own confessions concluded a total of 22 total victims. Sells's is believed to have killed upto 60 victims. The story of Tommy Lynn Sells's life is similar to that of other serial killers; full of childhood trauma, abuse, and events that set off a strand of murders. However, Sells's story is unique in comparison to other killers based on his victimology and patterns. Like his contemporary Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins, Sells was also extremely skilled at his crimes and admittedly loved the act of murder which makes him and those similar even more terrifying.
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.
On November 8, 1985, 18-year-old Tom Odle brutally murdered his parents and three siblings in the small southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon, sending shockwaves throughout the nation. The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in U.S. history. Odle was sentenced to death and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life. However, Illinois governor George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and later commutation of all death sentences in 2003, changed Odle’s sentence to natural life. The commutation of his death sentence was an epiphany for Odle. Prior to the commutation of his death sentence, Odle lived in denial, repressing any feelings about his family and his horrible crime. Following the commutation and the removal of the weight of eventual execution associated with his death sentence, he was confronted with an unfamiliar reality. A future. As a result, he realized that he needed to understand why he murdered his family. He reached out to Dr. Robert Hanlon, a neuropsychologist who had examined him in the past. Dr. Hanlon engaged Odle in a therapeutic process of introspection and self-reflection, which became the basis of their collaboration on this book. Hanlon tells a gripping story of Odle’s life as an abused child, the life experiences that formed his personality, and his tragic homicidal escalation to mass murder, seamlessly weaving into the narrative Odle’s unadorned reflections of his childhood, finding a new family on death row, and his belief in the powers of redemption. As our nation attempts to understand the continual mass murders occurring in the U.S., Survived by One sheds some light on the psychological aspects of why and how such acts of extreme carnage may occur. However, Survived by One offers a never-been-told perspective from the mass murderer himself, as he searches for the answers concurrently being asked by the nation and the world.
