"In 1988, MIchael Hayes committed the most heinous of crimes and compounded his felony with the shamelessly blasphemous excuse that he had been on a mission from God when he murdered four people he did not know. The gullible jury accepted the opinion testimony of the defense-hired expert witnesses as being truthful and chose to excuse Hayes's atrocity. This book details what led to the fateful event and documents the chronology of the evening of 17 July 1988 ..."--P. [4] of cover.
On January 13, 1975, the enterprising community of Elizabethtown, Kentucky (a few miles from Fort Knox and the gold vault) was rocked with the news that one of their own, Peggy Rhodes--beloved housewife, mother, and grandmother--was killed when a bomb exploded in the family barn. An hour south along I-65 lies Bowling Green, a city known for small town values, a burgeoning industrial complex, the expanding Western Kentucky University campus, and as "Home of the Corvette". However, the city was also just one generation removed from earning the nickname "Little Chicago," a regional hotbed for car thefts, bootlegging, gambling, prostitution--and worse still--bombings and horrific murders. Murder on Youngers Creek Road is the true story of a murder-for-hire gone wrong that involves a well-known automobile dealer, two hit men hired to kill him, and a pair of high-profile business partners. The product of more than two years of research and interviews and writing, this book details one of the most complex murders of the decade and how it brought together two Kentucky towns in an unflattering way. It is a "tale of two cities" mired in the muck of greed, violence and murder, and of local efforts to bring the guilty parties to justice. In the end, both the innocent and the guilty would lose their lives. In the beginning investigators were baffled. Why would anyone want to kill a 57-year-old woman, who by all appearances did her part in community activities, loved her family and enjoyed her time playing bridge with friends? Two weeks into the New Year of 1975, a horrific explosion ripped through the body of Peggy Rhodes and her pet horse, Tony. Who could possibly have wanted her dead? On a cold dark January night, a sudden blast interrupted the stillness of freshly fallen snow and with it, the lives of several Kentucky families were changed forever....
On a long dark road in deep East Texas, James Byrd Jr. was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck one summer night in 1998. The brutal modern-day lynching stunned people across America and left everyone at a loss to explain how such a heinous crime could possibly happen in our more racially enlightened times. Many eventually found an answer in the fact that two of the three men convicted of the murder had ties to the white supremacist Confederate Knights of America. In the ex-convict ringleader, Bill King, whose body was covered in racist and satanic tattoos, people saw the ultimate monster, someone so inhuman that his crime could be easily explained as the act of a racist psychopath. Few, if any, asked or cared what long dark road of life experiences had turned Bill King into someone capable of committing such a crime. In this gripping account of the murder and its aftermath, Ricardo Ainslie builds an unprecedented psychological profile of Bill King that provides the fullest possible explanation of how a man who was not raised in a racist family, who had African American friends in childhood, could end up on death row for viciously killing a black man. Ainslie draws on exclusive in-prison interviews with King, as well as with Shawn Berry (another of the perpetrators), King's father, Jasper residents, and law enforcement and judicial officials, to lay bare the psychological and social forces—as well as mere chance—that converged in a murder on that June night. Ainslie delves into the whole of King's life to discover how his unstable family relationships and emotional vulnerability made him especially susceptible to the white supremacist ideology he adopted while in jail for lesser crimes. With its depth of insight, Long Dark Road not only answers the question of why such a racially motivated murder happened in our time, but it also offers a frightening, cautionary tale of the urgent need to intervene in troubled young lives and to reform our violent, racist-breeding prisons. As Ainslie chillingly concludes, far from being an inhuman monster whom we can simply dismiss, "Bill King may be more like the rest of us than we care to believe."
Liberty Press announces the release of Danger Road: A true crime story of murder and redemption, by criminal defense lawyer and author John P. Contini. Contini was the trial lawyer who defended Gilbert Fernandez, Jr., the former Miami-Dade police officer once named, Miamis Meanest Cop. Danger Road is the riveting courtroom drama that recreates the true crime story of three drug dealers who were brutally murdered in 1983 on a lonely stretch of dirt road - ironically named Danger Road, in the Florida Everglades. Each victim had hoped this final drug deal in Hollywood, Florida would be their big retirement score. Instead, the drug dealers allegedly found themselves at the end of a gun wielded by Metro Dade officer Gilbert Fernandez, Jr., and eventually along Danger Road in Miamis Everglades. Fernandez, formerly known as a Mr. Florida bodybuilding champion, kick boxing champion and black-belt karate instructor, was also alleged to be the muscle for the mob in South Florida. He and his crew were not there to arrest the drug dealers that night, according to police - they were there to kill them and steal their nine kilos of cocaine.
When guitarist Dean Thibodeaux tries to score weed the night before his band goes on tour, the deal ends in a brutal attack he wasn’t supposed to survive. Stiff, bloody, sore—but alive—he boards the bus with his band, determined to keep the one thing that’s important in his life on track. Carl Delacroix failed his sister. And in the dead of night, with a gun in his waistband and nothing left to lose, he fails her again: his hesitation lets her killer get away. Short on sleep, short on cash, and determined not to make a trifecta out of his failure, he takes off after her attacker. And finds himself following a tour bus. Dean Thibodeaux is sick. He’s changing. And the thing that caused it is coming after him, intent on fixing its mistake. One man is hunting evil. The other is becoming it. Salvation lies in the crossing of their paths.
Picturesque hills stained with blood. An MO like no other. Can this senior officer draw on his paratrooper past to catch a twisted mind? Read book three in David J. Gatward's suspenseful DCI Harry Grimm crime thriller series.
Murder On Staunton Road is a fast-paced narrative of a sensational unsolved homicide that captured the attention of the nation in 1953-when Juliet Staunton Clark was savagely beaten to death in her home in the haute monde neighborhood of South Hills in Charleston, West Virginia. She was the owner of the Charleston Daily Mail, the capital city's prosperous afternoon newspaper. Her murder set off a flurry of investigation under the direct supervision of Charleston's flamboyant Mayor "Jumpin" John Copenhaver. Accusations and rumors flew as the investigation swept through the town. Many charged then, and some repeat the charge today, that there was manipulation to protect prominent Charlestonians who were being questioned as possible persons of interest in the Clark murder.
This rediscovered masterpiece captures a chilling moment in the stifling early days of Communist Czechoslovakia. 1950s Prague is a city of numerous daily terrors, of political tyranny, corruption and surveillance. There is no way of knowing whether one’s neighbor is spying for the government, or what one’s supposed friend will say to a State Security agent under pressure. A loyal Party member might be imprisoned or executed as quickly as a traitor; innocence means nothing for a person caught in a government trap. When a little boy is murdered at the cinema, the ensuing investigation sheds a little too much light on the personal lives of the cinema’s female ushers, each of whom is hiding a dark secret of her own.
Midwife Sarah Brandt Malloy and her detective husband, Frank, must discover who killed a prominent—but despised—society banker before an innocent family is destroyed in Murder on Wall Street, an all-new Gaslight Mystery in the USA Today bestselling series. Reformed gangster Jack Robinson is working hard to bolster his image in Gilded Age New York City society as he prepares to become a new father. But when Hayden Norcross, the man who nearly ruined his wife, is shot in cold blood, Jack knows the police will soon come knocking on his door. Frank Malloy has to agree—things don’t look good for Jack. But surely a man as unlikeable as Hayden had more than a few enemies. And it’s soon clear that plenty of the upper echelon as well as the denizens of the most squalid areas of the city seem to have hated him. Sarah and Frank have their work cut out for them. As the daughter of the elite Decker family, Sarah has access to the social circles Hayden frequented, and the more she learns about his horrific treatment of women, the more disturbed she becomes. And as Frank investigates, he finds that Hayden had a host of unsavory habits that may have hastened his demise. But who finally killed him? Sarah and Frank must put the pieces together quickly before time runs out and Jack’s hard-won new life and family are ripped apart.
From the tenements to the town houses of nineteenth-century New York, midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy never waiver in their mission to aid the innocent and apprehend the guilty. Now, the latest novel in the Edgar®-nominated series finds Sarah and Malloy investigating the murder of a Knickerbocker club member who was made to pay his dues… Sarah Brandt’s family is one of the oldest in New York City, and her father, Felix Decker, takes his position in society very seriously. He still refuses to resign himself to his daughter being involved with an Irish Catholic police detective. But when a member of his private club—the very exclusive Knickerbocker—is murdered, Decker forms an uneasy alliance with Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy to solve the crime as discreetly as possible. Malloy soon discovers that despite his social standing, the deceased—Chilton Devries—was no gentleman. In fact, he’s left behind his own unofficial club of sorts, populated by everyone who despised him. As he and Sarah sort through the suspects, it becomes clear to her that her father is evaluating more than the detective’s investigative abilities, and that, on a personal level, there is much more at stake for Malloy than discovering who revoked Devries’ membership—permanently.
