November, 1930. One sunny Saturday afternoon, 12-year-old Mena Griffiths was playing in the park when she was lured away by an unknown man. Hours later, her strangled body was found, mouth gagged and hands crossed over her chest, in an abandoned house. Only months later, another girl was murdered; the similarities between the cases undeniable. Crime in Melbourne had taken a shocking new turn: this was the work of a serial killer, a homicidal maniac. Despite their best efforts, police had no experience dealing with this kind of criminal. What followed was years of bungled investigations, falsely accused men - and the tragic deaths of two more girls - before the murderer was finally caught and brought to justice. With all the pace of a thriller, Katherine Kovacic recounts this extraordinary, chilling true story - of failed police enquiries, a killer with a Jekyll and Hyde personality, and the families shattered when four innocent lives were cruelly taken.
In the 1970s and early '80s, southern California was shocked when dead boys began turning up with disturbing regularity alongside some of the picturesque state's most heavily traveled freeways. Victims of sadistic torture, the dead boys and young men had been raped and strangled, and their untimely deaths were eventually attributed to the Freeway Killer, an elusive psychopath whose trail of death would go down in California history as one of the worst true crime stories in the country. While the Freeway Killer ultimately turned out to be three different men, one of them was truck driver William Bonin, one of the most prolific and sadistic among American serial killers. Bonin usually preferred to work with an accomplice, and the lust killer and his cronies brutally raped and tortured his victims - Bonin loved the sounds of their screams - before strangling them and dumping them on the side of the road like garbage. Bonin confessed to committing 21 murders in the span of just a year, although many experts believe he was responsible for the deaths of many more missing young men. He was executed in 1996, and in this detailed serial killer biography, you'll learn the background that might offer some understanding of what makes a man go off the rails and become a deranged lust killer. Of course, spine-tingling story of a man whose youngest victim was a 12-year-old who was waiting for a bus to take him to Disneyland might be one that causes you to sleep with the lights on for weeks after turning the final gruesome page.
Art dealer Alex Clayton travels to Victoria's Western District to value the McMillan family's collection. At their historic sheep station, she finds an important and previously unknown colonial painting - and a family fraught with tension. There are arguments about the future of the property and its place in an ancient and highly significant indigenous landscape. When the family patriarch dies under mysterious circumstances and the painting is stolen, Alex decides to leave; then a toddler disappears and Alex's faithful dog Hogarth goes missing. With fears rising for the safety of both child and hound, Alex and her best friend John, who has been drawn into the mystery, join searchers scouring the countryside. But her attempts to unravel the McMillan family secrets have put Alex in danger, and she's not the only one. Will the killer claim another victim? Or will the landscape reveal its mysteries to Alex in time?
THE MUST-READ MULTIMILLION BESTSELLING MYSTERY SERIES—COMING SOON TO NETFLIX! • This is the story about an investigation turned obsession, full of twists and turns and with an ending you'll never expect. Everyone in Fairview knows the story. Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer? Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn't want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger. And don't miss the sequel, Good Girl, Bad Blood! "The perfect nail-biting mystery." —Natasha Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author
American serial killer Edmund Kemper III stalked co-eds in California at the height of the era of peace and free love, dismembering his victims and tossing their body parts in remote areas around Santa Cruz. As pieces of young women began washing up on shore and turning up alongside rural highways, female residents - especially college students - were decidedly on edge. A lust killer who savored the act of decapitating his victims - and often used their severed heads for sexual pleasure - Kemper's story is particularly twisted among historical serial killers. Still, the true crime tale of Edmund Kemper is particularly fascinating, because the man many people called "a gentle giant" was a near genius whose cunning manipulation of others made him particularly depraved and dangerous. This true crime story, a detailed biography of one of the most psychopathic serial killers of our time, shares some insight into the troubled childhood and awkward nature that led the American serial killer to take 10 lives, including those of six pretty co-eds, his paternal grandparents, his calculatingly cruel mother and his mother's best friend. Among historical serial killers, Kemper is especially depraved, since he included necrophilia and cannibalism in his gruesome mix of sordid criminal activity. Ultimately, Kemper's murderous inclinations and urges to kill were satisfied after he bludgeoned to death his mother, a woman he'd hated since he was eight years old, and he turned himself in. But if he hadn't finally acted on his long-held fantasy to end his mother's life, he might still be trolling California highways, getting away with murder.
Of all the many psychopaths and sociopaths that have hunted for human victims throughout history, few have been more disturbing or mysterious than Christopher Bernard Wilder - the beauty queen killer. From the middle of the 1960s until 1984, Wilder sexually assaulted countless women and murdered at least nine in Australia and the United States. The beauty queen killer was not only a true psychopath, but also a hunter as he carefully chose attractive girls and young women to victimize. But Wilder was no creepy looking killer; he was an attractive, articulate man who used a camera and offers of a modelling career to get his unsuspecting, naive victims to remote locations where he would then rape, torture, and ultimately kill them. Among serial killer biographies, Wilder's is a cautionary tale. First as a juvenile and later as a young man, Wilder was arrested on numerous occasions for sexual assaults in both Australia and United States; but he never served any time behind bars due to technicalities, witnesses refusing to testify, or the judges showing sympathy towards the beauty queen killer. When one considers some of the better known American crime stories from history, many red-flags are apparent that point towards the future criminal potential of an individual: for Wilder, the flags were bright, crimson, quite large, and difficult to avoid, yet were ignored by his friends, family, and the authorities. Christopher Wilder's saga is therefore not just a true crime murder story, but also an unfortunate example of how the system can fail to protect the public from a known sexual sadist. Open the pages of this intriguing book and read the story of an American serial killer who had it all: looks, money, and beautiful women. But as this captivating true crime story will reveal, nothing was ever enough for the beauty queen killer as he killed his way across the United States in order to satisfy his sadistic lust. Aspects of the Christopher Bernard Wilder story will disturb you, but at the same time you will find it difficult to put this serial killer biography down because you will be drawn in by the FBI's hunt to capture the elusive criminal."
Richmond, Virginia: On the morning of October 19, 1979, parolee James Briley stood before a judge and vowed to quit the criminal life. That same day, James met with brothers Linwood, Anthony, and 16-year-old neighbor Duncan Meekins. What they planned-and carried out-would make them American serial-killer legends, and reveal to police investigators a 7-month rampage of rape, robbery, and murder exceeding in brutality already documented cases of psychopaths, sociopaths, and sex criminals. As reported in this book, the Briley gang were responsible for the killing of 11 people (among these, a 5-year-old boy and his pregnant mother), but possibly as many as 20. Unlike most criminals, however, the Briley gang's break-ins and robberies were purely incidental-mere excuses for rape and vicious thrill-kills. When authorities (aided by plea-bargaining Duncan Meekins) discovered the whole truth, even their tough skins crawled. Nothing in Virginian history approached the depravities, many of which were committed within miles of the Briley home, where single father James Sr. padlocked himself into his bedroom every night. But this true crime story did not end with the arrests and murder convictions of the Briley gang. Linwood, younger brother James, and 6 other Mecklenburg death-row inmates, hatched an incredible plan of trickery and manipulation-and escaped from the "state-of-the-art" facility on May 31, 1984. The biggest death-row break-out in American history.
In an area of Houston known as the Heights, boys had been going missing for years, but it was the peace-and-love 1970s, so police just called them runaways, even if they'd left with little more than a swimsuit and some change. When the truth was uncovered, and police - and the rest of Houston - realized the boys had become victims of notorious American serial killer Dean Corll, Houston recoiled in horrified shock. Residents realized that they had not only become the site of the most grisly mass murder in Texas history, but the worst mass murder in all of U.S. history. The word serial killer had not yet been coined, and as body after decomposing body was uncovered from the dirt floor of the boat shed where Corll and his two young accomplishes had buried most of the victims, there were hardly words for what this sadistic lust killer had done. The depraved evil that Corll and his accomplices - two teen boys themselves who were promised money but eventually developed a thrill for the kill - was revealed as one of the cohorts, Wayne Henley, calmly, affably, told the stories of how after Corll sexually assaulting them and tortured them in unimaginable fashion, they would kill them and take the boys' bodies away to bury them beneath the dirt. This serial killer's biography will haunt you, especially as you learn more about the sadistic torture methods lust killer Corll used on his young victims, all lured to his various apartments by people they believed were their friends. While Corll is dead, killed by Henley during the lust killer's last night of depravity, the case remains entwined in Houston history, and unforgettable for the families of those who lived it.
Art dealer Alex Clayton and conservator John Porter are thrilled to be previewing the Melbourne International Museum of Art's (MIMA) newest exhibition, until they witness a museum worker collapse and badly damage a reportedly cursed painting. Belief in the curse is strengthened when MIMA's senior conservator Meredith Buchanan dies less than twenty-four hours later while repairing the work. But Alex and John are convinced there is a decidedly human element at work in the museum. The evidence sets them on the trail of a mysterious painting that could hold a key to Meredith's death, and the stakes are raised higher when Alex is offered her dream job at MIMA. Damaging the museum's reputation will jeopardise her professional future. The friends soon realise they are facing an adversary far more ruthless than they had anticipated, and there is much more at risk than Alex's career.
Patrick Wayne Kearney had a grudge. The American serial killer had been small and scrawny as a kid, and his classmates bullied him mercilessly. As a result, Kearney took his rage out on young men who either made the mistake of hitching a ride with him or catching his eye at a gay bar or bathhouse. In the process, he became one of the most prolific serial killers in California history. This serial killer biography goes behind the scenes, exploring the background that led to Kearney's horrific acts as well as the swath of death that the man who would become known as the Trash Bag Killer would carve across California. In the world of true crime murder, Kearney was a monster who preyed upon unsuspected boys and young men, and after they were dead, he used their bodies for sexual satisfaction before dismembering them and bagging them neatly up in industrial-size garbage bags. With the innocent looks of an accountant, Kearney seemed like a normal guy, if you didn't hear the gunshots - or happen to look out your window while the serial killer was taking out the trash. In the 1970s, this serial killer had California on edge. Today, Kearney's true crime story will have you on the edge of your seat, wondering how one man could so easily conjure up the devil and bring him so dreadfully to life.
