St. Martin's true crime library

"Nick, Carter, and Angelo bring their monster expertise on a camping trip to the woods, where they accidentally unleash creatures that have the power to copy human appearance exactly"--

"Alba, Texas. In 2008, Terry Caffey, a home health care aide and aspiring preacher, was asleep in his bedroom when he woke up to a barrage of bullets. His wife, Penny, was killed instantly. With blood pouring from five bullet wounds, among other serious injuries, Terry tried--but failed--to save his two youngest children before crawling out of his burning house. Meanwhile, Terry's sixteen-year-old daughter, Erin, was missing. Once Erin was found by local authorities, she claimed she had been kidnapped--but could not remember the details. It wasn't until Terry was fully conscious that he could explain what had really happened: He'd been shot, point-blank, by two young men. One of them he did not know; the other was Charlie James Wilkinson. Charlie was Erin's nineteen-year-old boyfriend, forbidden from entering the Caffeys' home. Until Erin helped Charlie come up with a plan to do away with her disapproving parents once and for all..."--P. of cover.

Russia at the turn of the century provides the setting for comedy sketches about life's minor tragedies.

On September 17, 1998, police found Las Vegas gambling magnate Ted Binion lying dead on the floor of his palatial home, an empty bottle of Xanax beside him. The police had been called by Binion's live-in lover, Sandra Murphy, 23, a California girl who had been working in a Vegas strip club when Binion had first met her. At first it seemed it was a fatal drug overdose that hilled the handsome multi-millionaire. But was it? A few days later, Binion's "friend" Rick Tabish was arrested for trying to break into a vault where the eccentric millionaire had stored seven million dollars' worth of silver bars and coins. Family members hired ex-homicide detective-turned-private investigator Tom Dillard to start digging into the case. Dillard turned over the evidence he collected to Las Vegas police. What they found led to Binion's death being ruled a homicide and Murphy and Tabish's arrest for murder. The state said they were greedy lovers who'd conspired to kill Binion before he could strike Murphy out of his will, while the defense claimed that his vengeful family was trying to railroad Murphy to keep her from inheriting her fair share of the estate. The two sides collided in court in what became the Southwest's Murder Trial of the Century! But in a dramatic chain of events, both Murphy and Tabish were acquitted of murdering Binion.

In 1989, Aileen Wuornos cruised Florida's I-95 for strangers and free rides. By 1990, seven of the men who had crossed her path had met their fate at the end of her .22 caliber pistol. Convicted in six of the murders, she claimed self-defense--then in turn blamed her ex-husband, her family, her lesbian lover, her defense team, the media, the Gulf War, and bum luck for the cold-blooded slayings. Written by the reporter who broke the story, this the startling account of Wuornos's brutal killing spree, which led to one of the most highly publicized trials, convictions, and executions in all of American crime.

Melanie McGuire, a mother and a well respected nurse decides she's had enough of her husband Bill. Not only does she kill him but she dismembers him, packs his body parts in a designer suitcase and dumps him in the Chesapeake Bay. She almost got away with it....

After midnight on November 26,2001,someone bludgeoned Terry King to death while he slept,and set his Florida home on fire.By the time the firefighter extinguished the blaze,King's sons,Alex and Derek,were at the home of their forty year old friend,Ricky Chavez, a convicted child-molester.By the next afternoon,following confessions,both boys were charged as adults in their father's slaying.Chavez was tried separately for the same crime-incredibly by the same attorney who would prosecute Alex and Derek,and argue contradictory theories....

They went from praying to preying... Priests, pasters, ministers, and nuns: they are the men and women of God. We trust them unconditionally, tell them our darkest deeds, turn to them in our most desperate hour. We would never, in our wildest dreams, expect them to be...cold-blooded murderers. Now, peek into the confessionals of eleven clergymen and -women who did the unthinkable-- who broke the most sacred commandment: Thou shalt not kill. Pastor Edmund Lopes could bring a congregation to its knees. Little did they know that years before, after murdering his wife and stabbing his girlfriend, he had found religion in prison and jumped parole to become a Baptist minister-- until police caught up with him, ten years after his escape. Sister Sheila Ryan De Luca, having left her Franciscan convent after allegations of a lesbian affair with another nun, stands accused of brutally murdering a man who she claims raped her. Ultimately she served ten years in prison until her conviction was overturned. Reverend Freddie Armstrong heard the voice of God telling him to "kill the Antichrist," so the schizophrenic ordained priest took a sharp butcher's knife and proceeded to stab and decapitate 81-year-old Fred Neal, a beloved local minister who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Josef Fritzl was a 73-year-old retired engineer in Austria. He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family,although one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been lost to a religious cult. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth's children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls' doorstep; Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth's disappearance... For twenty-four years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon, complete with sound-proof paneling and code-protected electric locks. There, she would eventually give birth to a total of seven of Josef's children. One died in infancy and the other three were raised alongside Elisabeth, never to see the light of day.

Documents the killing of elderly nun, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl by Father Gerald Robinson, a popular priest who was not convicted of her murder-- which had overtones of a Satanic ritual-- until twenty-five years later.