In the true crime area, I like the books by John Douglas and Robert Ressler and others who have made it their business to get inside the minds of criminals. I seem to recall Mindhunter, by Douglas, and Whoever Fights Monsters, by Ressler, as being particularly interesting.
As for “favorite” true crimes – for lack of a better term – I have to go with Herman Mudgett aka H. H. Holmes
RR
Aha! Thanks for clearing that up! I see the misunderstanding was a product of my being dense.
To show you how dense I am, I’ll admit that even after reading Eve’s explanation I was still scratching my head thinking :“Now why does being on a suicide hotline prevent you from revealing the information that your co-worker is a serial killer?” and “She set her daughter up with someone she knew was a serial killer!?”
:o I feel liks such a schmoe.
After the extended hijack I feel I should contribute to the actual OP of the thread.
I find myself occasionally morbidly interested in True Crime. I haven’t read a lot of True Crime novels (the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter). At one time I found a True Crime type website that consisted of letters and artwork from serial killers and various other unseemly types that someone had posted. Along with the letters were detailed accounts of the grisly crimes. I read a lot of them even though they horrified me. I had to stop when I started to get really freaked out about the possibility of something like that happening to me or someone I loved. What really struck me about that website was the seeming randomness and unpredictability of the crime and the delight the killers took in their crimes (at least from what was in the letters the allegedly wrote). I couldn’t help obsessing about the last moment’s of the poor victims’ lives. How one minute the victim is getting into her car to go to work and the next she is trapped in a nightmare of torture and pain that ends in her gruesome death. Blergh!
I think for me the fascination with it is a form of the fascination with death in general. My mind has a hard time comprehending and processing the ending of a life. A gruesome, sudden and pointless ending is even more difficult to understand. A gruesome, sudden, pointless ending at the hand’s of another human being is utterly baffling and hurtful to me so I have to keep examining it and prodding at it like an abscessed tooth until I can’t take it anymore.
And yet I still keep doing it. Maybe I’m just a sicko.
The Borden photo wasn’t too bad, but the Black Dahlia photo was very disturbing.
I find true crime fascinating also. I visited the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast/Museum, and I’d love to stay a night in the house. I love browsing the True Crime section.
Ann Rule used to be pretty good. I enjoyed Small Sacrifices, and it was oddly compelling to watch her spar with Diane Downs on Oprah back in '89. It seems that after Small Sacrifices, however, the quality of her writing went down.
Sheri
For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by the Leopold and Loeb case. I even wrote a paper examining the three films that were made about it: Rope, Compulsion, and Swoon .
I also read Hal Higdon’s extensive analysis of it and a play about it by John Logan called Never the Sinner .
Talk about an obsession…
Oooh, you just reminded me—I just bought a paperback book containing the 1926 Chicago Tribune articles that inspired the Broadway show, movie and musical “Chicago.” Fascinating! A couple of wise-cracking, hard-boiled murderesses, and some real “Front-Page” style reporting.
Both gals were acquitted, by the way, and Beaulah Annan, the inspiration for Roxie Hart, died in an asylum a year or two later.
What’s really unhealthy is that I just laughed out loud reading this post.
If you want to look at something true-crime-related that’s really disturbing, check out Lustmord-The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers; it’s a collection of writing, artwork, and other effluvia from a wide variety of killers. IMHO, Schechter’s books are kind of overly lurid-which in this crowd may not be such a bad thing. The best true-crime I’ve read lately is Gary Indiana’s Three Day Fever, about Andrew Cunanan. I highly recommend it.
Yeah; I couldn’t find the one I wanted in high enough resolution. She, and I’m figuring they arrested the right person, pretty much flayed his face down to the bone. Not your commonplace break-in murder. Somebody who really, really didn’t like Andrew Borden killed him.
The TV movie of it had Elizabeth Montgomery nude, at least. They didn’t show much but I settled for it.
Oh goodie, one of my fave subjects, and one I actually think I might’ve ‘won’ a GD on.
Well, it all started when I found a copy of Helter Skelter when I was eleven or so, read it, and went to ask my parents some questions. I was then regaled with an entirely apocryphal tale of my Uncle Jerry supposedly bringing Manson home with him waaaayyyy back when my Uncle was a biker…
I am so Canadian I was born somewhere else…two guesses where.
I’ve been studying this stuff ever since, sorta like what happened to Roy Hazelwood when he first heard about Harvey Glatman. I could not wrap my head around the whole thing, and NEEDED to understand what it was all about. I don’t pretend to yet, but I’m getting there… I also live in an area that has one of the highest percentages of sexual assault in Canada.
Ya know, I’m not sure which one is my favorite case. Odom and Lawson are up there, just because of the weird partnership between the two. One liked to rape and the other liked to kill. Of course, the Wests over in England are of considerable interest to me as well, since very very few serial sexual predators of this sort are female. Most also play a subordinate role to the male - there seems to be some question as to which one was dominant in what situation.
Or perhaps the South Side Strangler, because that one was a racial cross (most major crimes like this are kept within racial groups - black men tending to murder black women, etc…etc.), the wrong man was initially convicted, and it was one of the first major cases where DNA was used.
Colin Wilson is an excellent author on this subject. Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence was fascinating. Also gotta recommend Signature Killers, by Robert D. Keppel, and Without Conscience: the Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, by Dr. Robert Hare. And I gotta go home and check my titles, 'cause I got a really good one by a female forensic psychiatrist who talks about some of the problems in dealing with these guys both in trial and in the prison system afterwards.
If the book says “True Detective Magazine” on it anywhere, I ain’t interested. Don’t bother with anything by Maria Eftimades, either - she’s more interested in the sensationalism about a case than the whys, wherefores, and hows.
I like Anne Rule, but her foray into writing fiction based on true crimes sucks bigtime. I don’t even recall the title…
Second the endorsement of Colin Wilson. He’s the best I’ve read in the genre.
dropzone, I really don’t know what it is with serial killers and Canadian women, but I know I like reading about them!
Ginger, I read Max Haines as well… I have two volumes of his collected works here at home. I like his writing style; it just pulls you in.
I should really read more historical true crime, as well. Not that I don’t read it, but this thread just reminded me of how nice historical true crime can be. Sounds weird, but it’s true! 
It’s true that Ann Rule doesn’t write like she used to, but I always liked her books (I think I’ve read most of them).
booklover, I also know about Parker and Hulme… my mother rented the Heavenly Creatures video once and warned me not to watch the last scene, as it wasn’t appropriate for me. (I was maybe around 15 or 16 at the time) I watched it anyway, and still remember it… who could not? I think they murdered her because they couldn’t go on a trip somewhere together or something like that. When my mother found out that Juliet Hulme and Anne Perry were one and the same, she thought that was a pretty big deal, as indeed it was. However, for some reason, she keeps mixing up Anne Perry and Ann Rule… so she thinks that I like Anne Perry’s books, and not Ann Rule’s! 
:eek:
Due to this “unhealthy obsession with true crime”, my mom now thinks that if I read books about people who kill their parents,I will do the same thing! :rolleyes: I don’t think so! I might feel like doing so on any number of occasions, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll grab the nearest handy sharp kitchen implement and go for the jugular! Sheeeeeeeeesh! :rolleyes:
Go to my old hometown of Yellowknife, or go to the Yukon and visit tisiphone. You might get some insight.
Oooh! I LOVE this stuff!
Like **Eve, ** I’m big on the historical ones, and Hollywood murders are particularly fascinating.
William Desmond Taylor is one of my real favorites. I think it was Charlotte Shelby, but I read another book (damned if I can remember the name!) that presented a kinda convincing case for his murder being drug-related.
I adore the gruesome true-crime stuff. I have found quite a few rather interesting links right here in MPSIMS. I don’t know why I enjoy them so much. I am a truly paranoid person sometimes (I was convinced the white car always parked on the street behind my house contained either A) undercover cops, or B) mobsters). I am truly terrified by what I read, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. (I still get freaked out looking in the dark corners of my room at night after having read Gerald’s Game: Hey, is that a bone-nawing necrophiliac over there? I ask myself). I usually know not to do it when I am home alone in the basement, but sometimes I lack judgment and freak myself out.
I think my horror thing started when I began reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz at the tender age of 11. When I was 14, my brother’s weird friend who had a crush on me gave me his cherished copy of The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers and Mass Murderers; I was grossed out but gradually became intrigued. And I’ve loved true-crime ever since: the Black Dahlia case, the Borden slayings, and Jack the Ripper are my favorites. I like those A&E specials too, and I like the Hollywood Mysteries & Scandals series on E! hosted by AJ Benza. Hollywood stuff (like the Lana Turner/Johnny Stampanato/Lana’s daughter Cheryl murder triangle, or the Fatty Arbuckle murder) is usually my special favorite, just because it’s so juicy and…dark. And celluloid-y.
I couldn’t even tell you why I love it so much…I know it’s perverse to enjoy terrifying myself. But I keep doing it. Go figure. I’ll definitely check out some of the authors mentioned here.
I know! Up and down the whole left coast of this continent is the Happy Hooker Hunting Ground! Not that the Chicago to Central Wisconsin corridor hasn’t had MORE than its share of notable cases. But Yellowknife is further inland than that. Isolated. Lonesome. The sort of place where your screams would never be heard. A place where a beautiful redhead has to stay on her toes just to stay alive.
Pleasant dreams! 
[sub]Cripes, now I scared myself, too.[/sub]
Small communities have some reeeeeal weird folks in them…the guy my sister knew that had his dead girlfriend under his bed for over a year (slept on it too, creeped the hell out of his friends), the other guy who murdered his ex because she had the nerve to dump him - my stepmother knew her…the House of Horrors case in Surrey (crack house, had several murders in it) - I knew one of the murdered women (Annette went out with my husband’s stepbrother).
Then there’s Irene and Irma. Snake-mean women, both of them. Irma murdered her sister over a man about fifteen-twenty years ago, and has continued her stellar career as Vicious Skank since - one of those women you don’t look at because she might come over and stick a knife in you. Irene is slightly less nasty than Irma (hasn’t actually killed anyone - yet), I’ve partied with her and she was fun - just don’t ever turn your back to her. I am not sure how they still find men willing to go to bed with them - these are women you would want to wear a full body condom with, and certainly not ever actually sleep.
Up here, there’s so few people that when things like this happen, we all know the people involved. Rather more personally than we are comfortable with, in most cases.
I can introduce you to Irma…fascinating study in female psychopathology. She’s had to quit drinking (killed an elder in a DUI incident), so she might be safe to talk to. Maybe. Just don’t go for a beer.
And I know more…but refrain from boring you guys. Or creeping you out further.
Flamsterette_x, tell your mom you’re reading them for therapy, so you won’t HAVE to kill anybody. That’s what I told my coworkers, anyways. Now they leave me alone when they see me reading them. And I didn’t know Anne Perry was Juliet Hulme! Hmh. Wonder what that says about her psyche. Maybe I should read some more of her stuff - I didn’t care for the one I read.
And I can’t find the book by the forensic psychologist, it seems to have been swallowed by the bookcases. I have carnivorous bookcases, that devour the occasional volume and only regurgitate them under extreme pressure. Somehow, it’s never one of the Danielle Steele opuses (opi?), which I would never notice or miss. :mad:
Hmmm. In my excitement at finding more people that actually want to talk about this, I missed the part about favorite HISTORICAL true crimes. I think my favorite is Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River. Mostly because we still don’t know who he was, really, nor do we know why he took out like that, except that he might’ve been ‘bushed’. There’s a new book out on him that I haven’t been able to afford yet (tomorrow, YAY!) that claims to trace him, I can hardly wait!
Dropzone, one name - Robert Hansen. Granted, he was Alaskan, but still… And as far as I know, they’re still looking for Snookie Catholique’s sister, who disappeared while hitchhiking to Yellowknife…there’s a few that go missing every year. Same problem as Vancouver - who will look for the runaways/problem children? Nobody but the families take it seriously.
Ooooh, and here’s two of my favorite links…
www.crimelibrary.com Particularly the serial killers section and the criminal mind section.
www.apbonline.com Unfortunately, since the dot com crash, it’s pretty much a cobweb site, but the APB Crime Solvers section is pretty good.
Unfortunately I had a big problem with my bookmark file, and I lost the Cold Cases site, dammit.
I’m not into the ick factor…but I know people who know people (all halfassed stories begin this way) that know participants in the Cullen Davis and the Texas Chagra case (which involved Woody Harrelson’s dad as a hitman).
A lot of fascinating stuff in those cases, I am sure a dozen books have been written on each - as well as the obligatory TV movies. But the truth is stranger than fiction.
" . . . the Hollywood Mysteries & Scandals series on E! hosted by AJ Benza."
—Omigod, that show was SUCH crap, I am so glad it was cancelled! They relied on bad re-enactments with summer-stock actors and innaccurate costumes, and mixed interviews with actual experts with interviews by know-nothing nutjobs. And Benza was SUCH a sleazebag and gay-baiter. He actually said that poor Ramon Novarro “deserved” to be murdered because of his “perverted lifestyle!!” I couldn’t beleive E! aired that.
I’d love to do a biographical article on Virginia Rappe, the girl in the “Fatty” Arbuckle case. It was the classic blame-the-victim scenario. In an effort to make Arbuckle seem less guilty, she was tarred as a no-talent, slutty bit player. She was actually a successful, rising actress who got very good reviews in several films. But I can’t find enough on her to do an article, sad to say . . .
Give me some time, Eve, and I’ll see what I can dig up. Somewhere in one of my anthologies is a discussion of that case, and the person analyzing it comes to the conclusion that Fatty didn’t do it. There might be a list of source documents in the book, which might give you a starting place.
Tisi—Oh, I have a lot of information on the case itself. What I want is biographical and career background—non-Fatty-related—on Virginia Rappe, so I can do a biographical piece and show her as more than just “that dead girl.” She deserves better than that.
As far as the case, there’s been good sleuthing that indicates she died of a ruptured bladder due to an untreated urinary-tract infection (this was long before antibiotics, remember). Arbuckle certainly wasn’t guilty of murder or even manslaughter—but everyone at the party (especially the house doctor) WAS guilty of “depraved indifference” in not getting the poor girl to a hospital for two or three days.
Hi, my name is pugluvr and I am a true crime-aholic.
I love to watch “American Justice” because I like the courtroom drama aspect of famous crime trials. I also love “Secrets of Forensic Science,” although this show can get pretty grisly.
Since I’m a legal secretary, I have access to a big law library full of caselaw, and I sometimes scan the books for “People vs.” cases. The vast majority are two-bit burglaries, assaults, etc., but every now and then you come across a doozy of a serial murderer case. It makes for some grim lunchtime reading, I can tell you.
One case I’d love to find is the “infamous Snyder-Gray” insurance murder case, upon which the movie Double Indemnity is based. I find a few bits of info online, but I’d really like to read the case itself. I do remember that the actual real-life killers were nowhere near as clever or tidy as the movie killers were.