I have no read true crime in years and am looking for some things to disturb me. Books I have read in the past include:
[ul]
[li]Helter Skelter[/li][li]Devil’s Knot[/li][li]The Stranger Beside Me[/li][li]Some book about the McMartin preschool trial whose name escapes me[/li][li]In Cold Blood[/li][li]The Piano Teacher[/li][/ul]
I am currently reading My Life Among the Serial Killers
Any others that you morbid folks might recommend?
“In Cold Blood” is the best true crime book of all time, regardless of what you may think of the ethics of the author. I’d also put “The Stranger Beside Me” in the top 5, partly because of the unique connection between the author and killer.
One of Joe Wambaugh’s books belongs in the top rankings as well, probably “The Blooding” over “The Onion Field”, although both are classics.
Jack Olsen also deserves to be represented. A few of his best are “Doc”, “Son” and “The Misbegotten Son”.
Columbine by Dave Cullen
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston
(Admittedly, the last two are a bit broader in scope than just the crime.) I also loved *Helter Skelter *and In Cold Blood.
In Cold Blood.
I thought “Hellhound on his Trail” (a true-crime approach to the MLK Jr. assassination) was a good read.
I recently read Lost Girls by Robert Kolker. It is about the unsolved Murders of Prostitutes on Long Island. It focuses on the lives of the victims that have been identified and is a good read. Makes you think twice about making jokes about “Dead Hookers”.
Joe McGinniss’s 1983 book about the “Green Beret” murders, “Fatal Vision,” is compelling reading. It inspired at least one other book–on the topic of journalistic ethics, Janet Malcolm’s 1990 “The Journalist and the Murderer.”
(The accused, Jeffrey MacDonald, had hired McGinniss to write his story, expecting a book that would proclaim his innocence. The book did the opposite. All the writers MacDonald approached, including McGinniss, insisted on a signed release stating that MacDonald would have no editorial control over the book that would result from their interviews. Nonetheless, MacDonald sued McGinniss for breach of contract.)
In Broad Daylight is an interesting read about the life and death of Ken McElroy, killed by vigilante justice in Skidmore, Missouri.
Seconded.
Along those lines, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson was also worth reading.
And the Sea Will Tell, by Vincent Bugliosi was rivetingly disturbing, as was The Unicorn’s Secret, about hippie, trunk murderer, creep Ira Einhorn.
The Hillside Stranglers by Darcy O’Brien.
I’m still sorry I read as much of it as I did. Very, very unsettling. Sometimes there are things you don’t want to know.
The Killer of Little Shepherds, while not nearly as disturbing as The Hillside Stranglers, and while being a ‘quality’ book, was more than gruesome at times. A lot more.
I was disturbed by The Perfect Victim for a long time. It is about Colleen Stan, a young woman who was imprisoned in a wooden box under a bed for seven years.
I might even go get it off the shelf to revisit it now that it has returned to mind.
For a different kind of disturbing, try Everybody Pays:
It’s the story of a witness to a 1972 Chicago murder, and how his decision to testify ripped apart the lives of everyone involved, even the FBI agents protecting him.
The murder was an ordinary personal one, but the killer was a mob hitman, so the Outfit was inevitably involved, bringing along every form of political, judicial, law enforcement, and social corruption.
Every Breath You Take** is a fascinating (and very sad) story about this woman- Sheila Bellush. In the beginning of the book Ann Rule says that Sheila Bellush had a feeling that her ex husband was going to kill her and asked her sister to contact Ann Rule to write her story if anything did happen to her.
Buried Dreams - Tim Cahill’s account of the crimes of John Wayne Gacy
I also read his other book, “Murder in Little Egypt”. It’s about a doctor from southern Illinois who killed two of his children for the life insurance money, and committed a LOT of other crimes too. I lived in the area for a while, and some people still nearly worship the guy, 30 years later. 
Some others that immediately come to mind include:
Suffer The Little Children (a man who killed relatives and abused many people terribly)
Green River, Running Red (Ann Rule book about Gary Ridgway’s victims; all of them had heartbreaking lives)
The Pied Piper of Tucson (serial killer from the mid 1960s; the book was written not long afterwards)
Gerold Frank’s “The Boston Strangler”
The Good Nurse (current bestseller; its subject, Charles Cullen, was recently profiled on “60 Minutes”)
Blind Eye, about medical serial killer Michael Swango; I used to live in a city where he practiced, and heard plenty of stories about him
Too Young To Kill, about a group of teenagers who killed someone who thought she was their friend
and plenty of others, too.
I actually prefer true crime books about women criminals, because people tend not to suspect them, and honestly, women who are wired this way are WAY more dangerous than men.
p.s. The new book about Charles Manson, the one with the bright yellow cover and Manson as a smiling adolescent, is quite interesting too. 99% of the people who met him throughout his life hated him instantly; the other 1% worshipped him and this was how he managed to have his little mini-cult.
There are also two true-crime books called “Zero At The Bone”. One is about that guy from Arkansas who killed his wife, all his children and grandchildren, and their spouses too. About 15 total, and at least one of the grandchildren had been fathered by him. :eek: This happened in the 1980s.
The other is about the kidnapping and murder of Bobby Greenlease, the son of a wealthy Kansas City couple, and more specifically the fate of the ransom money. That in itself is a very fascinating story, and is the emphasis of the book. In short, much of it was never recovered, and all of the people believed to have stuck their fingers into that pie died horrible deaths.
“83 Hours Till Dawn” is another true crime classic that was about a kidnapping, but not a murder. It was made into a TV movie some years later, and it’s a good book even though the ending is well known. This happened about 40 years ago, and AFAIK the book is still in print.
A book someone right here on the Dope posted, about a girl killed by her next door neighbors - a woman and her sons. I thought it was called “The Girl Next Door” but an Amazon search doesn’t turn up anything that looks right, and it was too disturbing for me to look a lot further. I believe the doper who posted it knew the girl and/or the neighbors in some way. If I remember more details I will post them. Sorry to be so vague.
I think you are thinking of this movie which someone on the Dope recently posted about. As far as I know it is a work of fiction (thankfully since it is pretty disturbing sounding).
Life with Billy - story of an abused wife that finally shot her sadistic husband.
Th Girl Next Door (mentioned above) sounds like a true story I read about…I’ll try to find it