True Crime

//True Crime
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  • In the years between 1860 and 1880, dozens of bushrangers, some bold and famous, some little more than petty thieves, rampaged across the New South Wales and Victorian countryside - looting and murdering, bailing up travellers, harassing police, terrorising settlers. Perhaps the most famous of these in the 1860s was a handsome young man named Ben Hall, the first official outlaw under a new Act, shot dead by police in 1865. Other members of his gang, "Flash" Johnny Gilbert, Johnny Vane, O'Meally and Dunn, were all captured or shot by their pursuers. Also outlawed were Frederick Lowry, the ferocious Daniel Morgan, and Fred Ward, better known throughout New South Wales as "Thunderbolt". Finally, in this second volume of his History of Australian Bushranging, Charles White examines at length the incredible story of the Kelly Gang - Ned, Dan, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne.
  • Jimmy Governor was born a half-caste and grew up to be a gentle, hard-working man. On December 10 1898, he committed the unpardonable sin of marrying a white woman. He and his wife, downgraded to the status of outcasts, became the targets of taunts, insults and bigotry from a society determined to undermine their dignity. Two years later, Jimmy Governor became a murderer.
  • This is the shocking secret history of twentieth-century orphanages - which for decades hid violence, abuse, and deaths within their walls. For much of the twentieth century, a series of terrible events - abuse, both physical and psychological, and even deaths - took places inside orphanages. The survivors have been trying to tell their astonishing stories for a long time, but disbelief, secrecy, and trauma have kept them from breaking through. For ten years, Christine Kenneally has been on a quest to uncover the harrowing truth.   Centering her story on St. Joseph’s, a Catholic orphanage in Vermont, Kenneally has written a stunning account of a series of crimes and abuses. But her work is not confined to one place. Following clues that take her into the darkened corners of several institutions across the globe, she finds a trail of terrifying stories and a courageous group of survivors who are seeking justice. Ghosts of the Orphanage is an incredible true crime story and a reckoning with a past that has stayed buried for too long, with tragic consequences.
  • Many people remember Roscoe Arbuckle as 'the fat comedian who raped that girl'. He was one of the highest paid actors of his day and Hollywood was at his feet. On September 5 1921 he threw a lavish party to celebrate his $3 million Paramount contract. It got wildly out of hand and ended abruptly when a starlet named Virginia Rappé let out a terrifying scream. Rappé died five days later and Arbuckle was charged with first-degree murder . Three trials later, he was finally acquitted - and by then his multi million dollar career was devastated and his life was ruined. Recreating the glittering Hollywood of the 1920s, Edmonds draws on new and hitherto unpublished evidence to determine what really happened on that fateful day. Illustrated with photographs.
  • The Mafia murders that stunned Italy and how the killers were brought to justice...On 23 May 1992, the Mafia murdered its 'Number One Enemy', prosecutor Judge Falcone, with a motorway bomb that also killed his wife and three bodyguards. Fifty-seven days later, the Mafia also murdered Falcone's friend and colleague, Judge Borsellino, with a car bomb outside his mother's home that also killed five bodyguards. These murders changed forever the way that Italy views the Mafia. Based on interviews and the testimony of investigators, Mafia super grasses, survivors, relatives and friends, Vendetta recounts how the Mafiosi planned and carried out the murders and how the police hunted them down. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, The Hillside Strangler . . . serial murderers are the most horrific of all criminals. Kate Kray, whose marriage to gangster Ronnie Kray offered her access to a gruesome underworld few would dare to enter, peers into the minds of the worst killers to reveal the awful truth of their abominable acts. The extreme nature of their violence and their shocking lack of remorse makes for uncomfortable yet fascinating reading. From obsessive sexual predators and extreme sadists to cannibals and head hunters, each type of psychopath is examined, their crimes told with grim frankness. Kate's connections allow her to ask uncomfortable questions few would dare to ask such men. Offering extraordinary insight into the motivations of violent perpetrators often portrayed as monsters, this book begs the question of whether such individuals can themselves be viewed as victims of a troubled past, or merely as exponents of pure evil.
  • On November 25, 1996, in their home in the lakeside community of Eustis, Florida, Rick and Ruth Wendorf were savagely beaten to death with a tire iron. The Wendorfs' new Ford Explorer was stolen, but this was no routine robbery gone bad. This was a crime carried out by one Roderick Ferrell, a sixteen-year-old self-avowed Antichrist. His human sacrifice was a testament to the unique and sinister bond of four brainwashed teens. Heather Wendorf was a straight "A" student, a petite blonde with wide-set brown eyes. Yet she had been heard to wish her parents "off the face of the planet." Heather never dreamed that when she joined her friends for a joyride one fall evening, her wish had already come true. Including exclusive interviews with every living character involved in the case.
  • Like the Beaumont children and the Azaria Chamberlain cases before it, the backpacker murder case in Belanglo State Forest has entered Australian criminal folklore. Seven young people, most of them foreigners backpacking around Australia, brutally murdered, their remains uncovered in 1992 and 1993. It would take scores of police over three years, countless hours of forensic investigation, thousands of false leads and a few precious clues to charge and convict Ivan Milat for their horrific deaths. This is the definitive work on Ivan Milat, his family and the murders. Almost four years in the making, informed by exclusive interviews with members of the Milat family, key police investigators and Crown lawyers, this book reveals a family culture so bizarre it would lead inexorably to murder. It also scrutinises the police investigation – its remarkable success and failures, the dramatic turning point and the backbiting and bitterness that followed Milat's arrest. Thought-provoking, totally unsalacious and an exploration of the darker side of Australian life as a whole.  Photographic illustrations.
  • Just where is justice in Australia hiding? This brilliant new collection of true crime stories takes us into the Australian courts of the 1980s and '90s, back in time to the goldfields of the 1860s, and out to the island nation of Nauru in 2006 to explore how the scales of justice are unbalanced. This is a world in which the innocent still get locked up and the guilty too often go free. This collection is a must for all lovers of true crime. It will shock, outrage and intrigue. Features: Robin Bowles charts a mysterious case of sudden death; Lindy Cameron on the random shooting of Dr Andrew Taylor; Kathryn Deans on Heather Osland and how 13 years of torture was just the start of her ordeal; Liz Filleul on the disappearance of Elisabeth Membrey; Kerry Greenwood examines the role that crime writers have played in redressing miscarriages of justice; PD Martin on the Innocence Project, and Andrew Mallard; Susan Metcalfe on the tragedy of two Iraqis left behind on Nauru; Leigh Redhead asks how a man who secretly filmed his flatmates got away with it; Shelley Robertson, a modern forensic pathologist, questions the 'whole truth' of expert testimony; and Lucy Sussex on the unfortunate author Mary Fortune.