True Crime

//True Crime
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  • When Stefanie Rabinowitz was found dead of an apparent drowning in her bathtub at home, it was at first believed to be 'one of those things that just happen'. Because she was only 29, an autopsy was ordered which revealed that Stefanie was in fact strangled before being dumped in the tub to stage a fake drowning.  There was no evidence of a break-in, no history of marital trouble - and suspicion fell on her husband Craig: devoted family man, loyal husband and 'everybody's best friend'. As the investigation proceeded, the bizarre double life of Craig Rabinowitz unravelled... With exclusive interviews and black and white photographs.

  • In Houston, Texas, on the morning of May 23, 1982,  Carl 'Coral' Eugene Watts, 28, trapped two young women in their apartment. Only hours before, he'd killed another woman by drowning her in her bathtub. As Watts attempted to do the same to 20-year-old Lori Lister, her roommate Melinda Aguilar, 18, made a daring escape. Her courage led to Watts's arrest. Watts was a sadistic slayer with a lust for killing in a variety of ways: strangulation, suffocation, drowning and stabbing. He confessed to thirteen murders, but with no direct evidence to link him to the crimes, he managed to plea bargain his sentence down to 60 years for burglary. Due to a flaw in the Texas criminal justice system, Watts was supposed to be released from prison in 2006. Through the ceaseless efforts of investigators and the mother of one of his victims, Watts was finally tried and convicted to life in prison for a murder he had committed in Michigan in 1979. He died in 2007, still the prime suspect in approximately 90 other slayings. Experts theorise that Watts may have slain more than Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy...combined. Here is the chilling story of how he almost got away with murder. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • The author took a job in an Australian prison because - well, he needed a job, and any job would do.  What had been a stop gap became and all-absorbing preoccupation with the problem of men in prison. One day, he was asked if he remembered the Greek bloke who had killed his wife with half a house brick.  He couldn't remember the particular Greek - and he realised that over the seven years of his employment there, that the stone and steel had crept into his heart to the extent that a man who had killed his wife with half a house brick had left no impression on him.  In search of what beliefs and values he had left to him after prolonged exposure to the brutality, cynicism and despair of a big maximum-security prison, the author examines his experiences, not as a psychologist, but as a man whose profession is psychology. In the process, comes to several important conclusions.
  • Eric Clegg, formerly  His Honour Eric Clegg Q.C. is more than qualified to examine these famous trials and his expert viewpoint reveals many important and often controversial points which arose during the hearings. Cases contained in this volume include: The Kalgoorlie murders of two policemen in 1926, found down a disused mine-shaft; the Passionate Parson, acquitted on a charge of murdering his wife; the Lavers mstyery and the Sundown murders; the Pyjama Girl murder; the fantastic case of T. J. Ley, former Minister for Justice in New South Wales who was eventually convicted for the chalkpit murders and more. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • 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.
  • Frank Galbally CBE (1922 - 2005) dominated Australian Law for over four decades, frequently at the centre of controversy and always at the heart of things. He represented everyone from painters and dockers to a talking cockatoo; had audiences with popes and took on the Greek Colonels and was embroiled in the politics of 1975 and the policies of Collingwood Football Club. The Krope trial, the Costigan Commission, Kevin Barlow's appeal...the number of legal trials in which Galbally was involved extraordinary and the names became household words. This autobiography contains some of his most famous cases, with a few fighting words regarding crucial aspects of Australian public affairs such as police corruption and the royal commission into crime.  Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • 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.
  • What made them do it? What were they thinking? Was it nature or nurture, that is, were they born evil or were they the products of their environment? And why are we so fascinated with crime? Journalists Helen Goltz and Chris Adams have been spoilt for choice selecting stories for the first Grave Tales: True Crime volume. These are some of the terrible crimes that took away the public innocence, crimes destined never to be solved that live on in Australian history… crimes that are confounding with their cruelty, staggering in their brilliance and amazing in their sheer audacity. In this volume: Edward Leonski; Norman 'Chops' Lee; Linda Agostini, the 'pyjama girl'; The Battle Of Broken Hill; Martha Needle; John T.W. Smith; Bertha and Mary Schippan; Creswell and Orton; Frderick Bailey Deeming; Betty Shanks; Robert Francis Burns; The Clarke Brothers; Chrissie Venn; Eugenia Falleni; The Somerton Man. Illustrated with maps, photographs and includes all references and grave locations.
  • McLagan lifts the lid on a hugely important modern-day problem; an expensive both in terms of money and young lives. After terrorism, the single greatest worry for law enforcement agencies is gun crime and in particular 'black on black' shootings. McLagan has had exclusive access to police files and case histories. Together with his findings from these records are interviews with police officers, victims and their families, witnesses, lawyers and perpetrators of gun crime. The result is a unique and horrifying exposé of the disturbing truth behind this plague on the streets.