True Crime

//True Crime
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  • With the advantage of access to some of Scotland Yard's most confidential papers, Donald Rumbelow  lays out all the evidence in the most comprehensive summary ever written about the Ripper. Rumbelow, a former London Metropolitan policeman, and an authority on crime, has subjected every theory – including those that have emerged in recent years – to the same deep scrutiny. He also examines the mythology surrounding the case and provides some fascinating insights into the portrayal of the Ripper on stage and screen and on the printed page. More seriously, he also examines the horrifying parallel crimes of the Düsseldorf Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper in an attempt to throw further light on the atrocities of Victorian London.
  • 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.
  • Feldman makes a convincing case for his suspect.  His team spent a great deal of time, money and effort following leads in obscure documents, some of which had never been seen by anyone, to conclusively prove his theory.  Illegitimate children, extra-marital affairs, high society, royal connections and a mysterious diary and a watch are just some of what came to light.  Illustrated with black and white 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.
  • Almost every month in New South Wales, there are reports of police corruption and a police service under attack, from the criminals it tries to put away and the people it tries to protect and serve. Are the reports mere media sensationalism, or is the New South Wales Police in serious trouble? And if so, where did it go wrong? Priest was a cop who loved his job and gave everything he had to fight crime on the drug-ridden streets of Cabramatta. Yet he found his biggest battle was not with the drug gangs but with the very service he worked for. Eventually he could stand it no longer and spoke out about the bizarre policy decisions, politics, bureaucratic bungling and chronic lack of resources. For this he was labelled a whistle-blower and ultimately railroaded out of the police force.  Yet a parlimentary enquiry and the testimony of other officers proved that Tim was not only telling the truth, but this was only the tip of the iceberg of what is really wrong with the New South Wales Police Force.  While crime continues to spiral out of control, morale plummets among the rank and file police and experienced cops find they are at the mercy of a promotion system that leaves them nowhere to go but out. Tim teams up with Richard Basham, a man of vast experience through his involvement in a number of advisory boards, criminal investigations and personal friendships with ordinary cops, to reveal the untold story of the police service.
  • On 29 February 2000, Katherine Knight - mother of four, and a grandmother - seduced then stabbed John Price 37 times. A former abattoir worker, she skinned him. A loving partner, she cooked him with vegetables, making a soup with his head. She made gravy, and left him on plates for his family...Price was her de facto, and he wanted out. And Ketharine didn't like that...People said that most of the time Katherine seemed normal - until she got angry. She was judged to be legally sane when she committed a crime so horrible the media shied away from the details. Lalor covered the trial and wanted to know what made Knight go way over the borderline. He uncovers the layers of her dysfunction, opens the door of 84 St. Andrews Street and heads into the lives of Knight's ex-partners, her family and the locals of Aberdeen, New South Wales. Illustrated with colour photographs.
  • Ron Williamson was a star college sportsman in the small town of Ada, Oklahoma. When he left to pursue his dreams he seemed destined for glory. But years of injury, drinking, drugs and women took their toll, and he returned to Ada a lonely drifter. Soon after his homecoming, a local cocktail waitress was raped and murdered. With no immediate leads, the police worked the case for five years before arresting Williamson and charging him with her murder. Despite no physical evidence, and based largely on the testimony of jailhouse snitches, he was found guilty at trial and sent to death row. Left to await his fate, Williamson was the only person to know the terrible truth: that an innocent man had been sent on a journey to hell. A journey from which he might never return...Illustrated with black and white photographs.  
  • In 1928 Bill Lancaster and Chubbie Miller were international heroes after their sensational long-distance aeroplane flight from England to Australia. In 1932, Lancaster was on trial in Miami, accused of murdering Chubbie's lover, Less than a year later, Lancaster disappeared on a flight over the Sahara and it was 29 years before his body was found beside his wrecked plane.  A log book, tied to the wing, contained the moving record of the last eight days of his life. Lancaster's dramatic end was in keeping with his adventurous life. The account of his search for work and his desperate efforts to retrieve his fortune, how Chubbie fell in love with  American writer Haden Clarke while Bill was away and how Clarke was found shot dead in  a Miami house on Bill's return all lead up to one of the most turbulent murder trials of the twentieth century. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • On October 9, 1959, Kevin Simmonds and Les Newcombe broke out of Long Bay Gaol. Both incarcerated for strings of minor crimes, their escape set in train the most incredible  manhunts in Australian history - a media event which aroused public feeling to fever pitch. The death of a prison warder, the dogged determination  of police and the often ingenious desperation of the fugitives focussed public attention on not only the escapees, but also on the prison system from which they had sprung - its brutality and its systematic denial of hope and humanity. This is Les Newcombe's story - a story of life in prison and out of it, as a free man, a prisoner and an escapee. Illustrated with black and white photos.