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True crime stories

  • Auteur:
    Talty, Stephan
    Sommaire:

    The gripping true story of the origins of the mafia in America-and the brilliant Italian-born detective who gave his life to stop it *Film rights optioned by Paramount Studios, starring Leonardo DiCaprio* Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, and then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent and invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press and heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Standing between the American public and the Black Hand's lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the "Italian Sherlock Holmes," he was a famously dogged and ingenious detective, and a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre and the Black Hand's activities spread far beyond New York's borders, Petrosino and the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country's anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosino's quest to root out the source of the Black Hand's power would take him all the way to Sicily-but at a terrible cost. Unfolding a story rich with resonance in our own era, The Black Hand is fast-paced narrative history at its very best.

  • Auteur:
    Hendley, Nate
    Sommaire:

    The gruesome saga of the Black Donnellys has been heavily mythologized. A thick layer of rumour, legend, and hearsay has built up around the facts of the case. But one thing is clear: no one who reads this book will ever forget the murderous events that occurred near the town of Lucan, Ontario in the 1870s. 2004.

  • Auteur:
    Donovan, Kevin
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    A top journalist crosses the yellow tape to investigate a shocking high-society crime.

    Billionaires, philanthropists, socialites . . . victims. Barry and Honey Sherman appeared to lead charmed lives. But the world was shocked in late 2017 when their bodies were found in a bizarre tableau in their elegant Toronto home. First described as murder-suicide — belts looped around their necks, they were found seated beside their basement swimming pool — police later ruled it a staged, targeted double murder. Nothing about the case made sense to friends of the founder of one of the world’s largest generic pharmaceutical firms and his wife, a powerhouse in Canada’s charity world. Together, their wealth has been estimated at well over $4.7 billion.

    There was another side to the story. A strategic genius who built a large generic drug company — Apotex Inc. — Barry Sherman was a self-described workaholic, renowned risk-taker, and disruptor during his fifty-year career. Regarded as a generous friend by many, Sherman was also feared by others. He was criticized for stifling academic freedom and using the courts to win at all costs. Upset with building issues at his mansion, he sued and recouped millions from tradespeople. At the time of his death, Sherman had just won a decades-old legal case involving four cousins who wanted 20 percent of his fortune.

  • Auteur:
    Cherry, Paul
    Sommaire:

    The Quebec-chartered “Nomad” chapter of the Hells Angels had two specific goals: to monopolize the Quebec drug trade; and to expand that trade across other parts of Canada. Their war against rival dealer gangs escalated to a boiling point, taking the lives of dozens of gangsters and innocent people as it played itself out openly on Montreal’s streets.

    Little did the Nomads know that at the height of achieving their goals, they would also be months away from a lengthy police investigation to shut them down. The trials that followed revealed seven years of conflict and murder initiated by Maurice “Mom” Boucher, the man who was at the epicentre of this war.

    One criminal trial in particular turned out to be one of the longest in Canadian history. It meant convincing a jury to accept the notion that a biker gang works on the same principle as a pirate ship – even the cook knows what their common goal is.

    The “biker trials” brought out informants on both sides of the conflict, who, for a variety of reasons had turned on the gangs they had previously sworn loyalty to. Their testimonies revealed the arrogance of the Nomads in their pursuit of a monopoly over Quebec’s illegal drug trade. Now, Cherry reveals the inside story of the biker culture and the biker trials.

  • Auteur:
    McSherry, Peter
    Sommaire:

    Short-listed for the 2000 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction Norman "Red" Ryan was a notorious bank robber, safecracker, and killer. He escaped from Kingston Penitentiary twice - first by force, and then years later by gulling the credulous into believing that he was "reformed." The dupes of Ryan’s second emancipation included the prison’s Roman Catholic chaplain, several nationally prominent citizens, the country’s largest newspaper, and, ultimately, R.B. Bennett, the prime minister of Canada, who made the mistake of arranging a "political parole" for Ryan. Six people - three of them innocent victims - died as a result of Red Ryan’s freedom. Dubbed "the Jesse James of Canada" and "Canada’s most notorious criminal," Ryan had compiled a record of nineteen convictions for crimes of theft and violence, and had been in nine shooting affrays with police and citizens. He was a "lifer" in an era when "life" meant just that. Yet he got out of Kingston after just eleven and a half years and returned to Toronto, the city of his birth, amid fanfare befitting a national hero. His death in a liquor store robbery in Sarnia on May 23, 1936, just ten months after his release, was a huge jolt to Canada, and especially Toronto. How could such an obvious threat to society be paroled from prison as a paragon of reform? This question is central to The Big Red Fox. The answer lies not with Ryan himself - not even the cunning and deceitful Red Ryan could have hoodwinked his way out of a life sentence - but with those who helped him, and who benefited from his release.

  • Auteur:
    Rose, David
    Sommaire:

    Over eight bloody months in the mid-1970s, a serial rapist and murderer terrorized Columbus, Georgia, killing seven affluent, elderly white women by strangling them in their beds. In 1986, eight years after the last murder, an African American, Carlton Gary, was convicted for these crimes and sentenced to death. Though to this day many in the city doubt his guilt, he remains on death row. Award-winning reporter David Rose has followed this case for a decade, in an investigation that led him to, among other places, The Big Eddy Club-an all-white, private, members-only club in Columbus, frequented by the town's most prominent judges and lawyersas well as most of the seven murdered women. In this setting, Rose brings to light the city's bloodstained history of racism, lynching, and unsolved, politically motivated murder. Framed by the tale of two lynchings-one illegally carried out at the start of the last century, and the other carried out with legal due process at the end of it, The Big Eddy Club is a gripping, revealing drama, full of evocatively drawn characters, insidious institutions, and the extraordinary connections that bind past and present. The book is also a compelling, accessible, and timely exploration of race and criminal justice, not only in the context of the South, but in the whole of the United States, as it addresses the widespread corruption of due process as a tool of racial oppression.

  • Auteur:
    Szereto, Mitzi
    Sommaire:

    Serial killers can be anywhere and anyone. These accounts of serial killers--from contemporary to the historic--come from award-winning crime writers, journalists, and experts in the field of dark crimes.

  • Auteur:
    Rosen, Fred
    Sommaire:

    The true story of Louisiana serial killer Ronald Dominique's ten-year murder spree, the men he slayed, and the detectives who hunted him down. In 1997, the bodies of young African American men began turning up in the cane fields of the quiet suburbs of New Orleans. The victims'many of them transient street hustlers'had been brutally raped and strangled, but police had no leads on the killer's identity. The murders continued, leaving southeast Louisiana's gay community rattled and authorities desperate for a break in the case. Then, Detectives Dennis Thornton and Dawn Bergeron came together as task force partners, indefatigable in their decade-long effort to track down the killer. In 2006, DNA evidence finally linked the murders to a suspect: the unassuming Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for years, working as a pizza deliveryman and meter reader. But who was Ronald Dominique and what led him to commit such heinous crimes' With direct access to the investigation, Dominique's confession, and all of the killer's body dump sites in throughout the state, author Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of a murderer and captures a troubled, disturbing, and broken life. As with the many other serial killers he has covered, including Jeffrey Dahmer (the Milwaukee Cannibal) and Dennis Rader (the BTK Killer), Rosen provides a horrifying and fascinating account of the lengths to which a bloodthirsty monster will go to lure and brutalize his victims.

  • Auteur:
    Ryan, Chris
    Sommaire:

    The Mounties don’t always get their man.

    There is a folk legend living in Bay Bulls, on the Southern Shore of Newfoundland, by the name of Leo Crockwell. He ranks up there with legends like D. B. Cooper and Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River. This is the story of how Leo Crockwell took on one of the most revered police forces in the world, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and walked away unscathed.

    On December 4, 2010, Leo Crockwell, fifty-five, an electrical technician and lifetime resident of Bay Bulls, barricaded himself in his mother’s house in Bay Bulls after an altercation with his sister involving a firearm. Chris “Dutch” Ryan, a friend and neighbour of Leo’s, watched as for the next eight days the RCMP utilized every tool at its disposal to extract Leo from the house and bring the standoff to a peaceful end.

    But no one expected it to end like it did.

    The Bay Bulls Standoff is a dialogue-driven account of the eight days in Bay Bulls that made national headlines in 2010. Chris Ryan’s memoir takes the reader on a ride-along tour and, for the first time, shares the frustration and worry the residents of the town felt for the safety of their friend Leo Crockwell.

  • Auteur:
    Komar, Debra
    Sommaire:

    Winner, Canadian Authors Award for Canadian History, Jeanne Clarke Memorial Local History Award, and Prince Edward Island Book Award for Non-Fiction. Is it possible to reach back in time and solve an unsolved murder, more than 170 years after it was committed? Just after midnight on April 21, 1842, John McLoughlin, Jr. — the chief trader for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Stikine, in the northwest corner of the territory that would later become British Columbia — was shot to death by his own men. They claimed it was an act of self-defence, their only means of stopping the violent rampage of their drunk and abusive leader. Sir George Simpson, the HBC's Overseas Governor, took the men of Stikine at their word, and the Company closed the book on the matter. The case never saw the inside of a courtroom, and no one was ever charged or punished for the crime. To this day, the killing remains the Honourable Company's dirtiest unaired laundry and one of the darkest pages in the annals of our nation's history. Now, exhaustive archival research and modern forensic science — including ballistics, virtual autopsy, and crime scene reconstruction — unlock the mystery of what really happened the night McLoughlin died. Using her formidable talents as a writer, researcher, and forensic scientist, Debra Komar weaves a tale that could almsot be fiction, with larger-than-life characters and dramatic tension. In telling the story of John McLoughlin, Jr., Komar also tells the story of Canada's north and its connection to the Hudson's Bay Company.

  • Auteur:
    Komar, Debra
    Sommaire:

    Shortlisted, Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing. On a frigid February evening in 1805, Amos Babcock brutally murdered Mercy Hall. Believing that he was being instructed by God, Babcock stabbed and disembowelled his own sister, before dumping her lifeless body in a rural New Brunswick snowbank. The Ballad of Jacob Peck is the tragic and fascinating story of how isolation, duplicity, and religious mania turned impoverished, hard-working people violent, leading to a murder and an execution. Babcock was hanged for the murder of his sister, but in her meticulously researched book, Debra Komar shows that itinerant preacher Jacob Peck should have swung right beside him. The mystery lies not in the whodunit, but rather in a lingering question: should Jacob Peck, whose incendiary sermons directly contributed to the killing, have been charged with the murder of Mercy Hall? In this epic saga, media accounts of what happened in the aftermath of the murder have taken on a life all their own, one built of half-truths, conjecture, and narrative devices designed to titillate, if not inform. A forensic investigation of a crime from the Canadian frontier, the tale of Jacob Peck, Amos Babcock, and Mercy Hall remains as controversial and riveting today as it was more than two hundred years ago.

  • Auteur:
    Finkel, Michael
    Sommaire:

    One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century: the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser. In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down. This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost. Cover images: (top) Bat by Albrecht Dürer. Bridgeman Images; (bottom) The Sleeping Shepherd (detail) by François Boucher © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

  • Auteur:
    Mould, Philip
    Sommaire:

    What separates a masterpiece from a piece of junk? Thanks to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow and its American spin-off, everyone is searching garage sales and hunting online for hidden gems, wondering whether their attics contain trash or treasures. In The Art Detective, Philip Mould, one of the world's foremost authorities on British portraiture and an irreverent and delightful expert for the Roadshow, serves up his secrets and his best stories, blending the technical details of art detection and restoration with juicy tales peopled by a range of eccentric collectors, scholars, forgers, and opportunities. Each chapter focuses on one particular painting and the mystery that surrounds it. Mould is our trusty detective, tracking down clues, uncovering human foibles, and following hunches until the truth is revealed. Mould is known for his ability to crack the toughest puzzles, and whether he's writing about a fake Norman Rockwell, a hidden Rembrandt, or a lost Gainsborough, he brings both the art and the adventure to life. The Art Detective is memoir, mystery, art history, and brilliant yarn all rolled into one.

  • Auteur:
    Dial, Roman
    Sommaire:

    "A brave and marvelous book. A page-turner that will rip your heart out."--Jon KrakauerIn the tradition of Into the Wild comes an instant classic of outdoor literature, a riveting work of uncommon depth. I'm planning on doing 4 days in the jungle. ... It should be difficult to get lost forever: These were the haunting last words legendary adventurer Roman Dial received from his son, before the 27-year old disappeared into the jungles of Costa Rica. This is Dial's intensely gripping and deeply moving account of his two-year quest to unravel the mystery of his son's fate. In the predawn hours of July 10, 2014, twenty-seven-year-old Cody Roman Dial, the son of preeminent Alaskan scientist and National Geographic Explorer Roman Dial, walked alone into Corcovado National Park, an untracked rainforest along Costa Rica's remote Pacific Coast that shelters miners, poachers, and drug smugglers. He carried a light backpack and machete. Before he left, he emailed his father: "I am not sure how long it will take me, but I'm planning on doing 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out. I'll be bounded by a trail to the west and the coast everywhere else, so it should be difficult to get lost forever."They were the last words Dial received from his son. The Adventurer's Son recreates the author's two-year quest to learn the truth about his child's disappearance. Immediately after Cody Roman's planned departure date passed without a word from him, Dial set off for Costa Rica. As he trekked through the dense jungle, interviewing locals and searching for clues--the authorities suspected murder--the desperate father was forced to confront the deepest questions about his own life. Roman had raised his son to be fearless, to seek out adventure amid earth's wildest places. Was he ultimately responsible for his son's fate?A harrowing story of drama, adventure, and a father's love for his son, set in the most beautiful and dangerous reaches of the planet, The Adventurer's Son is a mystery, the memoir of a father and his son, and an unforgettable story of love and profound loss.

  • Auteur:
    Slater, Dashka
    Sommaire:

    This riveting nonfiction book for teens about race, class, gender, crime, and punishment tells the true story of an agender teen who was set on fire by another teen while riding a bus in Oakland, California. One teenager in a skirt. One teenager with a lighter. One moment that changes both of their lives forever. If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one. Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But one afternoon on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned, and Richard charged with two hate crimes and facing life imprisonment. The case garnered international attention, thrusting both teenagers into the spotlight.

  • Auteur:
    Sadler, Anthony, Skarlatos, Alek, Stone, Spencer, Stern, Jeffrey E.
    Sommaire:

    When a terrorist boarded a train bound for Paris, he encountered something he hadn't anticipated: three Americans who refused to give in to fear.

  • Auteur:
    Everhart, Ruth
    Sommaire:

    Pastor and survivor Ruth Everhart shines a light on the prevalence of sexual abuse and misconduct within faith communities, highlighting the damage done to individuals, families, and communities. Everhart offers hope to survivors as she declares that God is present with the violated and stands in solidarity with victims.

  • Auteur:
    Stobbe, Mark
    Sommaire:

    How the police create an imaginary criminal gang to trick homicide suspects into a confession and a prison cell There are people in prison who got away with murder until they told the boss of a powerful criminal gang all about it. When the handcuffs were snapped on, the killers learned they'd been duped-that "Mr. Big" was actually an undercover police officer. These killers ended up with lots of time to think about how tricky police can be. In this captivating book, we learn why Mr. Big is so good at getting killers to confess-and why he occasionally gets confessions from the innocent as well. We meet murderers such as Michael Bridges, who strangled his girlfriend and buried her in another person's grave. Bridges remained free until he told Mr. Big where the body was buried. We also meet people like Kyle Unger, who lied while confessing to Mr. Big and went to prison for a crime he did not commit. The "Mr. Big" Sting is essential for anyone interested in unorthodox approaches to justice, including their successes and failures. It sheds light on how homicide investigators might catch and punish the guilty while avoiding convicting the innocent.

  • Auteur:
    Shenher, Lorimer
    Sommaire:

    In this searing personal account, ex-police detective Lori Shenher (who transitioned to male in 2015, and is now known as Lorimer) describes his role in Vancouver's infamous Missing Women Investigation and unflinchingly reveals his years-long struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of working on the case. From his first assignment, in 1998, to investigate an increase in the number of missing women to the harrowing 2002 interrogation of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton, Shenher tells a story of massive police failure-failure of the police to use the information about Pickton available to them, failure to understand the dark world of drug addiction and sex work, and failure to save more women from their killer.
    That Lonely Section of Hell passionately pursues the deeper truths behind the causes of this tragedy and the myriad ways the system failed to protect vulnerable people.

  • Auteur:
    Krouse, Erika
    Sommaire:

    "The best story I've read in a long, long time."--Lacy Crawford, author of Notes on a Silencing "Krouse's vivid and original memoir is state of the art. Tell Me Everything is our new standard."--Charles D'Ambrosio, author of Loitering. Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open. Erika Krouse has one of those faces. "I don't know why I'm telling you this," people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she's doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down. Her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway, inspired by Grayson's conviction that he could help change things forever. And maybe she could, too. Over the next five years, Erika learns everything she can about P.I. technique, tracking down witnesses and investigating a culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university's football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and a historic civil rights case, Erika finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, Erika must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself

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