Showing titles in Abductions, Kidnapping & Missing Persons

A mother's story behind one of the most dramatic true crime cases in recent history. 'I have lived every parent's worst nightmare. On what would have been my daughter's 29th birthday, Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher knocked on the door and told me my beautiful Becky was dead. Found...

On a cold December evening in 2016 a terrified young woman turns up at a brothel in Germany with a French passport but doesn’t speak a word of French. The owner is suspicious and alerts the German authorities, igniting a groundbreaking and history-making global investigation where ancient rituals collide with the modern world of crime fighting.

If you thought you knew the story of The Teacher's Pet, get ready to be shocked. Hedley Thomas takes you behind the scenes with a blow-by-blow account of one of the most intriguing and enduring murder mysteries of our time - the crime, the podcast investigation, the sexual exploitation of...

Perfect for readers of Jon Krakauer and Douglas Preston, this "authentic and encyclopedic" book examines real-life cases of those who vanish in the wilderness without a trace (Roman Dial)—and those eccentric, determined characters who try to find them. These are the stories that defy...

Trust is the deadliest weapon. The killers in this book weren't strangers. They were husbands and wives, neighbors with friendly dogs, family members who sat across the dinner table. They spent years building the relationships they would eventually destroy. From suburban homes to isolated citrus groves, these twelve cases reveal what happens when ordinary people decide that the lives around them are simply obstacles to be removed.

'Tony is the real deal.' Andy McNab Sierra Leone, 2000. While on patrol as part of a peacekeeping mission, eleven British soldiers are kidnapped. The captors are a dangerous rebel group known as the West Side Boys. Fuelled by alcohol and drugs, the behaviour of the rebels is notoriously...

Number one bestselling author and ultimate thriller writer Jeffery Deaver returns with a new Lincoln Rhyme investigation. Rhyme and Amelia Sachs' latest case: catching a terrifying killer targeting couples... The happiest time of their lives - will be their last. William and Anna went to collect...

IN 2017, TINA SATCHWELL VANISHED FROM HER COUNTY CORK HOME. HER HUSBAND RICHARD CLAIMED THAT SHE HAD TAKEN THEIR SAVINGS AND LEFT OF HER OWN ACCORD. But as questions mounted, suspicion grew. Why did her husband wait four days before reporting her missing? And would Tina have left behind her...

In January 1959, ten experienced young skiers set out to travel to a mountain named Mount Otorten in the far north of Russia. During the trip, one of the skiers fell ill and returned. The remaining nine lost their way and ended up on another mountain slope known as Kholat Syakhl, or "Mountain of the Dead."

From kidnappings to terrorist incidents, violent armed stand-offs to talking someone back from the ledge: all these make up the day-to-day life of Nicky Perfect’s job as a crisis and hostage negotiator. One of the first on the scene in situations that most would run from, Nicky is deployed to defuse the most volatile and fraught situations imaginable. After a decade on the frontlines, confronting the extremes of human behaviour, these are the stories and cases that have shaped a career spent on high alert, where life often hangs in the balance.

Josef Fritzl was a 73-year-old retired engineer in Austria. He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family - though one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been "lost" to a religious cult. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth's children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls' doorstep; Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth's disappearance.... For 27 years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon.

As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown. But in the winter of 1978-79, he became known as one of many so-called “sex murderers” who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s.

In Volume #1: Ritual Killers we look into the minds of criminals who formed their own justifications for committing the ultimate act of murder. These killers were compelled to repeatedly follow their personal rituals before, during, and after crimes. Many believing they were protected by supernatural forces, some trying to re-live a sick memory, and others were cunning and methodical planners avoiding detection.

Whether in Truman Capote’s detailed murder of the Clutter family or Ted Bundy’s small-town charm, criminals have always roamed rural America and towns worldwide. Featuring murder stories, criminal case studies, and more, The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns contains all-new accounts from writers of true crime, crime journalism, and crime fiction. And these entries are not based on a true story—they are true stories. Edited by acclaimed author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto, the stories in this volume span the globe.

John Edward Robinson was a 56-year-old grandfather from rural Kansas. An entrepreneur and Eagle Scout, he was even honored as "Man of the Year" at a Kansas City charity. To some of the women he met on the internet, he was known as Slavemaster - a sexual deviate with a taste for sadomasochistic rituals of extreme domination and torture...even killing. 

In The Lost Girls, John Glatt tells the truly amazing story of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight - who were kidnapped, imprisoned, and repeatedly raped and beaten in a Cleveland house for over a decade by Ariel Castro - and their amazing escape in May 2013, which made headlines all over the world.

In May 2005, authorities discovered the Groene family murdered in their Idaho home. The family’s youngest members—eight-year-old Shasta and her brother, nine-year-old Dylan—were nowhere to be found. As a community prayed for their return, Shasta and Dylan were already miles away in the woods of Montana at the hands of serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan. After a harrowing forty-eight day ordeal, Shasta was rescued. In many ways, her survival story was only beginning.

'From cold cases and serial killers to the death of a spy, Peter's true life story is as gripping as the finest thriller' – Peter James, bestselling author of One of Us Is Dead Discover the truth beyond the police tape in What Lies Beneath, the arresting memoir of murder, investigation and...

In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. At first incredulous, Margaret discovered that this was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Up to 150,000 children, some as young as three years old, had been deported from children's homes in Britain and shipped off to a 'new life' in distant parts of the Empire, right up until as recently as 1970. Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents were told that their children had been adopted.

With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators, and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Best-selling true-crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.