In The Killer's Own Words...
"I killed Tanya Bennett...I beat her to death, raped her and loved it. Yes I'm sick, but I enjoy myself too. People took the blame and I'm free.... . Look over your shoulder. I may be closer than you think."-Keith Hunter Jesperson, the Happy Face Killer
In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennet. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people...
Keith Hunter Jesperson was a long haul truck driver and the murderer of eight women, including Taunja Bennet. He began a twisted one-man campaign to win the release of Sosnovke and Pavlinac. To the editors of newspapers and on the walls of highway rest stops, Jesperson scribbled out a series of taunting confessions. At the end of each confession, Jesperson drew a happy face, earning for himself the grisly sobriquet "The Happy Face Killer."
Based on access to interviews, diaries, court records, and the criminal himself, I: The Creation of a Serial Killer is Jesperson's chilling story. Edgar Award winner Jack Olsen lets the killer tell his story in his own words, offering unprecedented insight into the twisted thought process of a serial murderer.
That rarest of serial killers - a woman - Aileen 'Lee' Wuornos always craved fame. Long before she was hunted and caught by Florida law enforcement, long before she confessed to killing seven men, she told friends that she wanted to do something "no woman has ever done before" and to have a book about her life. After a decade on Florida's Death Row, as that life was scheduled to end by lethal injection on October 9th, here comes Sue Russell's book, Lethal Intent. Packed with exclusive material that sheds a different light on this cold-blooded serial killer, Lethal Intent contains new insights and intimate memories from her family, friends and childhood peers. (Peers who lost their virginities to Aileen, who began prostituting herself at a horribly early age.) Lethal Intent reveals Aileen's devastating double abandonment by her mother before she was age two, the crimes of her father, and the myriad events that helped set her path of destruction. It even contests the widespread superficial judgment of Wuornos as a "man-hating lesbian" via new insights from men with whom she shared sexual and romantic relationships. Lethal Intent also explores the dynamics of her fateful relationship with Tyria Moore, the lesbian lover who knew Aileen was killing yet stayed by her side, and how those dynamics moved Aileen closer to a life of murder. And much, much more
A GRIPPING TRUE ACCOUNT OF SERIAL MURDER, SUSPICION AND PUNISHMENT IN IDYLLIC FLORENCE
(1)'When I interrogate a serial killer I dive into the blackness of his soul. I am familiar with his feelings of emptiness, loneliness, depression, death, omnipotence and fear. I dive deeply to get a grip on his torment...' A profiler who wants to understand the mind of the serial killer must have been prepared by life experiences before he or she can dare to venture into the abyss. A person who has led a protected life will not survive.
(1)""The Only Living Witness" towers over the rest of the Ted Bundy bookshelf . . . (as) a monument to book-length journalism" (Jack Olsen, author of "The Misbegotten Son"). "A shining example of excellent reporting, fine writing, and a story of enduring value."--Carlton Stowers, author of "Careless Whispers."
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(2)A national bestseller—7 million copies sold. Prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, Vincent Bugliosi held a unique insider's position in one of the most baffling and horrifying cases of the twentieth century: the cold-blooded Tate-LaBianca murders carried out by Charles Manson and four of his followers. What motivated Manson in his seemingly mindless selection of victims, and what was his hold over the young women who obeyed his orders? Here is the gripping story of this famous and haunting crime. 50 pages of b/w photographs. Both Helter Skelter and Vincent Bugliosi's subsequent Till Death Us Do Part won Edgar Allan Poe Awards for best true-crime book of the year. Bugliosi is also the author of Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away with Murder (Norton, 1996) and other books. Curt Gentry, an Edgar winner, is the author of J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (available in Norton paperback) and Frame-Up: The Incredible Case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings.
My Friend Dahmer is the hauntingly original graphic novel by Derf Backderf, the award winning political cartoonist. In these pages, Backderf tries to make sense of Jeffery Dahmer, the future serial killer with whom he shared classrooms, hallways, libraries and car rides. What emerges is a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a young man struggling helplessly against the urges, some ghastly, bubbling up from the deep recesses of his psyche. The Dahmer recounted here, although universally regarded as an inhumane monster, is a lonely oddball who, in reality, is all too human. A shy kid sucked inexorably into madness while the adults in his life fail him. The crimes Dahmer committed are incredibly depraved, infamous and unforgettable, but in My Friend Dahmer Backderf provides profound (and at times, even strangely comic) insight into how, and more important, why Jeffery Dahmer transformed from a high school nerd into the most depraved serial killer since Jack the Ripper, coming as close as anyone yet has to explaining the seemingly unexplainable phenomenon of Jeffery Dahmer.
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