Beginning in 1968 and continuing into the 1970s, a predator stalked California and New York, torturing, raping and murdering young girls and women. But who was the monster behind these tragedies? Eventually, a suspect emerged, but he didn’t look like a monster. Indeed, Rodney Alcala was a handsome, charming photographer who’d once studied film at New York University under director Roman Polanski. With his wit and easy self-confidence and humor, he’d even been selected as the “winner” on the popular television show “The Dating Game.” But his real game was much more sinister. In 2010, Alcala was convicted of murdering five women in California during the 1970s; then in 2013, as he waited on Death Row, he confessed to the murder of two more in New York. Yet, that might not be the end of the nightmare he caused. At his arrest, police found his “portfolio” with thousands of nude […]
On a cold, winter’s night in early 1963, mob enforcer Rocco Anthony Balliro and a pair of associates stormed a darkened apartment on the outskirts of Boston and engaged in a fierce gun battle with several assailants (police officers, it turned out) waiting in ambush for the ex-convict and recent prison escapee. In the aftermath, a young woman and her toddler son lay dead. The story of Rocco Balliro, a petty criminal and enforcer for New England crime boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca, played out in glaring headlines across the country following the shootout with the Boston police. Had he heeded the commands of the cops to drop his weapon, Rocco would not have spent the next fifty years behind bars, and his girlfriend and her son might still be alive today. Instead, he fired the gun, erupting death and mayhem in the apartment. In the aftermath of the shootings, all […]
In 1976, a serial rapist terrorized Sacramento County in California. The masked predator made his way into the homes of his unsuspecting victims, leaving a trail of devastation and destruction behind him. He moved on to other areas in Northern California, and then onward to Southern California where he sank to an all new level of depravity, and his evil urges drove him to murder; again, and again. In Northern California, he was known as the East Area Rapist. In Southern California, he was called the Original Night Stalker. When his crimes all over California were finally connected, he would become known as the Golden State Killer, and by 1986, he had racked up a staggering tally of over 100 home break-ins or burglaries, 50 or more rapes, and at least 12 murders. On the heels of their wildly popular 2017 Season One podcast series on the Zodiac killer, veteran […]
Winner of the 2020 INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD and 2018 LITERARY EXCELLENCE PENCRAFT AWARD A practicing attorney, author Anne K. Howard first contacted Howell while he was serving a fifteen-year sentence for the murder of one of his seven victims. He was about to be charged for the remaining six murders. A unique and disturbing friendship between the two began, comprised of written correspondence, face-to-face prison visits and recorded phone calls. Howell, who had been unwilling to speak to any members of the media, came to trust Howard. In the years that follow, the suspect shared his troubled history with Howard but refused to discuss the charges against him, promising only to tell her everything when the case was over. That time has come. HIS GARDEN probes the complicated and conflicted mind of William Devin Howell–Connecticut’s most prolific serial killer. Both sacred and profane in its narrative style, the story on […]
In this prequel to the exciting Max Blake Mystery books, Emerald Ridge and Melia Ridge, a mild-mannered college professor becomes an unlikely candidate to hunt down the killer of the town’s richest man and his movie star paramour. But as things progress, it quickly becomes apparent that every attractive woman on the West Coast has become a maniac’s idea of the most dangerous game. Called in because of a chance encounter years before, Max Blake, a former newspaper reporter-turned-professor and part-time private detective, is forced to form unusual and sometimes dodgy alliances as he investigates the vicious killings with the city’s police chief. The alliance is even more complicated because of a past history between Max and the chief, and the fact that the leading candidates for the murders are members of the city’s police force. The trail winds through the incredible mansion called Raptor’s Ridge, down the streets and […]
For years Lori Orr believed her Los Angeles firefighter dad was a selfless hero. When Lori’s dad was arrested and charged with four murders and countless arson fires, it was her testimony that helped keep him from being sent to Death Row. Eventually, Lori’s search for the truth lead her to the dark secrets lurking in her family’s past and to an inescapable conclusion about the remorseless killer and arsonist known as the “Pillowcase Pyro” and his reign of terror in sunny Southern California. Together with award-winning journalist Frank C. Girardot Jr., Orr looks back on the journey that took her from love to fear and the search for answers about how the father she loved could also be a thrill-seeking predator. A predator brought to justice by a dogged investigator no one wanted to believe. A master manipulator who participated in the writing of this memoir in hopes that […]
In the late 1960’s, and early 1970’s, an enigmatic serial killer terrorized the San Francisco Bay area of Northern California, and teased the police tasked with stopping him. Through bold letters and cryptic ciphers mailed to local newspapers as well as taunting calls to police, the Zodiac left his mark on the state of California. Without warning he was gone, but not before achieving infamy in the annals of true crime history. Just who was the Zodiac Killer? Criminology podcast takes the deepest dives into the most mysterious true crime cases using actual case files, documents, and police reports to help tell the full and accurate story of the crimes they cover. Now for the first time, Criminology Podcast and WildBlue Press brings the series to readers in book form with added commentary, photographs, and documents.
When northern California’s idyllic Napa Valley is shattered by the vineyard shooting deaths of two men, investigative-reporter-turned-wine-editor Dante Rath seizes the chance to salvage his sagging career. One of the dead is the winery’s top investor, a high-tech genius, who was shot and killed by the winery’s owner, who in turn was gunned down by Napa County sheriff deputies. At the murder scene, Dante encounters Carmen Carelli, the lawyer for the deceased investor and whose case files he rifles after sharing wine and other pleasures. But when Carelli is shot and wounded jogging near her house in Sonoma, Dante knows something deeply sinister is fermenting in wine country. Doggedly pursuing the story, Dante uncovers fraud, deceit, and a toxic scandal certain to shake the wine world and topple an international wine producer. But he must stay alive to publish the story. From The Book: Her panicked voice came over the […]
Do you think I’m pretty. No one likes me. I hate my life. I wish I had a friend. It was the mantra of fourteen-year-old Sherokee Harriman, who in September 2015 faced her alleged bullies in a small Tennessee public park and pulled out a concealed kitchen knife. She drove the knife into her stomach as the horrified teens watched. Local media focused on sensationalism rather than truth. The word “bullicide” was used, meaning bullying drove Sherokee to kill herself. The story of Sherokee’s death flew through social media, broadcast for all to see. Sherokee had shared her secrets online where privacy disappears with a slight movement of a computer mouse. A product of a family doing their best with little resources, Sherokee was passed through the mental health system as far as it would take her, shuttled through an overworked and underfunded education system supervised by government agencies with […]
Many organizations today find themselves stagnating, struggling just to keep up in today’s rapidly changing environment. Companies rise and fall with alarming rapidity. Employees and managers have little or no loyalty to their organizations and are always on the lookout for a bigger pay check or the next step in their own careers. All of this presents major problems for any group, whether a gas station, church or international corporate powerhouse. And they can all be traced back to one thing – culture. Culture is the soul of any organization. A strong culture breeds loyalty, innovation, and success. A weak culture will breed cynicism, apathy, instability, and the eventual demise of the organization. Yet, culture is an often overlooked aspect of business thinking and strategy. However, there are a lot of organizations with counterproductive cultures in which culture is an inhibitor, slowing down all processes and increasing transaction, governance and production costs. […]
“THE SHAWCROSS LETTERS is a graphic and dramatic page turner that delves into the twisted mind of a serial killer. A true crime book that will horrify, enlighten, and keep you up at night.” – Joseph Souza, Author of The Neighbor What happens when one of the most evil men in the history of America meets a man he trusts to share his darkest secrets with? How does it affect someone already on the edge of society when he is taken under the wing of a serial killer? Partly told through the letters of Arthur Shawcross, The Shawcross Letters is the tale of one of America’s most notorious serial killers and his relationship with his would-be biographer, John Paul Fay. John Paul Fay was a murderabilia dealer with a troubled past. Arthur Shawcross, also known as the Genesee River Killer, was in prison after being convicted of murdering numerous women, he […]
A frustrated, unhappy wife. Her much younger, attentive lover. A husband who degrades and ignores her. The stage is set for a love-triangle murder that shatters family illusions and lays bare a quiet family community’s secret world of sex, sin and swinging. BETTER OFF DEAD, the latest true crime book from New York Times bestselling author Michael Fleeman, strips away the pleasant veneer of the Silver Lakes neighborhood in California’s high desert to tell a shocking story about a headline-grabbing crime. Sabrina Limon, a vivacious blond mother of two and part-time “sample girl” at Costco, is handing out free food samples one day when in walks handsome young firefighter Jonathan Hearn shopping for the station. Their conversation leads to a flirtation that leads to a steamy affair that has them hooking up once and twice a week at her home, his home, and out in hidden spots in the vast […]
Hang on! Just a minute! When last we checked in with hard-boiled private eye and former muck-raking journalist Max Blake and his intrepid fiancee, Caeli Brown, they were traveling across the entirety of Ireland to find her Uncle Jack, only to see him shockingly cut down in a hail of gunfire on a remote island. But the same postcard that jump-started the sorrowful end to the archbishop’s life, along with his cause, in EMERALD RIDGE shows up again weeks later in Max’s Oregon mailbox. Wait a second, what’s going on here? Is Uncle Jack dead or not? Max and Caeli are soon on the road to the Vatican’s Secret Archives Building in the heart of Rome, where they meet a mysterious prelate with a fixation for world domination – a man who may well hold the key to determining who actually shot American President John F. Kennedy in 1963. This […]
After a beaten Japan surrendered to the United States and its World War II allies in 1945, a little-known peninsula, home to 30 million Korean people, was dangling leaderless from the Asian continent into the Yellow Sea. Treated as an afterthought in negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States, it was halved at the 38th parallel. That line still separates hostile armies on each side. Do Americans remember that nearly 75 years ago the US and the Soviet Union intended for the peninsula to prosper peacefully as a single country? That was before the Iron Curtain descended upon the world. After that supporters of democracy entered a harsh rivalry with advocates for communism. Each side offered contrasting visions about how governments should work. The first big military test of strength between the two rival factions occurred at Korea’s 38th parallel. The result was a standoff that consumed people, […]
As the sun rises over the quiet city of Kingston, New York on July 12, 1988, a local transient discovers the remains of 19-year-old Anna Kithcart. The pretty, black teen-ager had been strangled and beaten to death, with the letters “KKK” carved into her thighs. While her heartbroken family mourns, and the police work around the clock to uncover the truth, the investigation is complicated by the entrance of the Reverend Al Sharpton who insists that a racist killer is responsible. As investigators struggle to find evidence, Sharpton and his supporters denounce the entire area as a “Klan den” and make public pronouncements that a “racist cult” is operating throughout the area. Then, as if things can’t get any worse, the transient who found the body confesses to an unspeakable sexual act against the corpse. Almost immediately after the media reports his alleged depravity, he changes his story and accuses the police […]
An incredible true story that reads like an international crime thriller peopled with assassins, political activists, shady FBI informants, murdered witnesses, a tenacious attorney, and a murderous foreign dictator. On June 1, 1981, two young activists, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, were murdered in Seattle in what was made to appear like a gang slaying. But the victims’ families and friends suspected they were considered a threat to the dictatorship of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his regime’s relationship to the United States. But how could they prove it up against such powerful, and ruthless, adversaries? In SUMMARY EXECUTION attorney and author Michael Withey describes his ten-year battle for justice for Domingo and Viernes that he fought because “They killed my friends.” Follow along as he embarks on a long and dangerous investigation and into the courtroom to obtain convictions of three hitmen, and then prove in U.S. federal court […]
