Showing titles in Criminology

From a skeleton, a skull, or a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, prominent forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.

One New Haven summer evening in 2006, a retired grandfather was shot point-blank by a young stranger. A hasty police investigation culminated in innocent sixteen-year-old Bobby being sentenced to prison for thirty-eight years. New Haven native Nicholas Dawidoff returned home and spent eight years reporting the deeper story of this injustice, and what it reveals about the enduring legacies of social and economic disparity. In The Other Side of Prospect, he has produced an immersive portrait of a seminal community in an old American city now beset by division and gun violence.

The trial of 25-year-old Casey Anthony for the death of her daughter, Caylee, was the most sensational case in America since O.J. Simpson’s. After being acquitted in July 2011, Ms. Anthony instantly became one of the most infamous women in the world. Dr. Keith Ablow distills tens of thousands of pages of documents he has obtained, his behind-the-camera, one-on one interviews, and his decades of experience in the world of forensic psychiatry to make sense of this troubled young woman.

After a wealthy woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home in 1908, the police found a convenient suspect in Oscar Slater, an immigrant Jewish cardsharp. Though he was known to be innocent, Slater was tried, convicted, and consigned to life at hard labor. Outraged by this injustice, Arthur Conan Doyle, already world famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, used the methods of his most famous character to reinvestigate the case, ultimately winning Slater’s freedom.

Keri Blakinger always lived life at full throttle. Growing up, that meant throwing herself into competitive figure skating with an all-consuming passion that led her to nationals. But when her skating career suddenly fell apart, that meant diving into self-destruction with the intensity she once saved for the ice. For the next nine years, Keri ricocheted from one dark place to the next: living on the streets, selling drugs and sex, and shooting up between classes all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell.

Written by the world's leading expert on false confessions, this landmark book reveals the psychology behind why innocent men, women, and children, intensely stressed and befuddled by the promises, threats, trickery, and deception of a police interrogation, are duped into confession, no matter how horrific the crime.

In 1983, Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain, both serving life sentences at the U.S. Prison in Marion, Illinois, separately murdered two correction officers on the same day. The Bureau of Prisons condemned both men to the severest punishment that could legally be imposed, one created specifically for them. It was unofficially called "no human contact." Each initially spent nine months in a mattress-sized cell where the lights burned twenty-four hours a day. They were clothed only in boxer shorts, completely sealed off from the outside world with only their minds to occupy their time.

Innocent people do go to jail. Sometimes mistakes are made. But even more terrifying is when the authorities conspire to frame them. That's what happened to Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, who were convicted of murder and are serving life sentences. Un-Making a Murderer is an explosive book which uncovers the illegal, devious, and covert tactics used by Wisconsin officials.

Beyond OODA: Developing the Orientation for Deception, Conflict and Violence is Varg Freeborn's highly anticipated follow up to the extremely popular Violence of Mind. While Violence of Mind was a broad introduction to all aspects of violence preparation, Beyond OODA focuses precisely on the development of mindset, or more accurately the orientation that influences and governs our decision making, and how it is developed for both good and bad people, alike.

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.

Aaron Iturra was just 18 years old when he was found dead in his bedroom in Eugene, Oregon. Soon, the quiet community would be rocked and shocked by who was behind the killing: Mary Louise Thompson, also known as Gang Mom. An anti-gang activist, she was a modern day deadly Fagin, running her own gang of juveniles who preyed on the unsuspecting city.

Adam Plantinga, author of the acclaimed 400 Things Cops Know and a 17-year veteran sergeant with the San Francisco Police Department, gives an inside view of the police officer's job, from handling evidence and conducting interrogations to coping with danger, violence, and death. Not hesitating to confront controversial issues, Plantinga presents the police officer's views on police shootings, racial profiling, and relationships between police and the community.

As the biggest criminal trial since the Boston Strangler draws nearer, the public’s fascination with the life and crimes of mob boss Whitey Bulger continues to heat up. Many stories have been told about the murders Whitey and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi committed, and the tacit permission they received from the FBI.

For years, the DeCavalcantes, the most powerful Mob family in Jersey, labored in the shadows of the more famous families in New York - the likes of the Gambinos and the Columbos. Dismissed by the big-city capos, the DeCavalcantes finally came into their own when they found their lives mirrored in the television hit, The Sopranos. Overnight it legitimized the made men of the Garden State. Now they were a familia to be reckoned with. Unfortunately with high profile came high risk.

The Tangled Web tells the dramatic story of detective Richard Cain's criminal career as revealed by his half-brother, Michael. Cain led a double-life—one as a well-known cop who led raids that landed on the front pages, and the other as a "made man" in one of Chicago's most notorious mob families.

Get ready to experience the real-life drama from behind the walls of one of the country's worst maximum-security facilities. Experience horrific assaults, bloodthirsty murders, and the kind of drama that needs to be heard to be believed. Simon King shares a raw and uncensored look beyond the razor wire, giving you the opportunity to see how life really runs inside a place filled with those the society would rather forget.

Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books; indeed, she employed it more than any other murder method, with the poison itself often being a central part of the novel. Her choice of deadly substances was far from random—the characteristics of each often provide vital clues to the discovery of the murderer. Christie's extensive chemical knowledge provides the backdrop for A Is for Arsenic, in which Kathryn Harkup investigates the poisons used by the murderer in fourteen classic Agatha Christie mysteries.

Half a dozen years ago, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman set out to study the rise of this global phenomenon just as some of its members were turning to political protest and dangerous disruption. She ended up becoming so closely connected to Anonymous that the tricky story of her inside-outside status as Anon confidante, interpreter, and erstwhile mouthpiece forms one of the themes of this witty and entirely engrossing book.

Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California, in the 1980s and '90s. A former gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios managed to escape the bleak outcome of many of his friends and earned a PhD at Berkeley and returned to his hometown to study how inner-city young Latino and African American boys develop their sense of self in the midst of crime and intense policing. Punished examines the difficult lives of these young men.

In 1981, Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper", was convicted of 13 murders and seven attempted murders. All his proven victims were women; most were prostitutes. There is a still-secret story of how Sutcliffe's terrible reign of terror claimed at least 22 more lives and left five other victims with terrible injuries. Police and prosecution authorities have long known that Sutcliffe's reign of terror was far longer and far more widespread than the public has been led to believe. But the evidence has been locked away in the files and archives.