In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy's home. The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa's friends and peers. With a fresh perspective and painstaking research, James Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. What emerges is a portrait of a community seething with dark undercurrents.

One moonlit night, 14-year-old Reena Virk went to join friends at a party and never returned home. In this “tour de force of crime reportage” (Kirkus Reviews), acclaimed author Rebecca Godfrey takes us into the hidden world of the seven teenage girls - and boy - accused of a savage murder. As she follows the investigation and trials, Godfrey reveals the startling truth about the unlikely killers. Laced with lyricism and insight, Under the Bridge is an unforgettable look at a haunting modern tragedy.

June 26, 2010. A Pennsylvania state trooper witnesses a car speeding and crashing into trees. Stopping to help, he finds that the driver, Michael Ballard, is alive - and drenched in blood. When asked what happened, the man answers, "I just killed everybody." Not far from the accident, police make a gruesome discovery. In the home of Michael's ex-girlfriend, Denise Mehri, they find four bodies that had been stabbed repeatedly with a knife.

Growing up, Rachel Rear knew the story of Stephanie Kupchynsky’s disappearance. The beautiful violinist and teacher had fled an abusive relationship on Martha’s Vineyard and made a new start for herself near Rochester, NY. She was at the height of her life - in a relationship with a man she hoped to marry and close to her students and her family. And then, one morning, she was gone.

On September 13, 2016, in the small town of Ashland, Ohio, emergency dispatchers received a 911 call from a terrified woman who claimed to be kidnapped. The man holding her hostage was Shawn Grate, a serial killer whom the press later dubbed “The Ladykiller.” A key to his conviction and death sentence were Grate’s extensive recorded confessions—all extracted by one woman: Detective Kim Mager.

Neighbors Gwen, Aimee, and Lisa share more than playdates and coffee mornings on their tranquil street in East Bethesda. They confide their deepest secrets, navigate the challenges of motherhood together, and provide a support system that seems unbreakable. But when Gwen's husband is found murdered after one of their weekly Friday night dinners, the peaceful quiet of their cul-de-sac shatters. The seemingly idyllic world of the three close-knit mom friends becomes a web of deception, betrayal, and revenge.

At Jessica McCord's house, law enforcement officials found windows covered in blankets, a cache of weapons and ammunition, carpets torn up, new tile on the floors, and the couch missing. Then they learned about the nasty divorce and bitter custody battle that had landed Jessica in jail. Along with her new police officer husband, Jessica became the prime suspect in this brutal double murder.

A promising young attorney and a dedicated family man, Michael Fletcher seemed to have it all. But in the summer of 2000, Michael found himself standing trial for the murder of his pregnant wife, Leann. The verdict - guilty of second-degree murder - would leave friends, family, and the public at large scrambling to make sense of a twisted and frightening series of events that ended in the brutal killing of Leann Fletcher. What could possibly have led Michael Fletcher to commit such a gruesome act?

A truly inspiring and heartbreaking book from the mother of little James Bulger - whose murder by two young boys shocked the world. On 12th February 1993, Denise's life changed forever. As she was running errands at New Strand Shopping Centre, she let go of her two-year-old son's hand to take out her purse. Denise never saw her son again. In this extraordinary and heart-wrenching audiobook comes the unflinching account of that terrible day from James Bulger's mother, Denise.

In the fall of 2010, in the all-American town of Apple Valley, Ohio, four people disappeared without a trace: Stephanie Sprang; her friend, Tina Maynard; and Tina's two children, 13-year-old Sarah and 11-year-old Kody. Investigators began scouring the area, yet despite an extensive search, no signs of the missing people were discovered.

Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr. was only fourteen when he first became entangled with serial rapist and murderer Dean Corll in 1971. Fellow Houston, Texas, teenager David Brooks had already been ensnared by the charming older man, bribed with cash to help lure boys to Corll's home. Corll baited Henley with the same deal he'd given Brooks: $200 for each boy they could bring him.

Jenn Corbin appeared to have it all: two dear little boys, a posh home in one of the upscale suburbs of Atlanta, expensive cars, a plush houseboat, and a husband - Dr. Bart Corbin, a successful dentist - who was tall, handsome, and brilliant. But gradually, their seemingly idyllic life together began to crumble. Bart was distraught and Jenn seemed disenchanted. Then, just a few weeks before Christmas 2004, Jenn was found dead with a bullet in her head, an apparent suicide....

Iowa housewife Tracey Pittman Roberts seemed to have it all: natural beauty, three loving children, and a fairy-tale second marriage to a wealthy, handsome businessman. But beneath the happy façade was a woman who used lies, manipulation, sex, ugly allegations, blackmail - and even murder - to serve her own selfish ends. In 2001, police rushed to Tracey's home after a shooting left her vulnerable young neighbor dead. Tracey claimed it was an act of self-defense. Nine gunshot wounds - and a decades-long trail of extortion and fraud - said otherwise.

At first, Linda Bergstrom's marriage to her husband James was idyllic. They were young and in love; he was about to enter the Navy and she was eager to start a family. But it wasn't long before the dream exploded. James became abusive and violent, prone to sudden bursts of anger, long silences, and unexplained disappearances. But Linda vowed to hold on, despite the pain and fear...and her disturbing suspicions about her husband's secret life.

After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death - using want ads to lure his young female victims. And time after time, justice was thwarted by a killer whose twisted legal genius was matched only by his sick savagery. Here, complete with the testimony of women who suffered his unspeakable sexual abuses and barely escaped with their lives and of the police who at last put him behind bars, is one of the most shattering and thought-provoking true-crime stories of our time.

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 teenage students, the courtroom drama - and how justice was finally delivered.

On January 21, 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather changed the course of crime in the United States when he murdered the parents and sister of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend (and possible accomplice), Caril Ann Fugate, in a house on the edge of Lincoln, Nebraska. They then drove to the nearby town of Bennet, where a farmer was robbed and killed. When Starkweather’s car broke down, the teenagers who stopped to help were murdered and jammed into a storm cellar. By the time the dust settled, ten innocent people were dead and the city of Lincoln was in a state of terror.

Susan McFarland watched, powerless, as her husband, Rick McFarland, went into a downhill spiral of get-rich-quick schemes, quirky shopping trips, and prescription-drug abuse. Susan, a rising star at a major corporation, finally had enough. When she decided to call it quits, Rick ended her life, leaving three young boys - ages 5, 8, and 11 - without a mother. A two-month long search by law enforcement and volunteers found no trace of the missing woman....

Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz were four marginalized women striving to make ends meet as sex workers. They looked out for one another. But they would soon share a connection that none of them could have imagined. When Melissa was found dead, the other three women were on edge but assumed they were safe. Twelve days later, they too were dead and police had detained an unlikely suspect—Juan David Ortiz, a ten-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Timed for a trial that will capture national attention, When the Night Comes Falling examines the mysterious murders of the four University of Idaho students. Having covered this case from its start, Edgar award winning investigative reporter Howard Blum takes listeners behind the scenes of the police manhunt that eventually led to suspected killer, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, and uncovered larger, lurid questions within this unthinkable tragedy.

Praying for a happy ending, friends and family stood by Laci's grieving husband Scott. Four months later, Laci's decomposed body was found in the murky waters of San Francisco Bay. The body of her child had washed ashore about a mile away, after a possible "coffin birth." It was a sad closure to an exhaustive search, and a grim end to a marriage that by all accounts had appeared to be perfect.

Raised in the suburb of Riverside, California, 20-year-old college student Jason Bautista endured for years his emotionally disturbed mother's verbal and psychological abuse. She even locked him out of the house, tied him up with electrical cord, and on one occasion, gave him a beating that sent him to the emergency room. On the night of January 14, 2003, Jason strangled his mother. To keep authorities from identifying her body, he chopped off her head and hands, an idea he claimed he got from watching an episode of the hit TV series The Sopranos.

The author of the acclaimed true-crime memoir, The Kill Jar, tells the inside story of the “University of Idaho Murders,” offering a memorable, thoughtful dive into our societal fascination with true crime, the media’s seeming blood-frenzy, and the future of homicide investigations, while cultivating an intimate look into the minds and hearts of the victims and their suspected killer alike.

In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy's home. The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa's friends and peers. With a fresh perspective and painstaking research, James Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. What emerges is a portrait of a community seething with dark undercurrents.

On September 13, 2016, in the small town of Ashland, Ohio, emergency dispatchers received a 911 call from a terrified woman who claimed to be kidnapped. The man holding her hostage was Shawn Grate, a serial killer whom the press later dubbed “The Ladykiller.” A key to his conviction and death sentence were Grate’s extensive recorded confessions—all extracted by one woman: Detective Kim Mager.

On Christmas Eve in 1985, a hunter found a young boy's body along an icy corn field in Nebraska. The residents of Chester, Nebraska buried him as "Little Boy Blue", unclaimed and unidentified - until a phone call from Ohio two years later led authorities to Eli Stutzman, the boy's father. Gregg Olsen's Abandoned Prayers is an incredible true story of murder and Amish secrets.

The year 1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Long-haired teenagers roam the streets, strumming guitars and preaching about peace and love...and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire—the leader of their counterculture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands out hallucinogenic drugs like candy. But beneath his benign persona lies a twisted and uncontrollable rage that threatens to break loose at any moment. Tony Costa is the most dangerous man on Cape Cod.

At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall. Witnesses reported officers beating him with Billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma.

In November 1987, a young couple on an overnight trip to Seattle vanished without a trace. A week later, the bodies of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook were found in rural Washington. It was a brutal crime, and it was the perfect crime: With few clues and no witnesses, an international manhunt turned up empty, and the sensational case that shocked the Pacific Northwest gradually slipped from the headlines.

From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all—a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate as Stompanato's intense jealousy took over.