Showing titles in Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions

It was a time of unregulated madness. And nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. Speakeasies thrived, gang war shootings announced Al Capone's rise to underworld domination, Chicago's corrupt political leaders fraternized with gangsters, and the frenzy of stock market gambling was rampant. Enter a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz, who enticed hundreds of people (who should have known better) to invest as much as $30 million.

May Hanna gave her millionaire ex-husband's hired Pinkerton detectives the slip to sneak out of the country. To escape financial embarrassment, James Potter, the manager of a prominent Euclid Avenue apartment building, gave his family cough medicine laced with poison, killing his entire family including himself. Married to a Millionaires' Row doctor, the infamous con woman Cassie Chadwick posed as Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter and forged a fake $5 million check.

The sequin star trilogy interrogates the sixteen years of ‘post-truth’ surrounding the unsolved JonBenét Ramsey case. The first narrative spans nine lawsuits, two books, John Ramsey’s first political campaign and the circumstances surrounding Patsy’s death – all during the first six years after the Grand Jury trial was railroaded. It also interrogates the psychological fabric holding these “sequins” together. Besides testing aspects from the original timeline, the sequin star narrative examines the arch account of the Ramsey case; that treatise of ‘post-truth’ penned by ...

Nobody knows who killed JonBenét Ramsey. Despite the efforts of Colorado’s legendary super sleuth Lou Smit, the JonBenét Ramsey case has – to the present date - defied demystification. Smit, who cracked over 200 cases and had a 90% success record, devoted the last years of his life to finding JonBenét’s killer. Smit died in 2010 having failed to solve this confounding case. 6 years later, despite massive media attention and widespread public scrutiny the most famous of cold cases remains unsolved. Now two rising stars of the true crime genre have put their heads together for their ...

Vincent van Gogh is the world’s most popular and expensive artist, the father of modern art, and yet no one really knows how he died, when, how or where. If he didn’t commit suicide, what happened? If Vincent did commit suicide, why would the master of expressionism fail to express himself on his own death? Why would a man whose art, beloved for its effusiveness, remain mum on this most primary of primary motives; why not reveal his motives for snuffing out his own yellow flame? Why would someone who wrote so many letters – 830 that we know of, at a rate of almost a letter a day – ...

No one has been able to say why - until now. "As we navigate our way through the monster’s murky psychology, pushing through his dark impulses and penetrating his despicable motivations, will we find ourselves far from familiar places, or troublingly closer to them?"

Doubt persists about the fate of a little girl lost twelve years ago. DEEP INTO DARKNESS challenges and tests the mainstream mythology that is the paedophile-abductor narrative. The current default story for what happened to Madeleine McCann on May 3rd, 2007 has many spin-off conspiracies. DEEP INTO DARKNESS examines the best and worst of these, and debunks almost all of them. But if the conspiracies and crazy theories aren't true, what is? What lies hidden deep in the darkness?

Is the criminal justice system taking advantage of ordinary Americans, or is Steven Avery [and a pair of filmmakers] playing us for fools? It has to be the one or the other, so which is it? Is there something unsavoury about a pair of defense lawyers [defending a murderer/rapist] becoming celebrities? Is Ken Kratz' sexting more offensive than the murder, and is Ken Krantz more of criminal than Steven Avery? Are Teresa Halbach's family really bigger suspects than any of the Averys? What do we make of Dr Phil's statements about this case? Is the judge working in cahoots with the prosecution/...

The 6th narrative in the definitive TWO FACE series examines Nichol Kessinger’s five interviews to law enforcement, while simultaneously interrogating the substantiveness of Chris Watts’ confession. Hidden in the deception and lies are clues, leaks and psychological slips that reveal the true machinery of a monster’s mind.

“The last chapter in particular is grueling and grotesque…” The fifth book in Nick van der Leek’s definitive TWO FACE series on Chris Watts does exactly what the title claims: it drills deep through the mountain of Discovery Documents. The fifth narrative not only makes sense of the 1960 pages of discovery, it also integrates the video footage for the first time into a seamless narrative. Missing pieces are found and new insights revealed and contextualized in the most comprehensive assembly of facts and psychological analysis around this puzzling case yet. The main focus of the ...

SHE SAVED HIM CAN YOU SAVE HER? It was a crime that shocked the community in Coronado to its core. In the days following Rebecca Zahau's death in the summer of 2011, an unfathomable horror closed in around her. By early September the same year, law enforcement announced the case closed, and Zahau's billionaire boyfriend Jonah Shacknai, thanked them for their trouble. Years passed and nothing happened. But it wasn't over. Far from it. Crowdsleuthers rallied to the cause of the Zahau family. Funds were raised to lay charges and re-open the case. The case that seemed mired in red tape, welded ...

The Rebecca Zahau case is one of the most bizarre high-profile homicide cases. It is more holes than fabric. For example, why are there no cell phone records of Adam Shacknai? Why was his girlfriend – whom he supposedly called on the night of the incident – not interviewed? Why are there no cell phone records for Dina Shacknai? Why is there so much mystery surrounding the final call and final message left on Rebecca’s phone? Why was it erased and who erased it? Was Rebecca’s cell phone ever examined for fingerprints? Why it was never established what the blunt object was that caused...

In the third ground-breaking book in their series on Amanda Knox, Wilson and van der Leek have done it again! In UNDER SUSPICION they dig out brand new insights that others have overlooked eight years after the original trial. Using powerful detective tools including pattern recognition, graphology, systematic cross-referencing and good-old deep analysis, the SHAKEDOWN TEAM do what they’re supposed to do – they deliver the goods. Effectively our knowledge of what really happened that November 1st night in Italy has taken a real step forward thanks to the insights in this book. In UNDER ...

On April 26th, 2018, Patrick Frazee, a cattle rancher from Florissant near Cripple Creek in Colorado, confided in his elderly neighbor that he'd finally figured out a way to kill his fiancé. "No body, no crime, right?" Joe Moore, a fellow rancher who thought of Frazee as a stepson, and as one of the best cattlemen around, urged the 30-year-old to "get that sh*t out of your head." But Frazee didn't. He persisted. Seven months later, Frazee committed what he hoped was the perfect murder. MURDER MOST FOUL is the definitive narrative of the Frazee case by the world's most prolific true crime ...

When was two-year-old Caylee Anthony murdered? Why is it not an accidental death, by drowning or otherwise? Why was she murdered? How was she murdered? Treachery deals with each of the unprecedented 31 days between June 16th 2008 and July 16th 2008, when Casey Anthony kept up the appearance that her two-year-old daughter Caylee was still alive, but was she?

When scores of aspiring parents turned to the fertility industry to start families, they chose a remarkable young man to be the biological father of their children. He was a music prodigy and gifted athlete who had a genius IQ, movie star looks, and perfect health....

Step into one of the most chilling true crime stories ever told — a saga of control, deception, and an unthinkable act of desperation. This gripping book unravels the shocking details of Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s life under the oppressive rule of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who weaved an intricate web of lies fueled by Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. The already sensational story took the first of many incredible twists on April 3, when the group released a tape of Patty saying she had joined the SLA and had adopted the nom de guerre “Tania.”

Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff’s edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it’s this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it’s that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick.

In The Long Road to Justice: Unraveling Alex Murdaugh's Tangled Web, juror 864, Amie Williams offers a first-hand account of her experiences in the jury box, chronicling the many revelations contained in one of the most sensational criminal cases in South Carolina. Analyzing the trial's most compelling moments including key evidence and witness testimony, Williams offers listeners a better understanding of not only the trial itself but also the sacrifices that come with serving on a jury on a high-profile case.