A CRIME STEPHEN KING COULD NOT INVENT. Davis teen Daniel Marsh grows fond of sadistic violence and torture. He believes there are too many people in the world, and that serial killers can help solve this problem. He wants to be like them. On April 14, 2013, he murders Oliver "Chip" Northup, 87, and Claudia Maupin, 76, in a way that, as Davis police said, showed "exceptional depravity." He carefully covers his tracks but talks up the crime to friends. In a five-hour confession he tells police it "felt great" to kill the couple. He pleads not guilty and seeks to have the confession tossed. When...

Double-Barreled Death in the Sierra Foothills "I think I shot my husband," said the voice on the 911 call. "Is he dead?" The date was July 27, 1985. The caller was Colleen Batten of Placerville, California. Colleen had shot her husband Jim Batten. She shot him twice with a shotgun, and he was dead. Colleen Batten claims her husband was a violent predator, and that she has no memory of shooting him. A jury believes her, and Colleen Batten walks free. Colleen marries Bob Harris of the U.S. Forest Service. They live happily for more than 20 years, but when things start to go south, Bob becomes...

Confronting the Jihad of Junkthought Political correctness may be all the rage, but as Peggy Lee said about fever, it's not a such a new thing. It started long ago, and Lloyd Billingsley has been writing about it for decades. "Political correctness," he notes in Bill of Writes, "is a legacy of the Old Left, which allowed only one 'correct' view on anything." And as the author's Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield demonstrate, "political correctness is usually at odds with factual correctness." Political correctness "dead-bolts the mind and rigs an alarm system that demonizes...