Kategoria BISAC: True Crime >> Murder - General

What personal vendetta motivated a group of men, labelling themselves a Vigilance Society, to enter the Donnelly farmhouse in southwestern Ontario on that night in February 1880 and brutally bludgeon the family to death? According to the author, this is the wrong question to ask. In This Side of Heaven, a phrase he takes from the verse on the Donnelly family gravestone, Norman Feltes suggests that this legendary event cannot be fully understood through conventional narrative, but only as the historical product of the diverse economic, socio-political, and ideological conditions that...

In December 1883, Peter Lazier was shot in the heart during a bungled robbery at a Prince Edward County farmhouse. Three local men, pleading innocence from start to finish, were arrested and charged with his murder. Two of them -- Joseph Thomset and David Lowder -- were sentenced to death by a jury of local citizens the following May. Nevertheless, appalled community members believed at least one of them to be innocent -- even pleading with prime minister John A. Macdonald to spare them from the gallows.

The Lazier Murder explores a community's response to a crime, as well...

A high-profile murder can function as a mirror of an era, and attorney and crime researcher Virginia McConnell provides a fascinating view of Connecticut in Victorian times, as glimpsed through the unrelated, but disturbingly similar murders of two young women near New Haven in the late 1800s. The colorful characters involved in the commission, investigation, and prosecution of these crimes emerge as real, vibrant individuals, and their stories, compelling in themselves, reveal much about Victorian sex and marriage, drugs from arsenic to aphrodisiacs, early forensic medicine, and...

While the short, lethal careers of serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Andrew Cunanan terrorize the public and provide morbid inspiration for the entertainment industry, few people realize that it is the female serial killer, seldom heard of, who deserves most to be feared. "Murder Most Rare" provides startling information about the female serial murderer, who is shown to be far more deadly and determined, difficult to apprehend, and complexly motivated than her male counterpart. While serial murder by women is relatively rare, a surprising number of female serial killers are...