Murder category: 3028 books

On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers...

The true story of a murder-suicide at Kalamazoo College and its rippling effects on the campus community.

At 3:30 a.m. on April 11, 1933, neighbors and firefighters arrived at the farmhouse of Albin and Alvira Johnson to find a smoldering heap where a seemingly happy home once stood. Beneath the ruins, investigators found the bodies of Alvira and her seven children, but Albin's remains were nowhere to...

Using court transcripts, personal interviews, and police records to retrace the key events of the case,this journey to uncover the truth about what happened to Richard Davis provides a disturbing, eye-opening look into the problems of today's military. After surviving tours in Bosnia and Iraq, Davis...

This thought provoking and inspirational story is the true account of how Anita’s nephew’s brutal murder forced her to experience forgiveness in the rawest form. It is a testament to the strength of the human spirit’s ability to heal after crippling devastation which would forever alter the...

On December 5, 2009, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher. In December of the following year, the appeal trial began. Despite the initial verdict, the Italian and international public opinion is widely divided: many are those who think that...

A chronicle of sixteen ruthless killings from Lone Star history and the dirty details that have shocked and bewildered Texans for decades. Texas has long boasted of its iron fist and strict treatment of criminals. Nevertheless, a number of homicidal scoundrels and fiends have slipped through...

Can Modern DNA Science Crack this Cold Case? The 1978 murder of actor and American icon Bob Crane remains one of the most high-profile unsolved celebrity murders of all time. Thirty-eight years after his brutal murder in Scottsdale, Arizona, millions around the world still want answers. Was John Carpenter...

New York Times**–bestselling author: “In the art of true-crime reportage, Jerry Bledsoe is the best in the country . . . Before He Wakes has the suspense of a novel” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).** Barbara Stager was known as a devoted mother, loving wife, and dedicated church leader...

The story started in Manly, a beachside Sydney suburb, on Australia Day 1986. Megan Kalajzich was shot as she slept beside her husband, Andrew, in their family home. Two bullets were also fired into his pillow. Bill Vandenberg confessed to being the hitman and committed suicide in 1988 by hanging himself...

When Marian Louise Baker went missing, it didn't take long to find her body. She'd been brutally murdered in rural Pennsylvania and it wasn't long before her killer felt compelled to tell someone. In this taut, horrifying account of Marian Baker's 1950 murder, Richard Gehman describes a country setting...

Deep in the wilderness of the Washington timberlands the mutilated body of Ralph Allinson lay for months before it was accidentally discovered by a local lumberjack. A short time later police came across another decomposing body in dense undergrowth which bore similar marks to the first one, leading...

Nurse Robina Lyttle was murdered and dismembered by her lover, Patrick McClafferty, in the basement of an apartment they shared in Flushing, Queens, New York City. The Irish Catholic woman met the Scottish Protestant man in February 1926. McClafferty, a janitor's helper, was encouraged to immigrate...

More than two dozen gripping tales of murder, kidnapping, robbery, and much more from the Reader’s Digest archives. For more than 90 years, Reader’s Digest has been telling the amazing true stories of real-life thrillers, unsolved mysteries, and tales of cold-blooded murder—and of the...