A Homicide in Hooker's Point

A Homicide in Hooker's Point
Author: Gloria Taylor Weinberg
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2012-01-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1469142457

As a quintessential storyteller at the top of her form, Gloria Taylor Weinberg delves into the sometimes painful realities of life to produce a hauntingly unforgettable novel. In the fall of 1950, eight-year old Vicki Leigh Bayle learns that prejudice is not always about color, and that truth, as adults define it, is malleable. She learns that love and hate are drawn from the same well, and that some of the people she loves most keep stores of each in equal measure. The day after neighbor Eric Magruder kills her kitten during a domestic dispute, Vicki and her father watch as Eric is gunned down in their front yard. Witnesses say he was killed by his father-in-law. But is that really what happened during that tragic weekend of violence? At least one investigator has doubts. Both Vicki and her father had access to a gun that day, and her father refuses to produce it. Why? A Homicide in Hookers Point is a fascinating tale of innocence and pathos colliding in a small community in rural South Florida. The story develops inexorably; building momentum as it evolves, all the while tempting the reader to linger over passages of lush, evocative imagery. I was struck by the authors insightful portrayal of people and places, which brought back fond memories of the simple, authentic life experiences that I had growing up in Clewiston near Hookers Point. -- Erik C. Larsen, Attorney, Winter Park, Florida.

The Murder of Helen Jewett

The Murder of Helen Jewett
Author: Patricia Cline Cohen
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 514
Release: 1999-06-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0679740759

In 1836, the murder of a young prostitute made headlines in New York City and around the country, inaugurating a sex-and-death sensationalism in news reporting that haunts us today. Patricia Cline Cohen goes behind these first lurid accounts to reconstruct the story of the mysterious victim, Helen Jewett. From her beginnings as a servant girl in Maine, Helen Jewett refashioned herself, using four successive aliases, into a highly paid courtesan. She invented life stories for herself that helped her build a sympathetic clientele among New York City's elite, and she further captivated her customers through her seductive letters, which mixed elements of traditional feminine demureness with sexual boldness. But she was to meet her match--and her nemesis--in a youth called Richard Robinson. He was one of an unprecedented number of young men who flooded into America's burgeoning cities in the 1830s to satisfy the new business society's seemingly infinite need for clerks. The son of an established Connecticut family, he was intense, arrogant, and given to posturing. He became Helen Jewett's lover in a tempestuous affair and ten months later was arrested for her murder. He stood trial in a five-day courtroom drama that ended with his acquittal amid the cheers of hundreds of fellow clerks and other spectators. With no conviction for murder, nor closure of any sort, the case continued to tantalize the public, even though Richard Robinson disappeared from view. Through the Erie Canal, down the Ohio and the Mississippi, and by way of New Orleans, he reached the wilds of Texas and a new life under a new name. Through her meticulous and ingenious research, Patricia Cline Cohen traces his life there and the many twists and turns of the lingering mystery of the murder. Her stunning portrayals of Helen Jewett, Robinson, and their raffish, colorful nineteenth-century world make vivid a frenetic city life and sexual morality whose complexities, contradictions, and concerns resonate with those of our own time.

Zero at the Bone

Zero at the Bone
Author: John Heidenry
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2010-06-22
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9780312641962

This haunting true crime tale brings to life the infamous 1953 kidnapping and murder of Bobby Greenlease. The son of a wealthy Kansas City automobile dealer, Bobby was just six years old when a pair of grifters, Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Heady, snatched him away-and set what was then the country's highest ransom ever paid. Six hundred thousand dollars later, Bobby was killed anyway, setting off a chain of events that would culminate in notorious mobster Joe Costello stealing half the ransom and Hall and Heady's eventual double execution. Told by acclaimed journalist John Heidenry in bone-chilling detail, and featuring a cast of characters ranging from underground crime bosses and hard-boiled detectives to the victim's family and the murderers themselves, this is the story of one of the most complex and least understood crimes in American history. Book jacket.

The Five

The Five
Author: Hallie Rubenhold
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2019
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1328663817

Miscast in the media for nearly 130 years, the victims of Jack the Ripper finally get their full stories told in this eye-opening and chilling reminder that life for middle-class women in Victorian London could be full of social pitfalls and peril.

The Subject of Prostitution

The Subject of Prostitution
Author: Jane Scoular
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2015-12-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317696468

The Subject of Prostitution offers a distinctive analysis of the links between prostitution and social theory in order to advance a critical analysis of the relationship of law to sex work. Using the lens of social theory to disrupt fixed meanings the book provides an advanced analytical framework through which to understand the complexity and contingencies of sex work in late modernity. The book analyses contemporary citizenship discourse and the law's ability to meet the competing demands of empowerment by sex workers and protection by radical feminists who view prostitution as the epitome of patriarchal sexual and economic relations. Its central focus is the role of law in both structuring and responding to the 'problem of prostitution'. By developing a distinctive constitutive approach to law, the author offers a more advanced analytical framework from which to understand how law matters in contemporary debates and also suggests how law could matter in more imaginative justice reforms. This is particularly pertinent in a period of unprecedented legal reform, both internationally and nationally, as legal norms simultaneously attempt to protect, empower and criminalise parties involved in the purchase of sexual services. The Subject of Prostitution aims to overcome the current aporia in these debates and suggest new ways to engage with the subject and law. As such, The Subject of Prostitution provides an advanced theoretical resource for policymakers, researchers and activists involved in contemporary struggles over the meanings and place of sex work in late modernity.

Murder in the Bayou

Murder in the Bayou
Author: Ethan Brown
Publisher: Scribner
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1982127813

A New York Times Bestseller & the Basis for the Hit Showtime Docuseries Murder in the Bayou is a New York Times bestselling chronicle of a high-stakes investigation into the murders of eight women in a troubled Southern parish that is “part murder case, part corruption exposé, and part Louisiana noir” (New York magazine). Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered in Jennings, Louisiana, a bayou town of 10,000 in the Jefferson Davis parish. The women came to be known as the Jeff Davis 8, and local law enforcement officials were quick to pursue a serial killer theory, stirring a wave of panic across Jennings’ class-divided neighborhoods. The Jeff Davis 8 had been among society’s most vulnerable—impoverished, abused, and mired with mental illness. They engaged in sex work as a means of survival. And their underworld activity frequently occurred at a decrepit motel called the Boudreaux Inn. As the cases went unsolved, the community began to look inward. Rumors of police corruption and evidence tampering, of collusion between street and shield, cast the serial killer theory into doubt. But what was really going on in the humid rooms of the Boudreaux Inn? Why were crimes going unsolved and police officers being indicted? What had the eight women known? And could anything be done do stop the bloodshed? Mixing muckraking research and immersive journalism over the course of a five-year investigation, Ethan Brown reviewed thousands of pages of previously unseen homicide files to posit what happened during each woman’s final hours delivering a true crime tale that is “mesmerizing” (Rolling Stone) and “explosive” (Huffington Post). “Brown is a man on a mission...he gives the victims more respectful attention than they probably got in real life” (The New York Times). “A must-read for true-crime fans” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), with a new afterword, Murder in the Bayou is the story of an American town buckling under the dark forces of poverty, race, and class division—and a lightning rod for justice for the daughters it lost.

Point of Origin

Point of Origin
Author: Patricia Cornwell
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 432
Release: 1999-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101207345

The clues to a series of remorseless killings go up in smoke—and only Kay Scarpetta can find them in this #1 New York Times bestseller from Patricia Cornwell. “Sears its way into the psyche…Ablaze with Cornwell’s finest, scariest writing.”—Atlanta Journal Constitution The devastating fire tore through the horse farm, destroying everything it touched. Picking through the wreckage, Dr. Kay Scarpetta uncovers human remains—the work of an audacious and wily killer who uses fire to mask his brutal murders. And when Scarpetta learns that her old nemesis, Carrie Grethen, has escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is somehow involved, the investigation becomes personal. Tragedy strikes close to home. And Scarpetta must match Grethen’s every move with one of her own to douse the inferno of evil that threatens everyone around her... Includes an Introduction by the Author

Who Killed Donna Gentile

Who Killed Donna Gentile
Author: Larry S. Avrech
Publisher: Adamo Novus Books
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2019-09-12
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9781950036042

Donna Marie Gentile was an informant for the San Diego Police Dept. Larry Avrech, who was a young officer at the time, stumbled across Donna and the information about her 'sugar daddy' within the department. Recognizing the telltale signs of possible corruption, he befriended the prostitute to dig deeper. It would turn out to be the biggest mistake of his career. Eight months later, Avrech was terminated. His police brothers had chosen to believe a prostitute over a trusted officer "because it fit the specific needs of the department at that particular time". His integrity cost everything dear to him-his career, his home, and later his children. After his termination, the vindictive department continued to threaten him; doing everything they could to preserve their coverup and destroy Larry. Only six weeks after Donna testified against Avrech, her lifeless nude body turned up making Larry an instant murder suspect. In a twist of fate, Avrech got a call from a high-ranking Deputy District Attorney who said he could prove Larry was set up. But the question remained, "Who Killed Donna Marie Gentile?" Larry would work tirelessly for the next seven years to uncover a serial murder and eventually reveal the details in this comprehensive book about what happened behind the sensational headlines.

Blood Trail

Blood Trail
Author: Steven Walker
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2012-03-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0786032014

Now updated with a new afterword, the classic true crime thriller by journalist Steven Walker and veteran police detective Rick Reed exploring the grisly crimes of a sadistic serial killer who dismembered his victims. Joseph Weldon Brown confessed to more than a dozen murders across seven states. He was convicted and sentenced for killing a woman whose body he dismembered and scattered across three Indiana counties. In prison, he hogtied and strangled his cellmate, then asked the judge to lock him up for life because if he was released, he would continue killing. Police detective Rick Reed was on the scene when Brown led authorities to the scattered remains of Ginger Gasaway in 2000. After Brown’s arrest, he confessed to a shocking number of other heinous crimes—the torture and murders of drifters and sex workers, the cold case of a naked woman’s body found in a roadside ditch, even the murder of his own mother. Detective Reed was the one man Brown opened up to—and the only one to cut through the deceptions and lies and learn the terrible truth . . . In this newly updated edition, now-retired detective Reed reveals his personal theories and insights into one of the darkest minds he has ever encountered—and one of the most terrifying crime stories ever told . . .

The Professor and the Prostitute

The Professor and the Prostitute
Author: Linda Wolfe
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2014-08-26
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 149763704X

Acclaimed true-crime journalist Linda Wolfe presents the chilling case of a college professor who bludgeoned to death the prostitute he loved—plus eight other true stories that expose the psychological forces that drive seemingly respectable people to commit violent, unexpected crimes A professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, a suburban husband, and father of three, William Douglas secretly frequented Boston’s Combat Zone, a world of pimps, pushers, and porn shops. One night in 1982 he met twenty-year-old prostitute and former art student Robin Benedict, with whom he began a torrid affair that would end in murder. With the revealing psychological insights that made her previous books such riveting character studies, Wolfe depicts the catastrophic results of Douglas’s living out his secret love fantasies and the complex police investigation that brought the professor to justice. Among the eight shorter true-crime stories included in this volume is the case of the notorious Marcus twins, Manhattan gynecologists and drug addicts who were found dead together in an Upper East Side apartment. Wolfe also takes readers into the gay and transsexual clubs of 1980s New York for a twisted story of love and murder, and to the Texas suburbs, where a privileged fourteen-year-old boy takes a semiautomatic to his parents one sweltering July morning.