The Man They Killed on Christmas Day

The Man They Killed on Christmas Day
Author: Catalin Gruia
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2013-07-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781492282594

Essential Ceausescu The Life of Romanian Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu: Road to Hell Paved with Good IntentionsA black dog licks at a puddle of blood in which two old people lie, executed on Christmas day in the Targoviste garrison, Romania. Following a kangaroo trial, a special tribunal sentenced them to death by shooting in December 1989 for “serious crimes against the people of Romania.” He died instantly. The woman died a minute later, after the execution squad's paratroop captain furiously emptied another round in her. Thus Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu's five-decade journey together ended, after they started from the bottom, seized power, and grew old while ruling the country. Who Was That Man They Killed on Christmas DayAdulated for all of his 24 years in power, during which he came to personify Romania, Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu – dethroned and replaced by some of his former barons – was turned into a scapegoat for all the evils done to Romanians. But the question remains: Between these two extremes, who was the real Nicolae Ceausescu ?During his regime, Ceausescu's image had been painted in sparkling white. Once he was killed – everything turned to pitch black. This documentary aims to paint a portrait in color, with all shades of grey included, combining the good and bad, the light and the dark extremes of the life of Nicolae Ceausescu (aka Ceaucescu).This book is a concise journalistic style account of Ceausescu's life, following his path through:• A miserable childhood• A boyhood in prisons• A rising youth in the Romanian Communist Party• The honeymoon of his beginnings as the youngest ever political leader in Europe• Times of glory and seizing absolute power• The rough years of decline• A violent deathCeausescu 101Dear reader – stop here for a second, please!You should know from the very beginning this is not an exhaustive, academic paper. Author Catalin Gruia is a veteran journalist who has written and reported for the Romanian edition of National Geographic for over 10 years. What you'll find here is a concise journalistic account of Ceausescu's life.* For behind the scenes information about Gruia's books -->www.catalingruia.com/

The Christmas Massacres

The Christmas Massacres
Author: Human Rights Watch (Organization)
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
Total Pages: 72
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 1564324389

And recommendations -- Maps -- Background -- Attacks on civilians between September and November 2008 -- The Christmas massacres -- Life with the LRA : the children speak -- Response from the LRA -- Recent international action on the LRA -- Acknowledgements.

Faces of the Fallen

Faces of the Fallen
Author: Robert P. Clark
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2018-11-30
Genre: Veterans' families
ISBN: 9781721978717

This book takes the reader back to a single day in Vietnam, December 25, 1967, to tell the stories of the twenty-five men who died that day, and to learn what their lives and deaths meant to their families, friends and comrades. The author, a Vietnam veteran, uses official documents, online archives, online posted messages, personal correspondence, diaries, interviews, news articles, televised reports, video clips, maps and photographs (some of which he took) to reconstruct for the reader many of the details of their lives and deaths. More than ten background chapters place these stories in the broader context of the war. Collectively, these stories are a "micro-history" of one day out of the nearly seven thousand days of the Vietnam War.

The Man Who Died

The Man Who Died
Author: Antti Tuomainen
Publisher: Orenda Books
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1495628175

DIVWhen Finnish mushroom entrepreneur Jaakko discovers that he has been slowly poisoned, he sets out to find his would-be murderer ... with dark and hilarious results. The critically acclaimed standalone thriller from the King of Helsinki Noir... ***Shortlisted for the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year*** ***Shortlisted for the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award*** 'Right up there with the best' Times Literary Supplement 'Deftly plotted, poignant and perceptive in its wry reflections on mortality and very funny' Irish Times 'Told in a darkly funny, deadpan style ... The result is a rollercoaster read in which the farce has some serious and surprisingly philosophical underpinnings' Guardian ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– A successful entrepreneur in the mushroom industry, Jaakko Kaunismaa is a man in his prime. At just thirty-seven years of age, he is shocked when his doctor tells him that he's dying. What's more, the cause is discovered to be prolonged exposure to toxins; in other words, someone has slowly but surely been poisoning him. Determined to find out who wants him dead, Jaakko embarks on a suspenseful rollercoaster journey full of unusual characters, bizarre situations and unexpected twists. With a nod to Fargo and the best elements of the Scandinavian noir tradition, The Man Who Died is a page-turning thriller brimming with the blackest comedy surrounding life and death, and love and betrayal, marking a stunning new departure for the King of Helsinki Noir. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 'The deadpan icy sensibility of Nordic noir is combined here with warm-blooded, often surreal, humour. Like the death cap mushroom, Tuomainen's dark story manages to be as delicious as it is toxic' Sunday Express 'An offbeat jewel ... relentlessly funny' Don Crinklaw, Publishers Weekly 'A bizarre, twisty, darkly comic novel about a man investigating his own murder ... a tightly paced Scandinavian thriller with a wicked sense of humour' Foreword Reviews 'Smart, sensitive, and engaging, and guaranteed to be unlike anything else in your crime fiction library ... the perfect blend of thrills, investigation, character development, and comedy' Crime by the Book 'Hugely entertaining and satisfying ... like Carl Hiassen transported to Finland. It's full of black comedy and has an unlikely hero in Jaakko, who you'll root for to the very end' Kevin Wignall, author of A Death in Sweden 'A delightful mad caper of a story, which will make readers snort out loud with laughter and would have made an excellent 1930s screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra' Crime Fiction Lover 'Combines a startlingly clever opening, a neat line in dark humour and a unique Scandinavian sensibility. A fresh and witty read' Chris Ewan, author of Safe House 'Dark and thrilling, funny and intelligent, this Fargo-like novel contains lethal doses of humour ... and mushrooms' Sofi Oksanen, author of Purge ‘A book I will never forget’ Matt Wesolowski ‘This one is a winner right from the first sentence’ Booklist ‘Antti Tuomainen is a wonderful writer, whose characters, plots and atmosphere are masterfully drawn’ Yrsa Sigurðardóttir ‘An original and darkly funny thriller with a Coen Brothers-esque feel & tremendous style’ Eva Dolan/div

Murder in Paradise

Murder in Paradise
Author: Chris Loos
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2003-07-29
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9780060093464

The shocking true story of the murder of 23–year–old Dana Ireland and the nine–year investigation that became Hawaii's most publicised murder case. By all accounts, 23–year–old Dana Ireland would have been successful at whatever she chose to do with her life. But she didn't get that chance. On Christmas Eve, 1991, this blonde–haired, blue–eyed young woman set off on her bicycle. As she was riding back to the holiday meal, three local youths decided to celebrate Christmas in a different way. They followed her in their car, then rammed her bike, kidnapped, raped, and beat her, and left her for dead on an isolated spot overlooking the ocean. In a community where many residents left their doors unlocked, people were shocked and terrified by this random, brutal act of violence. Worse still was that if the authorities hadn't taken so long to get to the victim, she might have lived. As months and years went by, frustration turned to outrage when police failed to arrest anyone for Dana's murder. But from his home in Springfield, Virginia, John Ireland started his own dogged investigation and crusade for justice. And nine years after his daughter's murder, after one of the most complicated cases the state had ever seen, three men were convicted. Here is a dramatic true story.

Who Killed These Girls?

Who Killed These Girls?
Author: Beverly Lowry
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2016-10-11
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1101947993

“A true-crime page-turner.... Lowry exhausts every possible scenario behind the shocking, unsolved quadruple murder ... and offers a theory on what really happened.” —New York Post "Gripping, moving, and as good as any depiction of a murder case since In Cold Blood.... Brilliant." —Ann Patchett, award-winning, bestselling author The facts are brutally straightforward. On December 6, 1991, the naked, bound-and-gagged, burned bodies of four girls—each one shot in the head—were found in a frozen yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. Grief, shock, and horror overtook the city. But after eight years of misdirected investigations, only two suspects (teenagers at the time of the crime) were tried; their convictions were later overturned and detectives are still working on what is now a very cold case. The story has grown to include DNA technology, coerced false confessions, and other developments in crime and punishment. But this story belongs to the scores of people involved, and from them Beverly Lowry has fashioned a riveting saga that reads like a novel, heart-stopping and thoroughly engrossing.

The Man Who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas

The Man Who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas
Author: Harris Dousemetzis
Publisher: African Sun Media
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2024-03-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1998951391

On 6 September 1966, inside the House of Assembly in Cape Town, Dimitri Tsafendas stabbed to death Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa’s Prime Minister and so-called “architect of apartheid”. Tsafendas was immediately arrested and before he had even been questioned by the authorities, they declared him a madman without any political motive for the killing. In the Cape Supreme Court, Tsafendas was found unfit to stand trial on the grounds that he suffered from schizophrenia and that he had no political motive for killing Verwoerd. Tsafendas spent the next 28 years in custody, making him the longest-serving detainee in South African history. For most of his incarnation he was subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment by the prison authorities. From 2009 to 2018, Harris Dousemetzis extensively researched the assassination of Verwoerd and the life of Tsafendas. For this research, he travelled to South Africa, Mozambique, Greece, France, and Turkey, and interviewed about 150 people who either knew Tsafendas or Verwoerd or were involved with the case of the assassination. He discovered about 12,000 pages of documents on the case, most of them previously unpublished, in archival collections in South Africa, Portugal and the UK. Dousemetzis collaborated with prominent South African jurists, psychiatrists and psychologists, and concluded his research, by writing the Report to the Minister of Justice in the Matter of Dr. Verwoerd’s Assassination. The report conclusively proved that Tsafendas had assassinated Verwoerd for political reasons and that the apartheid authorities had orchestrated a massive operation to declare him insane and apolitical. This ground-breaking report and this book corrected the historical record regarding Verwoerd’s assassination and Tsafendas. The Man Who Killed Apartheid, based on Dousemetzis’s groundbreaking research, chronicles in detail Tsafendas’s life and conclusively demonstrates that he was a perfectly sane and deeply political person with a long history of political activism. At the same time, the book exposes the lie at the heart of apartheid’s posture on the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd and provides a rare picture of how the racist regime operated and what it was like to live and die under apartheid.

The Christmas Killings

The Christmas Killings
Author: Stephen C. Grismer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2018
Genre: Gangs
ISBN: 9780989530224

"The Christmas Killings: 40 Hours to Justice is published on the 25th anniversary of, arguably, Dayton, Ohio’s most shocking murder spree. The crimes were so horrifying that they captured the attention of the national and international press. Known as “The Christmas Killings,” this series of events became a worldwide news story in the print media and early days of cable news. This true-life crime drama opens Christmas week 1992 in a Dayton, Ohio, a declining major industrial U.S. city. The first murder to come to the attention of the four-man Dayton police homicide squad occurs on the evening of December 24, 1992. The ensuing complex criminal acts, including multiple perpetrators, victims, and locations, span 40 consecutive hours until they are resolved only through the tenacity of the detectives and uniformed officers. The full narrative unfolds through the four-day holiday weekend and then presses onward into the weeks and months that follow. Although the story details the atrocities committed by a local gang of teens — the self-proclaimed “Downtown Posse” — who inflict acts of brutality on unsuspecting members of the local community, The Christmas Killings – is a unique portrayal. It is told from the perspective of four homicide investigators – Sgt. Larry Grossnickle and Detectives Wade Lawson, Tom Lawson, and Doyle Burke – both in the way the murders unfold for them in 1992 and in the way these distinguished officers recall the tragic events. Author Dennis Murphy, himself a former Dayton police homicide detective, wanted “The Christmas Killings” told from the point of view of the investigators – the protagonists. He believed there was no better way to recount these tragic events than to tap into the thoughts and feelings of the men who were called out to investigate the homicides over a holiday weekend when most citizens were otherwise engaged in joyous holiday festivities and oblivious to the danger lurking in their city streets. "--Provided by publisher.

From Cochise to Geronimo

From Cochise to Geronimo
Author: Edwin R. Sweeney
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2012-09-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0806188502

In the decade after the death of their revered chief Cochise in 1874, the Chiricahua Apaches struggled to survive as a people and their relations with the U.S. government further deteriorated. In From Cochise to Geronimo, Edwin R. Sweeney builds on his previous biographies of Chiricahua leaders Cochise and Mangas Coloradas to offer a definitive history of the turbulent period between Cochise's death and Geronimo's surrender in 1886. Sweeney shows that the cataclysmic events of the 1870s and 1880s stemmed in part from seeds of distrust sown by the American military in 1861 and 1863. In 1876 and 1877, the U.S. government proposed moving the Chiricahuas from their ancestral homelands in New Mexico and Arizona to the San Carlos Reservation. Some made the move, but most refused to go or soon fled the reviled new reservation, viewing the government's concentration policy as continued U.S. perfidy. Bands under the leadership of Victorio and Geronimo went south into the Sierra Madre of Mexico, a redoubt from which they conducted bloody raids on American soil. Sweeney draws on American and Mexican archives, some only recently opened, to offer a balanced account of life on and off the reservation in the 1870s and 1880s. From Cochise to Geronimo details the Chiricahuas' ordeal in maintaining their identity despite forced relocations, disease epidemics, sustained warfare, and confinement. Resigned to accommodation with Americans but intent on preserving their culture, they were determined to survive as a people.