True crime journalist Gregg Olsen, author of the instant bestseller If You Tell, unravels the twisted tale of a shocking murder in Amish country.
On Christmas Eve in 1985, a hunter found a young boy's body along an icy corn field in Nebraska. The residents of Chester, Nebraska buried him as "Little Boy Blue," unclaimed and unidentified-- until a phone call from Ohio two years later led authorities to Eli Stutzman, the boy's father. Eli Stutzman, the son of an Amish bishop, was by all appearances a dedicated farmer and family man in the country's strictest religious sect. But behind his quiet façade was a man involved with pornography, sadomasochism, and drugs. After the suspicious death of his pregnant wife, Stutzman took his preschool-age son, Danny, and hit the road on a sexual odyssey ending with his conviction for murder. But the mystery of Eli Stutzman and the fate of his son didn't end on the barren Nebraska plains. It was just beginning... Olsen's Abandoned Prayers is an incredible true story of murder and Amish secrets.Applying the close-up, empathic reporting that made There Are No Children Here a modern classic, Kotlowitz offers a piercingly honest portrait of a city in turmoil. These sketches of those left standing will get into your bones. This one summer will stay with you.
"Haunting and heartbreaking, The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries lives up to its title, and is a must-read for true crime aficionados..."--Alex Finlay, author of Every Last Fear and The Night Shift
#1 New Release in Medical Forensic Psychology
This collection of cold cases examines crimes that are dark, scary, mysterious, and still waiting to be solved.
Unsolved crimes, unanswered questions. Crimes are meant to be solved. But what happens when they're not? For the individuals involved--from the victims and their families to police investigators--this is the most frustrating part of all. For them there's no resolution, no justice, no tidy boxes in which to pack away all the bits and pieces of a puzzle that finally links together. Instead, they are only left with questions that may never get answered.
Chilling cold cases & unexplained mysteries. The Best New True Crime Stories examines a fascinating assortment of unsolved murders, unsolved crimes, serial killers, and mysterious stories from around the world, from the past to the contemporary. Like the previous anthologies in The Best New True Crime Stories series, this volume contains all-new and original nonfiction accounts penned by international writers from across the literary spectrum, from true crime and crime fiction to journalism. Contributors include Dean Jobb, Joan Renner, Cathy Pickens, Lindsey Danis, Anya Wassenberg, and many others.
Inside, you'll find:
If you like books about murder cases or liked The Book of Cold Cases, If You Tell, or Unmasked, you'll love The Best New True Crime Stories.
The gripping story of a young woman's murder, unsolved for over two decades, brilliantly investigated and reconstructed by her stepsister.
Growing up, Rachel Rear knew the story of Stephanie Kupchynsky's disappearance. The beautiful violinist and teacher had fled an abusive relationship on Martha's Vineyard and made a new start for herself near Rochester, NY. She was at the height of her life-in a relationship with a man she hoped to marry and close to her students and her family. And then, one morning, she was gone. Around Rochester-a region which has spawned such serial killers as Arthur Shawcross and the "Double Initial" killer-Stephanie's disappearance was just a familiar sort of news item. But Rachel had more reason than most to be haunted by this particular story of a missing woman: Rachel's mother had married Stephanie's father after the crime, and Rachel grew up in the shadow of her stepsister's legacy. In Catch the Sparrow, Rachel Rear writes a compulsively readable and unerringly poignant reconstruction of the case's dark and serpentine path across more than two decades. Obsessively cataloging the crime and its costs, drawing intimately closer to the details than any journalist could, she reveals how a dysfunctional justice system laid the groundwork for Stephanie's murder and stymied the investigation for more than twenty years, and what those hard years meant for the lives of Stephanie's family and loved ones. Startling, unputdownable, and deeply moving, Catch the Sparrow is a retelling of a crime like no other.***With a brand new chapter, updates on the investigations, 8 pages of exclusive photos, and a behind-the-scenes conversation between Billy Jensen and retired detective Paul Holes on the Golden State Killer, their favorite cold cases, and more***
The New York Times bestselling true-crime hit, now in trade paperback!
Journalist Billy Jensen spent fifteen years investigating unsolved murders, fighting for the families of victims. Every story he wrote had one thing in common--they didn't have an ending. The killer was still out there.
But after the sudden death of a friend, crime writer and author of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara, Billy became fed up. Following a dark night, he came up with a plan. A plan to investigate past the point when the cops had given up. A plan to solve the murders himself.
You'll ride shotgun as Billy identifies the Halloween Mask Murderer, finds a missing girl in the California Redwoods, and investigates the only other murder in New York City on 9/11. You'll hear intimate details of the hunts for two of the most terrifying serial killers in history: his friend Michelle McNamara's pursuit of the Golden State Killer and his own quest to find the murderer of the Allenstown Four. And Billy gives you the tools--and the rules--to help solve murders yourself.
Gripping, complex, unforgettable, Chase Darkness with Me is an examination of the evil forces that walk among us, perfect for every true crime fan who has read I'll Be Gone in the Dark and wants to know what's next?
On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities--fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century. The massacre produced international headlines for weeks, and prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to send in the US Army.
In The Colony, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended, and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. Their homestead--Colonia LeBaron--is a portal into the past, a place that offers a glimpse of life within a polygamous community on an arid and dangerous frontier in the mid-1800s, though with smartphones and machine guns. Rooting her narrative in written sources as well as interviews with anonymous women from LeBaron itself, Denton unfolds an epic, disturbing tale that spans the first polygamist emigrations to Mexico through the LeBarons' internal blood feud in the 1970s--started by Ervil LeBaron, known as the "Mormon Manson"--and up to the family's recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult, whose now-imprisoned leader, Keith Raniere, may have based his practices on the society he witnessed in Colonia LeBaron.
The LeBarons' tense but peaceful interactions with Sinaloa deteriorated in the years leading up to the ambush. LeBaron patriarchs believed they were deliberately targeted by the cartel. Others suspected that local farmers had carried out the attacks in response to the LeBarons' seizure of water rights for their massive pecan orchards. As Denton approaches answers to who committed the murders, and why, The Colony transforms into something more than a crime story. A descendant of polygamist Mormons herself, Denton explores what drove so many women over generations to join or remain in a community based on male supremacy and female servitude. Then and now, these women of Zion found themselves in an isolated desert, navigating the often-mysterious complications of plural marriage--and supported, Denton shows, only by one another.
A mesmerizing feat of investigative journalism, The Colony doubles as an unforgettable account of sisterhood that can flourish in polygamist communities, against the odds.
The most famous lady gambler of the Old West teams up with Widowmaker Jones in a doomed search for lost treasure, a deadly trek through the desert--and a dangerous alliance with the greatest gunslingers in history . . .
IT'S A MATCH MADE IN HELL.
Card player extraordinaire Poker Alice knows when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, and when to team up with master gunman Newt "Widowmaker" Jones. She's betting on Jones to protect her--and her money--on a treasure hunt in the California desert. Legend has it that a shipwreck is buried in the Salton sands. Some say it's a Spanish galleon that got stuck when the sea ran dry. Other says it's a Chinese junk full of pearls or a Viking ship filled with Aztec treasure. Either way, a lot of very mean and dangerously violent folks would kill to find it. Which is why Poker Alice needs the Widowmaker. In this game, it's winner takes all. Losers die . . . Praise for Spur Award winner Brett Cogburn "Fans of frontier arcana will revel in Cogburn's readable prose and lively characters."
--Publishers Weekly on Rooster "Cogburn amazes and astounds."
--Booklist