s&d: True Crime! books

this is a little different, but that reminds me of some of those killers who are arrested who have regular family lives but they're actually these horrible killers on the side. like the BTK. i don't know how rare that is but most serial killers are loners.

most useful thread on ilx. loved the rockefeller and skyjacking books - anyone reading anything written as well as those two? is the zodiac book worth a look?

zodiac book def worth it imo

Graysmith is a nutbar, let him show you how

read the sequel only for lols

was it someone itt who recommended Richard Parry's The People Who Eat Darkness I couldn't find the post but holyyyyyyy shit I picked it up from the library this week and read it in 3 days, couldn't put it down.

Highly recommend it for some serious wtf, on all levels -- family dynamic, killer, procedure, everything is just seriously weird and kind of bonkers.

whoever recommended it - thank you and otm

veg! i did. it's here, in the compressed portion prob. yeah, great book

looks so good.
agree with the upthread thumbs down to "blood will out". snooze.
anyone read that Jeff Guinn Manson book yet?

I heard an interview with Guinn on NPR a while ago, I'm curious to read the book.

A friend was raving about it, but he's a Manson obsessive so not really to be trusted. I only read Helter Skelter when I was a teenager, and kind of got turned off by all the borderline lionizing of him and pretty much avoided Manson shit after that - but this one does sound like it might be worth a read.

Helter Skelter is worth the re-read if you are inclined. Even just the craziness of the trial itself makes it well worth it, and the procedural stuff like how LONG it took them to link all the murders. there's so much about that case that I had forgotten, I definitely got a lot more out of it reading it recently.

the hook for the Guinn book, at least from the reviews I've read, seems to be that it places his life and acts in a larger historical context - but if's just the "nightmare end of the hippy dream" narrative I don't know how much detail I really need on that again - but there must be more to it than the old cliches, it is getting great reviews

manson's early childhood and prison life prior to the killings always seemed kinda interesting to me. I hope there's some decent meat on the bone, research-wise.

the michael morton doc is up on netflix instant. the article was so in-depth, not sure i need to see it, though.

I posted about Guinn's Manson book upthread: it's worth reading for the focus on individual Manson Family members and the group dynamics, incl. what they told him about Charlie's direction, attempts to break into show biz; also how they seemed to bizzers and affiliates, like Gail Zappa. The new interviews and research also cover his early life, what family members and neighbors said, often vs. his own claims, though his mother does come off...well, the Bad Seed tales do seem a bit convenient, if full of plausible details, considering later behavior (and if not a Bad Seed, certainly an early bloomer, incl. his juvenile record).
Ed Sanders' The Family still seemed good when I re-read it in an updated edition, but even the re-read was a long time ago, Pretty sure it's worth checking out. He does his research, and he gets to L.A. fairly soon after the murders, conveying the impact he feels (not just the lingering vibe, also the evidence he's shown, the things he's told). Haven't read Helter Skelter.

i'm halfway through people who eat darkness but i started something else. i like it though.

was it someone itt who recommended Richard Parry's The People Who Eat Darkness I couldn't find the post but holyyyyyyy shit I picked it up from the library this week and read it in 3 days, couldn't put it down.

read that last month. just amazing

it's gonna haunt me for a while

the michael morton doc is up on netflix instant. the article was so in-depth, not sure i need to see it, though.

what article is this?

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/innocent-man-part-one

It's a really fascinating read

thanks!

all bow down before Harold Schechter, the classiest of all true crime writers....his new book The Mad Sculptor looks great. A good interview here if you can handle the interlocutor Jon Batchelor, whose manner of speaking is annoying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXyP9re45lM&list=PLKRXaVyH4J7fr3pwuD3PpeDAx8rHhd3Ix&feature=mh_lolz

which is the best schechter book?

the one about H.H. Holmes is the best, I think

I might check that out. The HH Holmes story is so fking creepy

I just started reading Fire Lover by Joseph Wambaugh, about arsonist John Orr. We'll see if it's any good... on the fence atm

I hate books that dont grab me right away, I'm too impatient

I'm not far into the Wambaugh book -- I am having a love hate relationship with it.

The information he's giving is intense and compelling and I want to keep reading but the way it's written is seriously offputting at times. He'll mostly maintain a passive voice but then every now and then will for reasons unknown just randomly inhabit the voice of the douchey perp and using phrases like (shudder) 'whacking the weasel' & it's so jarring and gross like WHY would you do that

Can't ppl just write stuff that I want to read & not be gross really is it too much to ask

that's funny veg, i was just thinking to myself how i was curious about firefighters who are also arsonists. and curious about arsonists in general. i wish i would read more instead of just thinking about all the topics i'm curious about and all the true crime i want to read. anyway the book i'm reading is on the run by alice goffman and it's ok so far. i just liked the cover. at the same time i bought the new kitty genovese book too. this and being a little too excited to pay my mortgage two weeks early (idk why) contributed to me overdrawing my bank account.

arsonists interest me too! this is the first time I've read anything specific

I worked with a guy a long time ago, there was talk among the other staff that he was a firebug and I always wondered about him. He had tried to become a professional firefighter but they wouldn't take him, for whatever reason. Always got about in army fatigues and wore a hitlerish mustache and by the time I worked with him he was legit unstable enough that I was kind of scared to even talk to him

(this was at a commercial laundry who pretty much hired everyone in my hometown that was otherwise unhireable)

he shouted at the washing machines fyi

whether or not he lit fires I never really ascertained. he kinda seemed a bit too looped to be an un-nabbed arsonist, didn't seem really able to be coldly calculating but who the hell knows

but this guy John Orr is like the perfect profile of an arsonist, it's kind of amazing that he worked for so long not being caught, because he was setting off like every alarm bell even in his early career

it fits with my other interest in police impersonators. like guys who buy old police cars at county auctions and stick a red and blue light on the dash and pull people over.

TOTALLY

i always give side-eye to those middle-aged dudes who ride around on police-style motorcycles

this is gonna make one hell of a book someday:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/justice/mcstay-murder-mystery/index.html?c=us&page=1

whoa

xxpost harbl i just reached thepart in the book where the arsonist totally purchased an old crown vic & added lights & a siren loool

I usually don't read true crime, but couldn't resist _The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder by Charles Graeber. I guess I'm not devious in my thinking bc when it became clear how this nurse was murdering people for years and years, I was really taken aback. The way the hospitals kept letting him go but not even reporting their suspicions to their state's Boards of Nursing... unbelievable. My only annoyance (as a person who IS a nurse) is the way the audiobook kept pronouncing "dig" (short for digoxin).

I like the line in Fire Lover where Orr is described as "burying the accelerator pedal" in the old Crown Vic.

I live in Glendale and remember the Ole's Home Center file. Had to read it even though Orr is such a cypher.

I'd never heard of that fire til the book- so awful

After seeing it recommended here I checked out Fire Lover and finished it in two days. Man oh man. You almost have to admire his brazenness, but good lord. California is very lucky that there weren't a LOT more deaths as a result of his fires.

Loved the stat about the number of brush fires after his arrest going from like 60-80 per year to one.

right? crazy

ok i NEED to read that. last night i was thinking about the dc snipers and found no apparently decent books exist about them. just shitty ones. too bad.

I was stopped at a traffic light last week behind a beatup old caprice and found myself thinking 'wow yeah that is a really roomy trunk, totally get why the dc snipers used that model'

:/

Finally got a copy of the Charles Whitman book Viceroy recommended many months ago.

Vegemite, I guess that is how I progressed from the knives and gore books to mafia books. After so many slashers, you conclude, these people don't know how to do a "job". Refreshing to read, say, "Black Mass" and learn how to get rid of a body. When I see a Caprice Classic, I immediately think of dope deals and body dumping - they were so common back in the day that a crook driving one is less noticeable. We had one Caprice after another when I was a kid.

I loved renting Caprices/Crown Vics for band stuff because I could fit two amps, guitars, keyboards, *everything* in the trunk.

*nods, writes in notebook*

have started The Suspicions of Mr Whicher -- loving it! So cleverly written, I'm hooked already

Lots of good points and some appealing recommendations here, mostly recent books I hadn't heard of (most true crime books don't get much promotion budget and/or coverage, seems like):
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/29/sleazy_bloody_and_surprisingly_smart_in_defense_of_true_crime/
I even wrote her a fan letter, and I never do that! Honest! Tried not to make it like I was one of *those* fans, hope I didn't try too hard...

i think i heard her on npr this morning or yesterday

wow such a great list in that article. gotta read em all like true crime pokemon

Yeah she was interviewed at the end of the most recent On The Media episode, which is still on the OTM site. That's where I found out about the article.