s&d: True Crime! books

I think - I dgaf about 'serious' writers pondering what nasty crime means for society. But then Burn doesn't do that much iirc, is better than that - concrete, precise, observational. But anyway, going out!

intensely miserable

you are SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE! will add to wishlist.

Slightly OT, but true crime fans may enjoy this little tale:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/20/thomas-quick-bergwall-sweden-murder

Almost done with the Ressler book (Whoever Fights Monsters)- it's pretty good!

Interestingly enough, even though Ressler and John Douglas worked together in the FBI, Douglas barely rates mention, which I find funny. I guess they're in some kind of ego smackdown these days, lol.

Douglas' Mindhunter covers similar ground to Ressler, since they both interviewed a lot of the same criminals, but the styles are different enough that you could read both and come away with something from each. Douglas is much more narrative-focused, tries to bring you into the stories he tells and definitely has a much more intense focus on the victims and their families. Much more dramatic, and he has a lot of interesting detail about his own life and involvement in the cases.

Ressler's more analytical, he's not as interested in putting you there as he is in giving you facts and data, still very much a case-study kind of guy, you feel like you're more part of a lecture series or a class than fireside chats.

Kinda feel myself going down the rabbit hole again - will have to dig up a few more books to get the curiosity sated again. It seems like once or twice a year I go on a tear. Except I find it starts to mess with my head irl, like I start looking for windowless vans and get obsessed with local missing children reports... :/

One of those two wrote a book called "The Cases that Haunt Us" in which he discusses the Lindbergh kidnapping, Jack the Ripper, JonBenet Ramsey and other famous cases. I think it was Douglas, but in either case it's a really good book.

yeah it was Douglas. It's a good one, you're right.

I got to meet Douglas last year at a speaking event - he's a very nice man! He signed a couple of my books for me. I found his books were more productive (?) than others because he was always at great pains, much as Ressler is too, that the killers don't get too much credit or are not made out to be more than they are. They're always very quick to remind you of their failings as humns vs their successes as killers.

Picked up 'Road Out Of Hell' by Anthony Flacco from the library, about the 1920's Wineville Murders. Hoooolllly fuck. I'm only a few chapters in and it's already more harrowing than anything I've read in a long time. Scary shit.

and I also got Lisa Cohen's 'After Etan'

Not a book but True Crimers should check out the mini-series The Staircase. It's about a murder in Raleigh, NC and it is 100% amazing.

oh yeah that is incred

And if you do decide to watch it, which you should, avoid reading anything about the documentary or the case before hand. It is so much better if you go in cold.

Happy Like Murderers, about Fred and Rose West

think the prob I had w/ this book - which is esp good on the way that fred and rose's home became a manifestation of their banal evil - is that the high quality of the writing turns the whole thing into an aesthetic experience, somehow - that burn had given his subjects a better book than they deserved, maybe?

Any recs for definitive books on the Night Stalker or Hillside Strangler cases? Those are two I've always wanted to read more about. (Is Ramirez unique among serial killers in being apprehended by people on the street?)

thanks for the rec, carl -- I'm def gonna look up the Corridor!

no shit, that Wineville book gave me bad dreams last night, I've never had that happen before. Think this is a 'read in the daytime only' book.

It's not that the details are any worse than anything I've read, I think it's just that this acccount is written really WELL, and written as a firsthand account of events as they are unfolding by the nephew who was on the ranch & endured almost as much as the victims themselves. Being part of his thought process, and feeling like you're witinessing everything right along with him...it's a lot to handle.

Wait, the Wineville murders were the ones that figured in that Angelina Jolie movie, right?

The Staircase! If you look up the corridor, I can't say what you'll find...

lol corridor - staircase, I meant

xxpost Phil - yeah apparently Changeling was based on Wineville. I never did see the movie

xps re: Happy Like Murderers

I think that's otm, a good articulation of the problem that was nagging at me about it. But then it feels hard to know what one's asking for - worse books? No books about this kind of thing?

it's tough, because my other huge peeve is the leering, 'mind of a genius' style writing that seem to salivate over the details, and/or oversimplify.

I dunno what the answer is. I'm kind of glad there are books we can read about this kind of stuff, when they're well written, because there's things that can be learned. but yeah, they should come with mind-showers or something.

that Ressler book got a little tiresome in the end. He was kind of obsessed with 'we need to keep these killers alive so we can study them' and omg so passive agressive about pointing out 'this person complained about a thing I said but time passed and it turned out I was correct all along, lol that these poor plebs don't understand my genius'. I get the whole keeping them alive to study *in part*, but it's still kind of offensive somehow for me? after a while reading his book it starts to feel like Ressler has spent so long interviewing the perpetrators of these crimes that he has lost sight of the victims, and what that does to the families to have these men treated as though they're fascinating specimens. He's a bit too in love with his own role as interviewer, I think.

i read this book as a young beatles buff:

http://img3.etsystatic.com/000/0/6698079/il_fullxfull.321643311.jpg

completely unconvincing even to a teenager, but pretty entertaining.

I finished the Wineville murders book, Road Out Of Hell and I will go as far as to say it's one of the best books of its kind, in this genre, that I've read.

The story itself is literally unbelievable - a 13yo boy is for all intents and purposes abducted by his uncle, with full knowledge of his own mother, to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere where the uncle abused him constantly for 2 years, and abused and murdered at least 20 young boys. and coerced his own nephew into helping.

There are so many events that unfold that made me gasp or put the book down or have to walk away. the book is almost entirely told from the perspective of the boy. You go through what he goes through, which is why it's SO harrowing. It's like you're living it with him for so long. And the uncle is never exactly analysed or examined, because everything you need to know about him is witnessed by this boy.

He survived! It's insane. But that boy went on to be a wwii veteran, a husband, and adopted two at-risk boys who they raised as their sons. he told his oldest son everything when he was old enough. but he never passed any of the horror onto his family, because of a few key people who showed compassion for him when he needed it.

I'm honestly still open-mouthed at what went on at that ranch. The uncle was beyond Gacy levels of inhumanity. But that kid just seemed to have something in him that was built for survival. It's a really amazing story.

also those Best American Crime Reporting annual collections! any read the latest?

These were really good--I just found out the series has been cancelled, though, so last year's edition was the final one.

u guys read this? im into it, read 200 pp in like a day

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514GoYVgT6L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

Happy Like Murderers, about Fred and Rose West

theres a booknotes youtube of the ppl who eat darkness writer & he namechecks gordon burn, whom ive never heard of, but it sounds like something worth looking into for me. i think i need these to be at least a lil literary or else i just cant really deal

that People Who Eat Darkness looks intriguing

it's good; the perpetrator is such an enigma, and the best part is that the author recognizes it and doesnt at all try to pretend like he can fully explain him

i don't read a ton of these things, but i'm about halfway through ed sanders' The Family right now and it's pretty gripping.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307279081/ref=aw_d_iv_books/185-7597314-6346743?is=l

The killer of little shepherds, not perfect but fascinating story about a French serial killer in the late 1800s.

Also rep for the aforementioned Charles bowdens works. On a similar subject, The daughters of Juarez:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0743292049

Basically reads like the fourth part of bolano's 2666 but grimmer for being true.

Black mass isn't a bad account of whitey bulger's tenure as crime boss + his relaysh w the FBI. ymmv in terms of how fascinating you find mob stuff. I find most of it pretty tedious tbh but this was solid.

"The Staircase" doc that carl agatha recommended upthread is finally on youtube if anyone's interested.

I just started watching - gripping stuff!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oMpwP2e7fY

killer of little shepherds was good in a "devil in the white city" kinda way
people who eat darkness was pretty good but the author was annoying and i wished he had focused less on the girl's family

xp there'er gonna be 2 new "episodes" of the staircase on sundance channel in march

Awesome!!!!!

Thought I might have mentioned them already, but the two Lawrence Schiller bks on O.J. Simpson's trial and Jonbenet Ramsey are both pretty great - obviously subsequent events have dated them a little, but Schiller had tremendous access and a formidable research team, far more so than on average true crime bk.

gahhhhh only episode 1 of Staircase is online

fuckers

I'll have to investigate getting the rest of the episodes when I get home tonight. Jerks

You can get the DVDs through Netflix. Add them. Move them to number one in your queue. And then ilx mail me as you watch it because hearing people's theories and opinions about the case develop as the documentary progresses is one of my favorite things ever.

re: OJ, the paralegal students I'm teaching this term were asking me a heap of questions about the OJ trial and I had to admit that I didn't know too much about it. Perhaps I shall read that book.

i have no netflixes ;_;

but I have ways & means. this will happen imo

So there are like three books on the Snowtown/Bodies In Barrels murders. Can anyone recommend any of them?

carl agatha - bk is told very much from the defense team POV, if that helps or hinders, tho Simpson later tried to sue Schiller:

http://www.gba-law.com/press/oj-brills-content/

Happy Like Murderers, about Fred and Rose West, are v good, intensely miserable.
― woof, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 2:45 PM (3 months ago)

u were not kidding abt 'intensely miserable'. guh. brb, need 2 look @ some kitten blogs or w/e

Homicide by David Simon (I know, kind of obvious)
Bad: The Autobiography of James Carr
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail by Thomas McFadden
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley
Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II by Brendan Koerner

i'm reading "wilderness of error" by errol morris. it's a weird book - obsessively detailed to the point of being boring sometimes, really short chapters with little cute illustrations at the start of each - but, without knowing too much else about the jeffery macdonald case, i think it makes a very strong case for macdonald's innocence or at least that he shouldn't have been convicted based on the evidence

Patton Oswalt was tweeting about this a few months ago - his wife is a True Crime writer who has taken exception to the book (I haven't read this, because I still want to read the book): http://www.truecrimediary.com/index.cfm?page=cases&id=186

I don't know why I capitalized "True Crime"

otm, her blog is fascinating.

that's interesting but she hadn't read morris' book at the time of writing that post - in the book, he addresses some of the "telling details" she thinks point the finger at macdonald's guilt

I am never going to be able to remember what it was I read/saw/heard... oh god, was it maybe on Radiolab??? (to quote n/a: ugh radiolab ugh) but whatever it was, it really laid into Errol Morris's logic re: that book.

God, nominate that for the least useful comment ever.

Thanks I’m downloading that one

Finally read David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI: screwed out of their ancestral homelands for chump change, a deal you really can't refuse, they buy land in rocky, barren hills of the Oklahoma backside, going cheap and to Indians because white men don't want it and prob never will, so at least they can subsist peacefully, finally. Then: Oil, and what many, not all, white men consider consider to be crazy rich Indians (actually, the "headrights," mineral rights, of each share are held in collective trust by the tribe, so it's really mostly a matter of being able to afford new clothes, jewelry, store-bought liquor if that's your pref, housing, cars, albeit often sold at significant profit by whites)(one of whom is satisfied to report that Osage spend no more foolishly than whites)
The reaction reads like a slow-mo, much more "rational" improvement on the Black Wall Street massacre, with local interests prevailing on D.C. to create "guardianships" for each adult Osage, dispensing funds, also, in some cases, marrying into and decimating their families, including their own resulting off-spring, to inherit as much as possible---but in any case, many white law men are at least pliable (coming from an ill-educated professional tradition established via recruitment of gunslingers), also signif involvement of other officials, lawyers, undertakers, aforementioned merchants of various kinds, doctors---for quite a few years, despite increasing headlines and even real pressure, also a countervailing force of whites, though many of these are also killed, made examples of.
(J. Edgar balancing everything on fulcrum of career interests duh)
Pulled me along but Osage tend to get overshadowed by battlin' white people in most of the book, though they keep reappearing for good scenes, quotes---the last section is its own countervailing force, as Grann talks and travels with descendants of the Osage victims and of their white murderers, in several cases. There are still personal and professional (privately funded) investigations ongoing, including of killings and historically significant death rates that have never been dealt with by Authoritahs: they got a few good convictions and moved on to other matters.

Is that a spoiler? omg the details though.

Also some of the worst baddies, of those detected, live obscenely long lives duh)

Not into podcasts, but this is still a fave TAL, in its latest rebroadcast (stream/download/transcript)(it's worth hearing for the voices of family members)

Prologue
Ira Glass plays the song "Mystery of the Dunbar's Child" by Richard "Rabbit" Brown. It describes Bobby Dunbar's disappearance and recovery and the trial of his kidnapper, all of which was front page news from 1912 to 1914. Almost a century after it happened, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter, Margaret Dunbar Cutright, was looking into her grandfather's disappearance and found that the truth was actually more interesting than the legend. And a lot more troubling. (1 minute)
...Margaret Dunbar Cutright and Tal McThenia co-authored a book about the Bobby Dunbar story called A Case For Solomon. Tal discusses his experience with creating the radio and book versions in this article in The Huffington Post.

Finally read “Acid King” by Jesse P Pollack, about Ricky Kasso

The level detail & research is excellent, and he really goes to great lengths to contextualize Ricky, and Gary Lauwyers thr murder victim. So much better than that plagiarized Say You Love Satan piece of crap by St Clair.

I will say style-wise it’s a bit lacking, but that’s maybe just a personal preference. He’s synthesizing a lot of transcripts & reports and it’s hard to make that artful at the best of times - certainly not a knock on the author.

Saddest detail to me was how ~young~ these kids were. Also Ricky’s parents, how how poorly they handled his behavior & how obviously ill-equipped they were. I’ve seen versions of that growing up. fear-based tough-love parenting can really backfire in terrible, unintended ways

Highly recommend the book if you have any knowledge of the case or interest in 80’s teen dirtbags

Still working my way through "Deconstructing Jack", a 900-page self-published tome and now the author has a follow-up.

His theory is that there isn't one ripper, that it was a bunch of guys. I'm reading it for the social history. Not sure I agree with it or not, but I used to read Ripper forums and Ripperologists really need the piss taken out of them. Every suspect is implausible bullshit, IMO and there won't be any new insights until someone puts the murders in a historic context - something ripperologists don't do.

Personally I think the guy had a beer with poor and immigrant women, whoever he was. Clearly a lot of the profiling is wrong.

Still working my way through "Deconstructing Jack", a 900-page self-published tome and now the author has a follow-up.

His theory is that there isn't one ripper, that it was a bunch of guys. I'm reading it for the social history. Not sure I agree with it or not, but I used to read Ripper forums and Ripperologists really need the piss taken out of them. Every suspect is implausible bullshit, IMO and there won't be any new insights until someone puts the murders in a historic context - something ripperologists don't do.

Personally I think the guy had a beer with poor and immigrant women, whoever he was. Clearly a lot of the profiling is wrong.

(Sorry about the double post)

"Beef with" although he probably also had a beer, or ten.

Other thing is I'm back to reading about Al Capone and have this new pet theory that Bugs Moran set his own guys up to be bumped off (he survived), but I have to do more reading.

There are still unresolved issues with the St. Valentines massacre after all this time and growing up I heard a lot of stories.

my grandmother lived pretty close to where the SVM occurred and heard all the commotion after the fact. she was 17 when it happened i think. it was a wild time to grow up in Chicago.

Yeah it was crazy. People being gunned down in respectable neighborhoods. Gangsters eating in fancy restaurants every night. SVM massacre was in Lincoln Park I think Capone preferred to do business in the burbs.

I heard so many stories growing up of perfectly respectable people getting their liquor - smuggled from Canada - through Capone.

I learn new things every day: Anthony DeAndrea- "priest, politician, translator, gangster."

https://i.postimg.cc/7ZMNkfDH/Screenshot-20231201-045346.jpg

Halfway through this:

https://i.postimg.cc/yxGMjnpL/slenderman.jpg

There are a couple of print pieces cited earlier in the thread. I didn't know anything about the book or the case--just turned up on a sale table at Indigo.

Definitely disturbing. Part of me wants to know more about "Slenderman" and creepypasta.com, but a much bigger part says "No, those are not things you want to be googling." So I'll make do with the book. I do encounter some very strange middle-schoolers these days.