Jack Olsen has 14 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 79 ratings. The most-rated is The Misbegotten Son.
The Misbegotten Son
Summary
An account of the crimes of Arthur Shawcross describes how the paroled child killer shot, stabbed, suffocated, and strangled 16 Rochester, New York, prostitutes and examines how the legal system failed his victims.
©2014 Jack Olsen (P)2015 Evan Olsen, Su Olsen
I: The Creation of a Serial Killer
Summary
Prize-winning journalist Jack Olsen, armed with unprecedented access to one of the most infamous serial killers in American history, provides a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a murderer in the killer's own words.... In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of Taunja Bennet, a troubled 23-year-old barfly who had suffered mild retardation since birth. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people. And the real killer wasn't about to let anyone take credit for his kill. Keith Hunter Jesperson was a long haul truck driver and the murderer of eight women, including Taunja Bennet. As the case wound through police precincts and courts - ending in life sentences for both Sosnovke and Pavlinac - Jesperson began a twisted one man campaign to win their release. To the editors of newspapers and on the walls of highway rest stops, Jesperson scribbled out a series of taunting confessions: I killed Tanya Bennett.... I beat her to death, raped her and loved it. Yes I'm sick, but I enjoy myself too. People took the blame and I'm free.... Look over your shoulder. I may be closer than you think. At the end of each confession, Jesperson drew a happy face, earning for himself the grisly sobriquet "The Happy Face Killer". Based on access to interviews, diaries, court records, and the criminal himself, I: The Creation of a Serial Killer is Jesperson's chilling story. It chronicles his evolution from angry child to sociopathic murderer, from tormentor of animals to torturer of women. It is also the story of the fate that befell him after two innocent citizens were imprisoned four years for one of his killings. Edgar Award winner Jack Olsen lets the killer to tell his story in his own words, offering unprecedented insight into the twisted thought process of a serial murderer. Olsen takes his listeners along on Jesperson's vicious cross-country killing spree, letting him describe how he played his "death game" with eight innocent victims and how he finally came to grips with the fate he deserved. I: The Creation of a Serial Killer is one of the most revealing and insightful pieces of crime reporting ever published.
©2018 Jack Olsen (P)2018 Jack Olsen Literary Works
Cold Kill
Summary
David loved Cindy and was loved in return. Or so he thought. The troubled young man clung to his new love and dreamed of their future together. So begins the chain of events that was to evolve into a horror of terrifying proportions. Jack Olsen, best-selling author of Son, now reveals the details of a true-life romance gone hideously awry. After weeks of planning, the young misfits from two fine old Texas families donned grotesque battle gear and crept into the luxurious home where Cindy Ray's parents lay asleep with her two small sons. In the hot muggy room, the "cold kill" was over in seconds. Everyone who knew the unpredictable Cindy suspected that she was involved, but the ghastly crime had been so carefully orchestrated that Houston's top homicide detectives could get nowhere. Cindy wore black and sobbed at the funeral, then began a frenzied attempt to collect her inheritance and as many of her wealthy parents possessions as she could haul away. No one except David West was surprised when she walked out on him. Then the story took another bizarre turn. In a final bid to solve the case, a seductive young private investigator was assigned to cozy up to West. Soon the gullible killer was in love, once again with fateful consequences. Traditionally, true-crime drama illuminates the sinister motivations in the human psyche. Yet Cold Kill reveals something still more frightful - unspeakable murders are committed, not out of greed, revenge, or blind demented rage, but out of a troubled young man's tragically misconceived code of honor and a desperate need to please and protect the woman of his dreams. Jack Olsen's Cold Kill is a stunning testament to the profoundly discerning eye of a grand master of true crime. To listen to Cold Kill is not to forgive David West. It is, however, to undergo the uncanny experience of feeling oneself slowly but surely moving into the shoes of a pathological killer.
©2017 Jack Olsen (P)2017 Jack Olsen/Evan Olsen/Su Olsen
The Man with the Candy
Summary
A full account of the most heinous crime of the century in which nearly 30 young boys were sexually tortured to death.
©1974 Su Olsen / Evan Olsen (P)2018 Su Olsen / Evan Olsen
Charmer: A Ladies' Man and His Victims
Summary
The author of Predator traces the story of George Russell, Jr., a bright, young, popular black man whose thirty-year psychological unraveling led to a shocking killing spree.
©2017 Jack Olsen (P)2017 Evan P Olsen
Salt of the Earth
Summary
Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his 12-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied. Tips and sightings poured in as lawmen and volunteers combed the Cascades forest in the biggest search in Northwest history. Years passed with no sight of the blue-eyed girl or the bright clothes she'd worn on the day she disappeared, but Elaine remained undaunted. Salt of the Earth is the true story of how one woman fought and triumphed over life-shattering violence and how she healed her family - and herself. Salt of the Earth is the true story of a courageous woman who survived a hellish 20th-century nightmare. Mob violence, injustice, kidnapping, murder, and suicide were the black holes in the awful astronomy of Elaine Gere's life. Somehow she had to summon the courage to endure: to honor her beloved dead and to rebuild the shattered lives of the sons who depended on her strength. Jack Olsen has been lauded for his psychological insights into the most violent criminals in such previous masterworks as Doc, The Misbegotten Son, and Predator, but he has never overlooked their victims. By viewing the world through the eyes of Elaine Gere and her devastated family, he finds the core values that enabled them not only to survive and flourish, but, in the end, to triumph.
©2016 Jack Olsen (P)2016 Evan P. Olsen
Night of the Grizzlies
Summary
Jack Olsen's true account, traces the causes of the tragic night in August 1967 when two separate and unrelated campers, a distance apart, were savagely mangled and killed by enraged bears.
©2014 Jack Olsen (P)2014 Gregg Olsen
Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell
Summary
Award winner! With a new introduction by best-selling true-crime author Ron Franscell. For twenty-five years, the trusted family doctor in a small Wyoming town had been raping and molesting the women and children who most relied on him. Mostly Mormons, the naive victims sometimes realized on their wedding nights the truth about what had happened in Dr. Story's office. In riveting detail, veteran crime writer Jack Olsen tells the searing story of a small group of courageous women who decided to bring a doctor to justice--and unearthed a legacy of pain and anger that would divide their families, their neighbors, and an entire town.
©2014 Jack Olsen (P)2015 Evan Olsen, Su Olsen
Predator
Summary
An account of the life and crimes of psychopath Mac Smith that describes how Seattle police, eager to make an arrest in the murders of the city's women, arrested the wrong man for Smith's crimes.
©2014 Jack Olsen (P)2015 Evan Olsen, Su Olsen
Give a Boy a Gun
Summary
A classic true story.
©2014 Jack Olsen (P)2015 Evan Olsen, Su Olsen
The Secret of Fire 5
Summary
Fire 5 is a special roving unit which comes to the aid of other fire companies that run into trouble all over the city. Its story is told by one of the men of the unit, Charly Sprockett, and from the very first scene Jack Olsen hooks the listener with his remarkable ability to write dialogue that rings true and to create characters who jump to life. We live with the men in the station, take drills with them, hear them swap funny stories, marital woes and sexual adventures. We watch them razz the probies, initiate their first fireperson, Lulu Ann Tompkins, and unite in common hatred of their tyrannical new battalion chief, H. Walker Slater. We see them crawl through burning buildings, dragging out people trapped within. We join the hilarity when they come to the rescue of a 400-pound woman who gets stuck in her bathtub, and we root for Charly as he climbs out on an overpass over a freeway to talk a desperate young girl out of leaping to her death. But beneath the ribald humor lies an urgent suspense story. Somewhere in the city lurks the firefighter's deadliest enemy - a torch - a vicious arsonist who has been pouring gasoline over derelicts and setting them aflame. Funny, touching, exciting, true, The Secret of Fire 5 seems headed for certain success.
©2015 Jack Olsen (P)2015 Gregg Olsen
The Bridge at Chappaquiddick
Summary
And on its surface, the Chappaquiddick Incident (as it has infamously become known) was a simple but tragic traffic accident. However, its political fallout caused it to become the most speculated-upon car accident until Princess Diana's fatal ride, some 28 years later: Was Kennedy drunk? Was he trying to conceal an affair by deliberately killing Kopechne? Why did he wait for so long before reporting the accident? And who else was involved? Olsen tells the tale with as much detail as was made available to him. Though there is apparently only a single living eye-witness to the accident (Kennedy himself, who described having the "sensation of drowning" on live television a week later), Olsen tracks down the incongruous statements made by others who were indirectly involved and comes to a potential conclusion which would be difficult to refute. There is no legal evidence of this conclusion, of course, but his alternate explanation of events turns much of the circumstantial evidence into a logic-of-sorts. And his presentation thereof causes one to reflect seriously on the nature of the official record of events as told through Kennedy's lips.
©2014 Jack Olsen (P)2015 Gregg Olsen
The Climb Up to Hell
Summary
In the heart of the Swiss Alps stand the three majestic peaks of the Bernese Oberland, Europe's most famous mountain range. The highest, at 13,638 feet, is the Jungfrau. Next is the Mönch at 13,465 feet. But it is the smallest, the Eiger, rising 13,038 feet above sea level, that is by far the deadliest. Called a "living" mountain for its constantly changing conditions--unpredictable weather, disintegrating limestone surfaces, and continuously falling rock and ice--its mile-high north wall is perhaps the most dangerous climb in the world. And that may be just what beckons elite Alpinists to scale the treacherous peak against the odds. In 1957, nearly 40 years before the well-known Mount Everest tragedy, two teams of confident climbers set out to summit the north wall of Eiger Mountain. Not long into their journey, onlookers could tell the four men were headed for disaster. Soon rescue teams from all over Europe raced toward Eiger--yet only one of the four climbers survived to face unfounded international accusations. In a story as fascinating as any novel, Jack Olsen creates a riveting account of daring adventure, heroic rescue, and one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of mountain climbing.
©2014 Jack Olsen (P)2015 Gregg Olsen