The True Crime category has 1,229 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 13,216 ratings. The most-rated is If You Tell.
Deadly Greed
Summary
From the author of Above Suspicion: the “riveting” true story of Charles Stuart, who murdered his pregnant wife and pinned the crime on a Black man in 1980s Boston (Kirkus Reviews). On October 23, 1989, affluent businessman Charles Stuart made a frantic 911 call from his car to report that he and his seven-months-pregnant wife, Carol, a lawyer, had been robbed and shot by a Black male in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston. By the time police arrived, Carol was dead, and the baby was soon lost as well. The attack incited a furor during a time of heightened racial tension in the community. Even more appalling, while the injuries were real, Stuart’s story was a hoax: He was the true killer. But the tragedy would continue with the arrest of Willie Bennett, a young man Stuart identified in a line-up. Stuart’s deception would be exposed only after a shocking revelation from his brother and, finally, his suicide, when he jumped into the freezing waters of the Mystic River. As the story unraveled, police would put together the disturbing pieces of a puzzle that included Stuart’s distress over his wife’s pregnancy, his romantic interest in a coworker, and life insurance fraud. In an account that “builds and grips like a novel” (Kirkus Reviews), New York Times journalist Joe Sharkey delivers “a picture of a man consumed by naked ambition, unwilling to let anyone or anything get in his way” (Library Journal). Revised and updated, this book also includes a new epilogue by the author.
©1991 Joe Sharkey (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Flight of the Diamond Smugglers
Summary
For nearly 80 years, a huge portion of coastal South Africa was closed off to the public. With many of its pits now deemed "overmined" and abandoned, American journalist Matthew Gavin Frank sets out across the infamous Diamond Coast to investigate an illicit trade that supplies a global market. Immediately, he became intrigued by the ingenious methods used in facilitating smuggling - particularly, the illegal act of sneaking carrier pigeons onto mine property, affixing diamonds to their feet, and sending them into the air. Entering Die Sperrgebiet ("The Forbidden Zone") is like entering an eerie ghost town, but Frank is surprised by the number of people willing - even eager - to talk with him. Soon he meets Msizi, a young diamond digger, and his pigeon, Bartholomew, who helps him steal diamonds. It's a deadly game: Pigeons are shot on sight by mine security, and Msizi knows of smugglers who have disappeared because of their crimes. From the mining towns of Alexander Bay and Port Nolloth to Kleinzee's shores littered with shipwrecks, Frank investigates a long overlooked story. Weaving interviews with local diamond miners who raise pigeons in secret with harrowing anecdotes from former heads of security, environmental managers, and vigilante pigeon hunters, Frank reveals how these feathered bandits became outlaws in every mining town.
©2021 Matthew Gavin Frank (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Made Men
Summary
For the 30th anniversary of its premiere comes the vivid and immersive history behind Martin Scorsese’s signature film Goodfellas, hailed by critics as the greatest mob movie ever made. When Goodfellas first hit the theaters in 1990, a classic was born. Few could anticipate the unparalleled influence it would have on pop culture, one that would inspire future filmmakers and redefine the gangster picture as we know it today. From the rush of grotesque violence in the opening scene to the iconic hilarity of Joe Pesci’s endlessly quoted “Funny how?” shtick, it’s little wonder the film is widely regarded as a mainstay in contemporary cinema. In the first ever behind-the-scenes story of Goodfellas, film critic Glenn Kenny chronicles the making and afterlife of the film that introduced America to the real modern gangster - brutal, ruthless, yet darkly appealing, the villain we can’t get enough of. Featuring interviews with the film’s major players, including Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Made Men shines a light on the lives and stories wrapped up in the Goodfellas universe, and why its enduring legacy is still essential to charting the trajectory of American culture 30 years later. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Glenn Kenny (P)2020 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
Truth and Consequences
Summary
In December 2008, the world watched as master financier Bernard L. Madoff was taken away from his posh Manhattan apartment in handcuffs, accused of swindling thousands of innocent victims - including friends and family - out of billions of dollars in the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Madoff went to jail; he will spend the rest of his life there. But what happened to his devoted wife and sons? The people closest to him, the public reasoned, must have known the truth behind his astounding success. Had they been tricked, too? With unprecedented access to the surviving family members - wife Ruth, son Andrew, and his fiancée Catherine Hooper - journalist Laurie Sandell reveals the personal details behind the headlines. How did Andrew and Mark, the sons who'd spent their lives believing in and building their own families around their father's business, first learn of the massive deception? How does a wife, who had adored her husband since they were teenagers, begin to understand the ramifications of his actions? The Madoffs were a tight-knit - even claustrophobic - clan, sticking together through marriages, divorces, and illnesses. But the pressures of enduring the massive scandal pushed them to their breaking points, most of all son Mark, whose suicide is one of the many tragedies in the wake of the scandal. Muzzled by lawyers, vilified by the media, and roundly condemned by the public, the Madoffs have chosen to keep their silence - until now. Ultimately, theirs is one of the most riveting stories of our time: a modern-day Greek tragedy about money, power, lies, family, truth and consequences.
©2011 Laurie Sandell (P)2011 Hachette
The Caesars Palace Coup
Summary
It was the most brutal corporate restructuring in Wall Street history. The 2015 bankruptcy brawl for the storied casino giant, Caesars Entertainment, pitted brilliant and ruthless private equity legends against the world's most relentless hedge fund wizards. The Caesars bankruptcy put a twist on the old-fashioned casino heist. Through a $27 billion leveraged buyout and a dizzying string of financial engineering transactions, Apollo and TPG - in the midst of the post-Great Recession slump - had seemingly snatched every prime asset of the company from creditors, with the notable exception of Caesars Palace. But Caesars's hedge fund lenders and bondholders had scooped up the company's paper for nickels and dimes. And with their own armies of lawyers and bankers, they were ready to do everything necessary to take back what they believed was theirs - if they could just stop their own infighting. These modern financiers now dominate the scene in corporate America as their fight-to-the-death mentality continues to shock workers, politicians, and broader society - and even each other.
©2021 Sujeet Indap and Max Frumes (P)2021 Tantor
Is Rape a Crime?
Summary
She Said meets Lucky in Michelle Bowdler's provocative debut, telling the story of her rape and recovery while interrogating why one of society's most serious crimes goes largely univestigated. The crime of rape sizzles like a lightning strike. It pounces, flattens, destroys. A person stands whole, and in a moment of unexpected violence, that life, that body is gone. Award-winning writer and public health executive Michelle Bowdler's memoir indicts how sexual violence has been addressed for decades in our society, asking whether rape is a crime given that it is the least reported major felony, least successfully prosecuted, and fewer than three percent of rapists ever spend a day in jail. Cases are closed before they are investigated, and DNA evidence sits for years untested and disregarded. Rape in this country is not treated as a crime of brutal violence but as a parlor game of he said/she said. It might be laughable if it didn’t work so much of the time. Given all this, it seems fair to ask whether rape is actually a crime. In 1984, the Boston Sexual Assault Unit was formed as a result of a series of break-ins and rapes that terrorized the city, of which Michelle’s own horrific rape was the last. Twenty years later, after a career of working with victims like herself, Michelle decides to find out what happened to her case and why she never heard from the police again after one brief interview. Is Rape a Crime? is an expert blend of memoir and cultural investigation, Michelle's story is a rallying cry to reclaim our power and right our world. Time Magazine Best Books of the Year - 2020 A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books “Urgent...an indictment of one of the most glaring contradictions of the US criminal justice system.” (Boston Globe) "Intimate, powerful.... An urgent, necessary, stark exploration of 'one of the most horrific violations that can happen to a human being.'" (Kirkus) "Provocative.... Exhaustive research adds veracity to Bowdler’s powerful account of rape’s devastating aftermath. This is a brilliant study of how society views rape." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
©2020 Michelle Bowdler (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
Narcos Fall
Summary
“Finally, the definitive book about Escobar, original and up-to-date” (UNILAD) Pablo Escobar was a mama’s boy who cherished his family and sang in the shower, yet he bombed a passenger plane and formed a death squad that used genital electrocution. Most Escobar biographies only provide a few pieces of the puzzle, but this action-packed 1000-page book reveals everything about the king of cocaine. Mostly translated from Spanish, part three contains stories untold in the English-speaking world, including: The terrifying details of how Pablo slaughtered some of his friends. The Cali Cartel’s attempt to drop a bomb on Pablo’s prison. His final dark desperate days with his family. Who really hunted him and how he died.
©2020 Shaun Attwood (P)2020 Gadfly Press
The Darkest Night
Summary
Casper, Wyoming: 1973. Eleven-year-old Amy Burridge rides with her 18-year-old sister, Becky, to the grocery store. When they finish their shopping, Becky's car gets a flat tire. Two men politely offer them a ride home. Yet they were anything but good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes at the hands of these men before being thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived; the other did not. Years later author and journalist Ron Franscell - a childhood friend and next-door neighbor to the girls - can't forget his hometown's shocking story of abduction, rape, and murder. Exploring the nature of a small town's memory and the poison of survivor guilt, The Darkest Night races toward a shocking ending. The result is one of the most provocative true-crime stories of the decade, told by one of the nation's finest narrative journalists.
©2007 Ron Franscell (P)2015 Tantor
Maniac
Summary
Harold Schechter, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Hell’s Princess, unearths a nearly forgotten true crime of obsession and revenge, and one of the first - and worst - mass murders in American history. In 1927, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan, was celebrating a new primary school - one of the most modern in the Midwest - Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans. The local farmer and school board treasurer was educated, respected, and an accommodating neighbor and friend. But behind his ordinary demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia. On May 18 he detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone in it. Thirty-eight children and six adults were murdered that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history. Maniac is Harold Schechter’s gripping, definitive, exhaustively researched chronicle of a town forced to comprehend unprecedented carnage and the triggering of a “human time bomb” whose act of apocalyptic violence would foreshadow the terrors of the current age.
©2021 Harold Schechter. (P)2021 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Colombian Killers
Summary
Colombian Killers explores the stories of three men who have forever tainted the lush fields of Latin America. This book narrates the sadistic acts of serial killers Luis Alfredo Garavito, Pedro Alonzo Lopez, and Daniel Camargo Barbosa. For these men, rape and murder were but the beginning of the horrors they inflicted upon the world. The fear their crimes inspire is not about their nature, the methodology, or even the victims. It is about who the killers themselves are. These men were motivated by perhaps the most chilling trifecta - sex, power and revenge. This book begins with three parts, each dedicated to one of these three monsters of modern-day Colombia. Once you've been edified with the general knowledge of the atrocities, we will delve further into the tiny details, the forgotten horrors, the thousands of ways that we as a society failed these men and, in so doing, shaped them into be the monsters they are known as today. Luis Alfredo Garavito, Pedro Alonzo Lopez, and Daniel Camargo Barbosa are among the most prolific serial killers in the world. Between them, they were convicted of 329 murders, but it's believed that the number they committed is over 750. Colombian Killers is not for the faint of heart, nor for the feeble of spirit. Be very sure you want to know what you are about to hear, because if you can be sure of nothing else, be sure of this: You will never forget what you are about to hear.
©2016 Ryan Green (P)2016 Ryan Green
Gunning for the Godman
Summary
Notorious godman Asumal Sirumalani Harpalani (Asaram Bapu) is currently serving life imprisonment in the Central Jail, Jodhpur. He was convicted for rape and also has murder charges against him. A no-holds-barred, firsthand account, Gunning for the Godman looks at how Ajay landed the case when others had flatly refused; how he got a team together; how he foiled Asaram Bapu’s daring escape plan; how he ensured the victim’s safety even while receiving countless death threats himself. And, finally, how he played a masterstroke with the judge that changed the course of the case. This is the shocking, thrilling, true story behind the conviction, written by the investigating officer on the case.
©2020 Ajay Pal Lamba (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Top Cases of the FBI, Volume 2
Summary
From underworld gangsters to homegrown terrorists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has tracked down and arrested some of the most infamous felons in history.
In this second volume of Top Cases of the FBI, RJ Parker includes more recent and illustrious cases broken down into major criminal categories: organized crime and gangsters, counterintelligence/espionage, violent crime/major thefts/bank robberies, civil rights, white-collar crime, and terrorism.
Some of the more notorious investigations detailed in the book include: Black Dahlia, Hurricane Katrina fraud, American traitor Robert Hanssen, Undercover FBI Agent Joseph Pistone, the KKK, and the anthrax attacks post-9/11.
©2017 RJ Parker Publishing (P)2017 RJ Parker Publishing
Doctor Death: Harold Shipman
Summary
Britain's most prolific known serial killer wasn't a ripper or strangler. He was a licensed physician, bound in theory by the good medical practice guidelines of the General Medical Council established in 1858, making care of patients his "first concern" while "being open, honest, and acting with integrity". The "healer" nicknamed Doctor Death achieved none of those goals. But even knowing what he did, the question still remains: Why did he kill?
©2019 RJ Parker Publishing (P)2019 RJ Parker Publishing
Ich ging in die Dunkelheit
Summary
Der Killer kam immer nachts: Von 1976 bis 1986 ereignete sich in beschaulichen Vororten in Kalifornien eine Vergewaltigungs- und Mordserie, die die USA in ihren Grundfesten erschütterte. Auf unheimliche Weise tauchte der Mörder plötzlich im Schlafzimmer seiner Opfer auf. Und immer wieder entkam er unerkannt. Der "Golden State Killer": ein Mysterium, an dem sich trotz zahlloser Spuren Generationen von Ermittlern die Zähne ausbissen. Michelle McNamara heftete sich an die Fersen des Verbrechers und ermittelte über acht Jahre lang auf eigene Faust. Sie kam dem Monster immer näher - und starb, kurz bevor sie ihren Bericht fertigstellen konnte.
©2019 Atrium (P)2019 DAV
Lost Girls
Summary
Chelsea King was a popular high school senior, an outstanding achiever determined to make a difference. Fourteen-year-old Amber Dubois loved books and poured her heart into the animals for which she cared. Treasured by their families and friends, both girls disappeared in San Diego County, just eight miles and one year apart. The community's desperate search led authorities to John Albert Gardner, a brutal predator hiding in plain sight. Now Pulitzer-nominated author Caitlin Rother delivers an incisive, heartbreaking true-life thriller that touches our deepest fears.
©2012 Caitlin Rother (P)2020 Tantor
The Suspect
Summary
On a clear autumn morning in 2004, Rachel O'Reilly, a 30-year-old mother of two, was brutally battered to death in her home. It was a merciless killing that stunned the small, trusting community where she lived, and devastated her close-knit family. In the days that followed the discovery of her body, it was thought that Rachel was the victim of a bungled robbery attempt. It soon emerged, however, that police investigating the case believed Rachel had known her killer and that her murder had been carefully planned months in advance. The spotlight immediately fell upon Rachel's husband, Joe O'Reilly, who admitted in a number of extraordinary press interviews that he was a prime suspect in his wife's slaying. The 32-year-old advertising executive vehemently denied any involvement. It was a crime that captured the imagination of the public, who watched as the illusion of the idyllic suburban life the couple shared together began to shatter.
©2007 Jenny Friel (P)2017 Tantor
John Wayne Gacy
Summary
John Wayne Gacy: The Killer Clown, was a prolific American serial killer who murdered 33 boys between 1972 and 1976, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his house in Norridge, Cook County, Illinois. He was a businessman, politician, and registered clown who used his charm and trickery to lure his victims to his house, where he unleashed his sexual sadism and depravity on them before he strangled them to death with his “rope trick”. How did he go undetected for so long? Did he have any accomplices? How was he caught and sentenced to death? Let’s investigate!
©2021 Gisela K. (P)2021 Gisela K.
The Matriarch
Summary
The matriarch of Australia’s most violent and notorious criminal family, and allegedly the inspiration for the award-winning film Animal Kingdom, tells her side of the story. Kathy Pettingill is a name that’s both respected and feared, not only by Australia’s criminal underworld, but by many in the Victorian police force. As the matriarch at the head of the most notorious and violent family of habitual offenders in Australian criminal history, her life has revolved around murder, drugs, prison, prostitution, and bent coppers - and the intrigue and horror that surround such crimes. Her eldest son, Dennis Allen, was a mass murderer and a $70,000-a-week drug dealer who dismembered a Hell’s Angel with a chainsaw. Two younger sons were acquitted of the Walsh Street murders, the cold-blooded assassination of two police officers that changed the face of crime in Melbourne forever. One of the two, Victor, was gunned down himself in the street 14 years later, becoming the third son Kathy has buried. In this revised and updated authorized edition of Adrian Tame’s best-selling The Matriarch, Kathy Pettingill reveals the chilling truth behind many of the myths and legends that surround her family, including her experiences in the blood-spattered charnel house at the centre of Dennis Allen’s empire of drugs and violence. But this is no plea for pity. Forthright and deeply disturbing, like its subject, The Matriarch pulls no punches. Updated and revised for a new generation, this true crime classic is as terrifying and powerful as when it was first published.
©1996, 2019 Adrian Tame and Kathy Pettingill (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Australia. All rights reserved.
Fast Eddie
Summary
9.30 a.m. on 22 January 1993. The moment in crime history that one of Britain's most audacious thefts ever took place and the legend of 'Fast Eddie' was created. This is the story of how Securicor guard Eddie Maher managed to pull off a £1.2 million heist, fled the country despite every port being closed, spawned an international manhunt and managed to evade capture for 20 years. As Britain's most wanted man, he led 30 detectives, FBI and Interpol on a wild goose chase across the USA. Dubbed 'Fast Eddie' by the press, he was always one step ahead, and after two decades on the run with his family using a series of of aliases and identities, Eddie began to think he'd committed the perfect crime, until a cruel and dramatic betrayal proved otherwise.... Like a Hollywood movie script and told in full for the first time, Fast Eddie is the compelling story of how an ordinary British man became America's most notorious fugitive.
©2021 Eddie Maher (P)2021 Bonnier Books UK
The Murder of Kelsey Berreth
Summary
Love and Murder A successful young mother, Kelsey Berreth, vanishes on Thanksgiving Day in 2018. Kelsey, a pilot so good she taught the military how to fly, goes shopping at a Safeway store, and simply disappears. Her fiance, Patrick Frazee, says he doesn't have a clue. In fact, he says they broke up just a few days before. He's as mystified as everyone else. But Kelsey's mother, Cheryl, is afraid she knows what happened to her daughter. A task force of FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents believe they also know what happened to Kelsey. They have cell phone records and more, including surveillance video and DNA. But they have run into a roadblock. The agents have to get someone close to the killer to flip and turn state's evidence. Are they going to have to do a deal with the devil to find justice for Kelsey Berreth? Contains mature themes.
©2020 Lyons Circle Pubilshing Inc. (P)2021 Tantor