Showing results for "The Bell" in True Crime

Fear was the unacknowledged specter haunting the streets of London during the Second World War; fear not only of death from the German bombers circling above, but of violence at the hands of fellow Londoners in the streets below. Mass displacement, the anonymity of shelters, and the bomb-scarred landscape offered unprecedented opportunities for violent crime. In this absorbing, sometimes shocking account, Amy Helen Bell uncovers the hidden stories of murder and violence that were rife in wartime London.

Mord ist schon schrecklich genug, wenn er von Erwachsenen begangen wird, doch das Konzept erreicht eine völlig neue Ebene erschütternder Morbidität, wenn sich herausstellt, dass der Mörder ein junger Junge oder ein junges Mädchen ist. Ist es das Ergebnis schwerer Traumata, die sich auf die makaberste Art und Weise manifestieren? Ist es die Folge einer schweren psychischen Störung? Oder wurden sie von den Handlungen der Menschen beeinflusst, bei denen sie aufwuchsen?

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

What can drive a young and seemingly innocent child to kill? Murder is horrible enough when perpetrated by adults, and yet the concept takes on a whole new level of chilling morbidity when a murderer is revealed to be a young boy or girl. Is it the result of severe trauma manifesting itself in the most macabre of ways? Is it the progeny of some severe mental disorder? Or were they influenced by the actions of the people they grew up with? Most of the time, the answers to such a question are simple but no less horrific.

Alison was a vulnerable, mentally ill patient who was taken advantage of by an older male nurse. As a result, she became pregnant and a crisis abortion was arranged by staff at the mental health hospital. Alison emerged from the care of the NHS more damaged than when she had been admitted and took her life on what would have been her child's third birthday.

Mary Bell’s name to this day is infamous in Newcastle upon Tyne. Aged only 11 in 1968, she murdered two young boys, one aged three and one aged four, in Scotswood, an area of the West End of Newcastle upon Tyne. In both instances, Mary Bell told the victim that he had a sore throat, which she would massage to make them better before her hands became tighter when she would strangle them to death.

Beginning in the 1920s, an all-star team of goons, gunmen, and garrotters transformed America's criminal landscape. Its membership was diverse; the mob recruited men from all ethnicities and religious backgrounds. Most were natives of the Big Apple, handpicked from the city's toughest neighborhoods: Brownsville, Ocean Hill, Flushing. So prolific were their exploits that the media soon dubbed this bevy of hired hands Murder, Incorporated.

Shadows on Scotswood delves into one of Britain’s most haunting criminal cases, reimagining the story of Mary Bell, a young girl who shocked a nation with her crimes in the 1960s, child murder committed by a child would be huge news. Set against the bleak, gritty backdrop of Newcastle’s Scotswood neighborhood, the book explores Mary’s troubled childhood, marred by neglect, abuse, and a toxic family environment that would shape her life in ways no one could have foreseen.

Dive into the story of Larry Gene Bell, one of the first killers who used phones to terrorize people. Uncover the origins of this local monster as we peel back the layers of his past. Discover the complexities of his twisted personality that led to national attention. Step by step, follow the details of Bell's heinous, cunning acts, from victim selection to killing methods. You will see why it took innovative investigative techniques to get Bell behind bars.

Henry Louis Wallace terrorized Charlotte, North Carolina, from May 1992 to March 1994. Wallace preyed on lower economic class Black women between seventeen and thirty-five years old. He knew most of his victims, some through his job at Taco Bell, and gained their trust with his friendly demeanor and gentle nature—concealing a monster fueled by drug abuse and rage against women.

The First Counterspy is the story of spy, counterspy, and an American family unwittingly caught in its web. Until this case, the FBI had never recruited civilian counterspies to catch a Soviet agent. The first two were Larry Haas, a leading aviation engineer at Bell Aviation, and Leona Franey, head librarian at Bell's technical library. The FBI pitted them against Andrei Ivanovich Schevchenko, operating legally as one of the highest Soviet officials in the United States during WWII, and illegally as head of a wide-ranging spy network hidden within the American aviation industry.

November 21, 2016, was one of the worst days of my life. To this day, I can honestly say I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone. I will be forever changed because of it. Grief due to gun violence swept through my family and forever changed the dynamic.

In the waning days of World War I, William K. Dean was brutally murdered, his body hog-tied and dumped in a rainwater cistern on his farm in the quiet town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Suspicion quickly fell on Dean's wife, an invalid in the early stages of dementia. Her friends, outraged at the accusations, pointed instead to a former tenant of Dean's, whom many suspected of being a German spy. Others believed that Dean's best friend, a politically powerful banker and judge, was involved.