Showing results for "The Crimes of England" in Murder

Kaltblütige Morde, tragische Entführungen, niederträchtige Folter, skrupelloser Missbrauch, verhängnisvolle Familiendramen und ein Jahrtausendraub - echte Kriminalfälle aus dem wahren Leben. Beststellerautor und True Crime-Experte Adrian Langenscheid berichtet im dritten Band seiner Buchreihe True Crime International aufs Neue wahrheitsgemäß, sachlich und frei von jeglicher Sensationsgier über schockierende Straftaten aus der unmittelbaren Nachbarschaft. Verbrechen, die sich tatsächlich ereignet haben - und das vor gar nicht allzu langer Zeit.

In early modern England, murder truly was most foul. Trials were gossipy events packed to the rafters with noisome spectators. Executions were public proceedings which promised not only gore, but desperate confessions and the grandest, most righteous human drama. Bookshops saw grisly stories of crime and death sell like hot cakes. This history unfolds the true stories of murder, criminal investigation, early forensic techniques, high court trials and so much more.

In December 1832 a farmer found the body of a pregnant young woman hanging near a haystack outside a New England mill town. When news spread that Methodist preacher Ephraim Avery was accused of murdering Sarah Maria Cornell, a factory worker, the case gave the public everything they found irresistible: sexually charged violence, adultery, the hypocrisy of a church leader, secrecy and mystery, and suspicions of insanity. Murder in a Mill Town tells the story of how a local crime quickly turned into a national scandal that became America's first "trial of the century."

The six true-crime stories included in this collection are dark and chilling, and will leave you with a new understanding of just how fragile the human mind can be.

A female thief, with four husbands, a lover, and, reportedly, over 12 children, is arrested and tried for the murder of her stepson in 1872, turning the small village of West Auckland in County Durham upside down. Other bodies are exhumed, and when they are found to contain arsenic, she is suspected of their murder as well. The perpetrator, Mary Ann Cotton, was tried and found guilty and later hanged on 24 March 1873 in Durham Gaol. It is claimed she murdered over 20 people and was the first female serial killer in England.

If ever you worry about children today, spare a thought for the people of 19th century Britain, when knife-crime was rife and gangs of children roamed the streets and countryside, committing countless horrendous crimes including murder.

Who lived to regret her "deathbed" confession? Was Amelia Dyer mad or wicked? Why did the judiciary look compassionately on women who committed infanticide? Among over 80 women whose stories appear in this book, some were tragic; some were evil; some were mad; and several were undoubtedly innocent of the murders for which they were hanged.

One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans.

In July 1864, Thomas Briggs was travelling home after visiting his niece and her husband for dinner. He entered a First Class carriage on the 9.45pm Hackney service of the North London railway. At Hackney, two bank clerks entered the carriage and discovered blood in the seat cushions; also on the floor, windows and sides of the carriage. A bloodstained hat was found on the seat along with a broken link from a watch chain.

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut, Death in the Air, is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. In winter 1952, London automobiles and thousands of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air. But the smog that descended on December fifth of 1952 was different; it was a type that held the city hostage for five long days.

In the tranquil towns of New England during the 1970s, a sinister mystery unfolded when several boys vanished without a trace, and the community’s peace was shattered. One boy’s body was found years later, but what happened to the others remained a mystery. In 2013, author David McGrath, a former host on the Law Enforcement Today Network and an investigator with a relentless drive for justice, watched a documentary about the missing boys.

It took three tortured days in 1876 for Charles Bravo to die from the poison that burned its way through his body. The subsequent investigation revealed many people with a grudge against the young barrister. The dramatic inquest was covered in sensational detail by the press, but no one was convicted of his murder. Over a century later, James Ruddick draws on new evidence to solve one of the most famous murders in criminal history.

On January 7, 1994, residents of the Berkshire Hills woke up to a typical snowy winter day in the majestic woods of Western Massachusetts. The quaint New England towns, the idyllic scenery and the people who lived there could have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Vain and charismatic Walter Sickert made a name for himself as a painter in Victorian London. But the ghoulish nature of his art - as well as extensive evidence - points to another name, one that's left its bloody mark on the pages of history: Jack the Ripper. Cornwell has collected never-before-seen archival material - including a rare mortuary photo, personal correspondence and a will with a mysterious autopsy clause - and applied cutting-edge forensic science to open an old crime to new scrutiny.

There have been countless attempts to solve the brutal murders committed by Jack the Ripper more than 100 years ago. It seems that almost everyone has their own theory and their own suspect, ranging from the reasonably likely to the entirely preposterous. What this most famous of British criminal cases has always required is a professional eye to analyse it with all the benefits of modern investigate techniques. Now that has been provided in the shape of the man most qualified to solve the case: former British murder-squad detective Trevor Marriott.

John Christie was a man with many secrets, and his flat at 10 Rillington Place in London would become known as one of the original houses of horror. Former soldier, special constable, and husband, John was to become regarded as one of the worst British serial killers to date, and one that left a lot more questions than answers following his execution.

Over the course of seven months in 1988, eleven women disappeared off the streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts, a gloomy, drug-addled coastal town that was once the whaling capital of the world. Nine turned up dead. Two were never found. And the perpetrator remains unknown to this day. In Killing Season, Smith takes listeners into a close-knit community of working-class men and women, an underworld of prostitution and drug abuse, and the halls of New England law enforcement to tell the story of an epic failure of justice.

Lady Bette, the 14-year-old heiress to the vast Northumberland estates, becomes the victim of a plot by her grandmother, the Countess Howard, to marry her to the dissident fortune-hunter Thomas Thynn, a man three times her age with an evil reputation. Revolted by her new husband, Lady Bette flees to Holland. Within weeks, Thynn is gunned down in the street by three hired assassins. Who is behind the contract killing? Is it the Swedish Count Coningsmark, young and glamorous with blond hair down to his waist?

Florence Maybrick was the first American woman to be sentenced to death in England - for murdering her husband, a crime she almost certainly didn't commit. Her 1889 trial was presided over by an openly misogynist judge who was later declared incompetent and died in an asylum. Hours before she was to be hanged, Queen Victoria reluctantly commuted her sentence to life in prison. In her opinion, a woman who would commit adultery, as Maybrick had admitted, would also kill her husband. Her children were taken from her; she never saw them again. Her mother worked for years to clear her name.

On 28 November 1911, a retired showman died violently at his home in North London. Known to the world as Lord George Sanger, he was once the biggest name in show business, and was venerated as a national institution. The death of Britain's wealthiest showman read like a popular crime thriller: a merciless killer, a famous victim, a desperate manhunt and a dramatic denouement few could have anticipated. But for over a century, questions have persisted about the murder.