My Review (5 stars out of 5) Shortly after 3am on the 8th of August 1963 near Cheddington in Buckinghamshire, a gang of villains stole £2.6 million from the Glasgow to London mail train in a daring robbery. The names of some members of the gang have become synonymous with the legend that has grown…
Category: True Crime
‘Story of a Murder’ by Hallie Rubenhold
My Review (5 stars out of 5) (Audiobook) The story of legendary wife-murderer Dr Crippen, told with an emphasis on his victim and the women who knew and worked with her. When music hall artiste Belle Elmore disappears from her north London home, the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild want to know why. Pestering the police…
‘The Shadow of Death’ by Philip E Ginsburg
My Review (5 stars out of 5) (Audiobook) During the 1980s, a killer stabbed six women in the Connecticut River Valley, between New Hampshire and Vermont. Despite rigorous investigations, the murderer has never been caught. Author Philip E. Ginsburg reveals the pioneering forensic methods police and FBI agents used to track the killer. The only…
‘Beyond Evil’ by Nathan Yates
My Review (5 stars out of 5) In Soham in 2002, two ten-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, went out to go and buy some sweets, but they never came home. Among the volunteers who came forward to help in the search for the missing girls was school caretaker, Ian Huntley, who also put…
‘Supper with the Crippens’ by David James Smith
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife, Belle, lived in a rented house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent. Following supper with two of their friends, Crippen appears to have poisoned his wife and cut up her body, burying her under the cellar floor. Moving his mistress, Ethel le Neve,…
‘The Poisonous Solicitor’ by Stephen Bates
My Review (5 stars out of 5) In 1922, solicitor Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong was tried and found guilty of killing his wife by poisoning her with arsenic. Hanged for her murder, the case caused a scandal not only in Hay-on-Wye where he lived but across the whole country. My first introduction to this story…
‘Catch Me If You Can’ by Frank W. Abagnale with Stan Redding
My Review (3 stars out of 5) (Audiobook) In the nineteen sixties, American Frank W. Abagnale, while utilising several aliases, became one of the cleverest con men the world has ever seen. Posing as an airline pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, and sociology professor, he forged thousands of cheques, stayed free of charge in hundreds…
‘Little Lindy Is Kidnapped’ by Thomas Doherty
My Review (5 stars out of 5) (Audiobook) On March 1st, 1932, the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was taken from his bedroom in Hopewell, New Jersey. Given Lindbergh’s reputation as an aviator – having been the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic – the American public were appalled that…
‘Missing Presumed Dead’ by Mark Tedeschi
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Australians Dorothy Davis and Kerry Whelan had a lot in common – they both came from middle class, happy families and were well off financially. Unfortunately for them, they also both knew Bruce Burrell. When Dorothy disappeared in 1995 after leaving her home to visit a friend, police…
‘Kitty Genovese’ by Catherine Pelonero
My Review (5 stars out of 5) (Audiobook) Subtitled: A True Account of a Public Murder and its Private Consequences, this is the story of the horrific murder of Kitty Genovese on the street where she lived in Queens, New York in 1964. What proved more horrifying however, was the number of witnesses to her…
Colin Garrow 