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| american ripper history channel: H. H. Holmes Adam Selzer, 2019-04-02 America's first and most notorious serial killer and his diabolical killing spree during the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, now updated with a new afterword discussing Holmes' exhumation on American Ripper. H. H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of a murderer who has become one of America’s great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century. Though Holmes has become just as famous now as he was in 1895, a deep analysis of contemporary materials makes very clear how much of the story as we know came from reporters who were nowhere near the action, a dangerously unqualified new police chief, and, not least, lies invented by Holmes himself. Selzer has unearthed tons of stunning new data about Holmes, weaving together turn-of-the-century America, the killer’s background, and the wild cast of characters who circulated in and about the famous “castle” building. This book will be the first truly accurate account of what really happened in Holmes’s castle of horror, and now includes an afterword detailing the author's participation in Holmes' exhumation on the TV series, American Ripper. Exhaustively researched and painstakingly brought to life, H. H. Holmes will be an invaluable companion to the upcoming Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio movie about Holmes’s murder spree based on Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City. |
| american ripper history channel: Bloodstains Jeff Mudgett, 2017-04-25 This story set in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., San Francisco, New York, and London in the summer of 1888 is based on the true story of and facts uncovered by the author's investigation of the life of his great-great grandfather, Herman Webster Mudgett, aka H.H. Holmes. |
| american ripper history channel: Mysterious Chicago Adam Selzer, 2016-10-25 From Chicago historian Adam Selzer, expert on all of the Windy City’s quirks and oddities, comes a compelling heavily researched anthology of the stories behind its most fascinating unsolved mysteries. To create this unique volume, Selzer has collected forty unsolved mysteries from the 1800s to modern day. He has poured through all newspaper, magazine, and book references to them, and consulted expert historians. Topics covered include who really started the great Chicago fire, who was the first “automobile murderer,” and even if there was actually a vampire slaying at Rose Hill cemetery. The result is both a colorful read to get lost in, a window to a world of curiosity and wonder, as well as a volume that separates fact from fiction—true crime from urban legend. Complementing the gripping stories Selzer presents are original images of the crime and its suspects as developed by its original investigators. Readers will marvel at how each character and crime were presented, and happily journey with Selzer as he presents all facts and theories presented at the time of the “crime” and uses modern hindsight to assemble the pieces. |
| american ripper history channel: Sons of Cain Peter Vronsky, 2018-08-14 From the author of Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters comes an in-depth examination of sexual serial killers throughout human history, how they evolved, and why we are drawn to their horrifying crimes. Before the term was coined in 1981, there were no serial killers. There were only monsters--killers society first understood as werewolves, vampires, ghouls and witches or, later, Hitchcockian psychos. In Sons of Cain--a book that fills the gap between dry academic studies and sensationalized true crime--investigative historian Peter Vronsky examines our understanding of serial killing from its prehistoric anthropological evolutionary dimensions in the pre-civilization era (c. 15,000 BC) to today. Delving further back into human history and deeper into the human psyche than Serial Killers--Vronsky's 2004 book, which has been called the definitive history of serial murder--he focuses strictly on sexual serial killers: thrill killers who engage in murder, rape, torture, cannibalism and necrophilia, as opposed to for-profit serial killers, including hit men, or political serial killers, like terrorists or genocidal murderers. These sexual serial killers differ from all other serial killers in their motives and their foundations. They are uniquely human and--as popular culture has demonstrated--uniquely fascinating. |
| american ripper history channel: The Man from the Train Bill James, Rachel McCarthy James, 2017-09-19 An Edgar Award finalist for Best Fact Crime, this “impressive…open-eyed investigative inquiry wrapped within a cultural history of rural America” (The Wall Street Journal) shows legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applying his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. Between 1898 and 1912, families across the country were bludgeoned in their sleep with the blunt side of an axe. Jewelry and valuables were left in plain sight, bodies were piled together, faces covered with cloth. Some of these cases, like the infamous Villasca, Iowa, murders, received national attention. But few people believed the crimes were related. And fewer still would realize that all of these families lived within walking distance to a train station. When celebrated baseball statistician and true crime expert Bill James first learned about these horrors, he began to investigate others that might fit the same pattern. Applying the same know-how he brings to his legendary baseball analysis, he empirically determined which crimes were committed by the same person. Then after sifting through thousands of local newspapers, court transcripts, and public records, he and his daughter Rachel made an astonishing discovery: they learned the true identity of this monstrous criminal. In turn, they uncovered one of the deadliest serial killers in America. Riveting and immersive, with writing as sharp as the cold side of an axe, The Man from the Train paints a vivid, psychologically perceptive portrait of America at the dawn of the twentieth century, when crime was regarded as a local problem, and opportunistic private detectives exploited a dysfunctional judicial system. James shows how these cultural factors enabled such an unspeakable series of crimes to occur, and his groundbreaking approach to true crime will convince skeptics, amaze aficionados, and change the way we view criminal history. |
| american ripper history channel: The Devil In The White City Erik Larson, 2010-09-30 'An irresistible page-turner that reads like the most compelling, sleep defying fiction' TIME OUT One was an architect. The other a serial killer. This is the incredible story of these two men and their realization of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, and its amazing 'White City'; one of the wonders of the world. The architect was Daniel H. Burnham, the driving force behind the White City, the massive, visionary landscape of white buildings set in a wonderland of canals and gardens. The killer was H. H. Holmes, a handsome doctor with striking blue eyes. He used the attraction of the great fair - and his own devilish charms - to lure scores of young women to their deaths. While Burnham overcame politics, infighting, personality clashes and Chicago's infamous weather to transform the swamps of Jackson Park into the greatest show on Earth, Holmes built his own edifice just west of the fairground. He called it the World's Fair Hotel. In reality it was a torture palace, a gas chamber, a crematorium. These two disparate but driven men are brought to life in this mesmerizing, murderous tale of the legendary Fair that transformed America and set it on course for the twentieth century . . . |
| american ripper history channel: Serial Killers: Butchers & Cannibals Nigel Blundell, 2011-02-23 The body snatcher who inspired Psycho, the noblewoman known as Countess Dracula, Jack the Ripper, and other killers for whom murder was just the beginning. From Gilles de Rais’ castle in fifteenth-century France to “the Bloody Benders’” eighteenth-century Kansas farm to Jeffrey Dahmer’s quiet apartment in twentieth-century Milwaukee, history is littered with serial murderers whose first impulse was to take a life. For some, it was never enough. The real thrill came after their victims were dead. In this shocking anthology, true crime journalist Nigel Blundell brings together more than two dozen chilling profiles of the world’s most unforgettable fiends, including: Ed Gein, the Plainfield necrophile and inspiration for The Silence of the Lambs; Andrei Chikatilo, the “Rostov Ripper”, whose uncontrollable hunger was satiated by more that fifty victims; Dennis Nilsen, whose London house of horrors so overflowed with body parts that they blocked the drains; Germany’s Fritz Haarmann who killed and consumed more than two dozen men, then peddled the left-over meat on the black market; Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory whose lust for the blood of virgins—a body count estimated to be in the hundreds—has branded her the most prolific female serial killer in world history; and many more human monsters whose appetites are still the stuff of nightmares. |
| american ripper history channel: The Ripper Inside Us Rebecca Frost, 2024-04-04 The story of Jack the Ripper has had continual interest since he stalked the streets of Whitechapel during the Autumn of Terror in 1888. During this time, the murders of the Canonical Five made headlines all over the world while in the modern day, the Ripper story continues to permeate all forms of media on the page, screen, in podcasts, and in fiction. We continue to search for something we will likely never, and perhaps do not even wish to discover: Jack's true name. This book looks at the lasting intrigue of Jack the Ripper and how his story, and the stories of the Canonical Five victims, are brought back to life through modern lenses. As psychological approaches and scientific techniques advance, the Ripper's narrative evolves, opening a more diverse means of storytelling and storytellers. How these storytellers attempt to construct a full tale around the facts, including the burning questions of motive and identity, says more about us than the Ripper. |
| american ripper history channel: Words of a Monster Rebecca Frost, 2019-06-07 Decades before the term serial killer was coined, H.H. Holmes murdered dozens of people in his now-infamous Chicago Murder Castle. In his autobiography, Holmes struggled to define himself in the language of the late nineteenth century. As the first--or, as he labeled himself, The Greatest Criminal of the Age--he had no one to compare himself to, and no ready-made biographical structure to follow. Holmes was thus nearly able to invent himself from scratch. This book minutely inspects how Holmes represented himself in his writings and confessions. Although the legitimacy of Holmes' accounts have been called into question, his biography mirrors the narrative structure of the true crime genre that emerged decades after his death. |
| american ripper history channel: Naming Jack the Ripper Russell Edwards, 2014-09-09 After 125 years of theorizing and speculation regarding the identity of Jack the Ripper, Russell Edwards is in the unique position of owning the first physical evidence relating to the crimes to have emerged since 1888. This evidence is from one of the crime scenes, and has now been rigorously examined by some of the most highly-qualified forensic scientists in the country who have ascertained its true provenance. With the help of modern forensic techniques, Russell's ground-breaking discoveries provide conclusive answers to many of the most challenging mysterious surrounding the case. |
| american ripper history channel: Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession David Monaghan, Nigel Cawthorne, 2010-01-01 With several million copies sold in the last fifty years, My Secret Life, first published by Grove Press in the 1960s, is one of the most famous pornographic works in literary history. What readers of this long-banned and troubling book of violent sexual fantasies failed to realize is that it is also the confession of history’s most fiendish killer. Written during the era of Jack the Ripper, it’s narrated by “Walter,” the pseudonym of textile millionaire Henry Spencer Ashbee. Walter was a voyeur and rapist obsessed with prostitutes, and his writing revealed his darkest sexual secrets. He died in 1901, long before his book would be widely read. Only now have researchers finally come to the conclusion that “Walter” and Jack the Ripper were, in fact, one and the same. Jack the Ripper’s Secret Confession puts all the pieces together, and its new theory will amaze and titillate scholars who for generations have pondered the true identity of history’s most brutal murderer. |
| american ripper history channel: Life Undercover Amaryllis Fox, 2019-10-15 INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Fast and thrilling . . . Life Undercover reads as if a John le Carré character landed in Eat Pray Love. —The New York Times Amaryllis Fox's riveting memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master's program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted, with uncanny certainty, the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world. At twenty-one, she was recruited by the CIA. Her first assignment was reading and analyzing hundreds of classified cables a day from foreign governments and synthesizing them into daily briefs for the president. Her next assignment was at the Iraq desk in the Counterterrorism center. At twenty-two, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training, sent from Langley to the Farm, where she lived for six months in a simulated world learning how to use a Glock, how to get out of flexicuffs while locked in the trunk of a car, how to withstand torture, and the best ways to commit suicide in case of captivity. At the end of this training she was deployed as a spy under non-official cover--the most difficult and coveted job in the field as an art dealer specializing in tribal and indigenous art and sent to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia. Life Undercover is exhilarating, intimate, fiercely intelligent--an impossible to put down record of an extraordinary life, and of Amaryllis Fox's astonishing courage and passion. |
| american ripper history channel: Arkansas Hitchhike Killer, The: James Waybern "Red" Hall Janie Nesbitt Jones, 2021 Faulkner County native Red Hall was a serial killer who confessed to murdering at least twenty-four people. Most of his victims were motorists who picked him up as he hitchhiked around the United States. In the closing months of World War II, he beat his wife to death and went on a killing spree across the state. His signature smile lured his victims to their doom, and even after his capture, he maintained a friendly manner, being described by one lawman as a pleasant conversationalist. Author Janie Nesbitt Jones chronicles his life for the first time and explores reasons why he became Arkansas's Hitchhike Killer. |
| american ripper history channel: The Young Investigator's Guide to Ancient Aliens History Channel, 2015-07-21 Based on the popular History Channel show, this book takes a look at history while asking the question: What if there were aliens involved?-- |
| american ripper history channel: Natural Born Celebrities David Schmid, 2008-09-15 Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Over the past thirty years, serial killers have become iconic figures in America, the subject of made-for-TV movies and mass-market paperbacks alike. But why do we find such luridly transgressive and horrific individuals so fascinating? What compels us to look more closely at these figures when we really want to look away? Natural Born Celebrities considers how serial killers have become lionized in American culture and explores the consequences of their fame. David Schmid provides a historical account of how serial killers became famous and how that fame has been used in popular media and the corridors of the FBI alike. Ranging from H. H. Holmes, whose killing spree during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair inspired The Devil in the White City, right up to Aileen Wuornos, the lesbian prostitute whose vicious murder of seven men would serve as the basis for the hit film Monster, Schmid unveils a new understanding of serial killers by emphasizing both the social dimensions of their crimes and their susceptibility to multiple interpretations and uses. He also explores why serial killers have become endemic in popular culture, from their depiction in The Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files to their becoming the stuff of trading cards and even Web sites where you can buy their hair and nail clippings. Bringing his fascinating history right up to the present, Schmid ultimately argues that America needs the perversely familiar figure of the serial killer now more than ever to manage the fear posed by Osama bin Laden since September 11. This is a persuasively argued, meticulously researched, and compelling examination of the media phenomenon of the 'celebrity criminal' in American culture. It is highly readable as well.—Joyce Carol Oates |
| american ripper history channel: The Last Stone Mark Bowden, 2019-04-02 The true story of a cold case, a compulsive liar, and five determined detectives, from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author and “master journalist” (The Wall Street Journal). On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyons, ages ten and twelve, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, DC As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and the mystery endured. Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware. The acclaimed author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968 had been a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper at the time of the original disappearance, and covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending. Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch’s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies. How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind. “One of our best writers of muscular nonfiction.” —The Denver Post “Deeply unsettling . . . Bowden displays his tenacity as a reporter in his meticulous documentation of the case. But in the story of an unimaginably horrific crime, it’s the detectives’ unwavering determination to bring Welch to justice that offers a glimmer of hope on a long, dark journey.” —Time |
| american ripper history channel: Portrait Of A Killer: Jack The Ripper -- Case Closed Patricia Cornwell, 2002-11-11 Now updated with new material that brings the killer's picture into clearer focus. In the fall of 1888, all of London was held in the grip of unspeakable terror. An elusive madman calling himself Jack the Ripper was brutally butchering women in the slums of London’s East End. Police seemed powerless to stop the killer, who delighted in taunting them and whose crimes were clearly escalating in violence from victim to victim. And then the Ripper’s violent spree seemingly ended as abruptly as it had begun. He had struck out of nowhere and then vanished from the scene. Decades passed, then fifty years, then a hundred, and the Ripper’s bloody sexual crimes became anemic and impotent fodder for puzzles, mystery weekends, crime conventions, and so-called “Ripper Walks” that end with pints of ale in the pubs of Whitechapel. But to number-one New York Times bestselling novelist Patricia Cornwell, the Ripper murders are not cute little mysteries to be transformed into parlor games or movies but rather a series of terrible crimes that no one should get away with, even after death. Now Cornwell applies her trademark skills for meticulous research and scientific expertise to dig deeper into the Ripper case than any detective before her—and reveal the true identity of this fabled Victorian killer. In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, Cornwell combines the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation with forensic techniques undreamed of during the late Victorian era to solve one of the most infamous and difficult serial murder cases in history. Drawing on unparalleled access to original Ripper evidence, documents, and records, as well as archival, academic, and law-enforcement resources, FBI profilers, and top forensic scientists, Cornwell reveals that Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the world’s finest museums: Walter Richard Sickert. It has been said of Cornwell that no one depicts the human capability for evil better than she. Adding layer after layer of circumstantial evidence to the physical evidence discovered by modern forensic science and expert minds, Cornwell shows that Sickert, who died peacefully in his bed in 1942, at the age of 81, was not only one of Great Britain’s greatest painters but also a serial killer, a damaged diabolical man driven by megalomania and hate. She exposes Sickert as the author of the infamous Ripper letters that were written to the Metropolitan Police and the press. Her detailed analysis of his paintings shows that his art continually depicted his horrific mutilation of his victims, and her examination of this man’s birth defects, the consequent genital surgical interventions, and their effects on his upbringing present a casebook example of how a psychopathic killer is created. New information and startling revelations detailed in Portrait of a Killer include: - How a year-long battery of more than 100 DNA tests—on samples drawn by Cornwell’s forensics team in September 2001 from original Ripper letters and Sickert documents—yielded the first shadows of the 75- to 114 year-old genetic evid... |
| american ripper history channel: Life with the Afterlife Amy Bruni, 2020-10-27 Star of Kindred Spirits and paranormal investigator Amy Bruni shares stories from her years of experiences with ghosts, organized around thirteen truths that guide her approach to the supernatural. Amy Bruni, co-star of Kindred Spirits and one of the world's leading paranormal investigators, has learned a lot about ghosts over her years of research and first-hand experience. Now, in Life with the Afterlife, she shares the insight she has gleaned and how it has shaped her unique approach to interacting with the spirits of the dead and those who encounter them. From her earliest supernatural encounters as a child, through her years appearing on Ghost Hunters and the creation of her company Strange Escapes, which offers paranormal excursions to some of America's most notoriously haunted destinations, and into her current work on The Travel Channel's Kindred Spirits, this book is full of astonishing and deeply moving stories of Amy's efforts to better understand the dead but not yet departed. With Amy's bright humor and fierce compassion for both those who are haunted and those who are haunting, Life with the Afterlife is an eye-opening look at what connects us as people, in life and beyond. A USA Today Bestseller |
| american ripper history channel: The Kennedy Assassination--24 Hours After Steven M Gillon, 2009-10-06 Riding in an open-topped convertible through Dallas on November 22, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson heard a sudden explosive sound at 12:30 PM. The Secret Service sped him away to safety, but not until 1:20 PM did he learn that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Sworn in next to a bloodstained Jackie Kennedy at 2:40 PM, Johnson worked feverishly until 3:00 in the morning, agonizing about the future of both his nation and his party. Unbeknownst to him, his actions had already determined the tragic outcome of his presidency. In November 22, 1963, historian Steven Gillon tells the story of how Johnson consolidated power in the twenty-four hours following the assassination. Based on scrupulous research and new archival sources, this gripping narrative sheds new and surprising light on one of the most written-about events of the twentieth century. |
| american ripper history channel: The Complete History of Jack the Ripper Philip Sugden, 2012-03-01 The murders in London between 1888-91 attributed to Jack the Ripper constitute one of the most mysterious unsolved criminal cases. This story is the result of many years meticulous research. The author reassesses all the evidence and challenges everything we thought we knew about the Victorian serial killer and the vanished East End he terrorized. |
| american ripper history channel: Axes of Evil Todd C. Elliott, 2015-05-02 The ax-man murders of 1912 in Louisiana and Texas leave a bloody trail of evidence that points to the largest, unsolved serial killing in history of the United States. It’s a tale of ritual murder, voodoo mayhem, and wholesale killings that leads the reader on a shocking train ride across two states and into the chapters of a real American horror story. The fiendish slayings of 10 sleeping families nestled in their beds is only the beginning of the terrifying account of a true crime that remains unsolved. Axes of Evil sheds light on an unwritten part of American history and uncovers the American “Jack the Ripper.” |
| american ripper history channel: Notable Reprobates Joseph Howard Tyson, 2019-07-22 Notable Reprobates examines the pathological phenomena of serial killing and mass murder. It provides detailed case studies of notorious multi-murderers Elizabeth Bathory, H. H. Holmes, Belle Gunness, Ted Bundy, and Joseph J. DeAngelo Jr. Chapter 6 explains DNA and other modern methods of crime detection. The final section deals with heinous political regimes that have resorted to serial mass murder as a matter of policy, including Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, Mao Zedong’s Red China, and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge Movement in Cambodia. In the final analysis, criminal despots such as Stalin, Hitler, and Mao were exponentially worse for humanity than the likes of John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, and Jeffrey Dahmer. |
| american ripper history channel: Depraved Harold Schechter, 2008-06-30 The heinous bloodlust of Dr. H.H. Holmes is notorious -- but only Harold Schechter's Depraved tells the complete story of the killer whose evil acts of torture and murder flourished within miles of the Chicago World's Fair. Destined to be a true crime classic (Flint Journal, MI), this authoritative account chronicles the methods and madness of a monster who slipped easily into a bright, affluent Midwestern suburb, where no one suspected the dapper, charming Holmes -- who alternately posed as doctor, druggist, and inventor to snare his prey -- was the architect of a labyrinthine Castle of Horrors. Holmes admitted to twenty-seven murders by the time his madhouse of trapdoors, asphyxiation devices, body chutes, and acid vats was exposed. The seminal profile of a homegrown madman in the era of Jack the Ripper, Depraved is also a mesmerizing tale of true detection long before the age of technological wizardry. |
| american ripper history channel: Sex, Lies, and Handwriting Michelle Dresbold, James Kwalwasser, 2008-07-22 Explains how to use handwriting analysis to interpret people's character traits, personalities, and backgrounds, and examines the handwriting of such dangerous individuals as Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, and Osama bin Laden. |
| american ripper history channel: The Midnight Assassin Skip Hollandsworth, 2016-04-05 A New York Times bestseller, The Midnight Assassin is a sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885. In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin. And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life. |
| american ripper history channel: Ripper Patricia Daniels Cornwell, 2017 Examines the century-old series of murders that terrorized London in the 1880s, drawing on research, state-of-the-art forensic science, and insights into the criminal mind to reveal the true identity of the infamous Jack the Ripper. |
| american ripper history channel: Murder by Gaslight Troy Taylor, 2013-07 MURDER BY GASLIGHT THE AUTHENTICATED HISTORY OF H.H. HOLMES, HIS INSIDIOUS MURDER CASTLE, AND THE HORRORS OF GASLIGHT ERA CHICAGO Chicago during the Gaslight Era was a place that embodied both the elegance of America's Gilded Age and the vice, crime and sin of the most corrupt city in the country. During the 1880s and early 1890s, Chicago was home to killers, thieves, gamblers, con artists and whores - and hosted perhaps the greatest World's Fair in our nation's history. It was to this place that a man named H.H. Holmes was drawn like a moth to the flame and Chicago embraced him as one of its own. Charming and dapper, Holmes soon slashed his way into American history with devious schemes, unconscionable swindles - and bloody murders. Killing for profit and convenience, he claimed an unknown number of victims with his infamous Castle on Chicago's South Side, a grandiose monstrosity that was filled with trapdoors, winding passages, secret doors and staircases, torture chambers a crematorium and worse. Then, finally on the run from the law, he left a trail of corpses behind him before his past crimes finally caught up with him and led to what the newspapers called the Trial of the Century. In this spellbinding book, author Troy Taylor tackles the chilling tale of H.H. Holmes, cutting through the myths and exaggerations that have plagued the strange story for years and presenting a clear and concise account of Holmes' murders, his swindles, his confessions and the myriad of lies that effortlessly spilled from his lips. How many people did Holmes really kill? Who was the intrepid detective that finally brought about his downfall? And did a supernatural curse really surround those who sent Holmes to the gallows? You'll find out in one of the author's best books so far! |
| american ripper history channel: Chicago's Haunt Detective Raymond Johnson, 2011 Take a fresh look at Chicago's ghosts, legends, and psychics from the viewpoint of a retired West Chicago criminal investigator and local historian. Read favourite legends as well as little-known stories. Who was the fun-loving, hitchhiking, dance-hall phantom known as Resurrection Mary? What mysterious circumstances surround the tragic murders of Patricia and Barbara Grimes? Did Teresita Basa solve her own murder? How was a long-time Chicago city employee, who lead séances out of his home, responsible for the death of a Cook County Sheriff's Deputy? Are psychics able to help law enforcement solve crimes? Read the answers to these questions and others in a fact versus fiction supernatural investigation -- Chicago Style. |
| american ripper history channel: H.H. Holmes John Borowski, 200? |
| american ripper history channel: Female Serial Killers Peter Vronsky, 2007-08-07 In this fascinating book, Peter Vronsky exposes and investigates the phenomenon of women who kill—and the political, economic, social and sexual implications buried with each victim. How many of us are even remotely prepared to imagine our mothers, daughters, sisters or grandmothers as fiendish killers? For centuries we have been conditioned to think of serial murderers and psychopathic predators as men—with women registering low on our paranoia radar. Perhaps that’s why so many trusting husbands, lovers, family friends, and children have fallen prey to “the female monster.” From history’s earliest recorded cases of homicidal females to Irma Grese, the Nazi Beast of Belsen, from Britain’s notorious child-slayer Myra Hindley to ‘Honeymoon Killer’ Martha Beck to the sensational cult of Aileen Wournos—the first female serial killer-as-celebrity—to cult killers, homicidal missionaries, and our pop-culture fascination with the sexy femme fatale, Vronsky not only challenges our ordinary standards of good and evil but also defies our basic accepted perceptions of gender role and identity. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS |
| american ripper history channel: Soul Eaters Goði RavenSkül Venås, 2019-08 This book paints a picture of how humanity is willing to kill and murder it's own people. |
| american ripper history channel: I, Ripper Stephen Hunter, 2015-12-29 Includes an excerpt from The third note. |
| american ripper history channel: True Raiders Brad Ricca, 2021-09-21 True Raiders is The Lost City of Z meets The Da Vinci Code, from critically acclaimed author Brad Ricca. This book tells the untold true story of Monty Parker, a British rogue nobleman who, after being dared to do so by Ava Astor, the so-called “most beautiful woman in the world,” headed a secret 1909 expedition to find the fabled Ark of the Covenant. Like a real-life version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, this incredible story of adventure and mystery has almost been completely forgotten today. In 1908, Monty is approached by a strange Finnish scholar named Valter Juvelius who claims to have discovered a secret code in the Bible that reveals the location of the Ark. Monty assembles a ragtag group of blueblood adventurers, a renowned psychic, and a Franciscan father, to engage in a secret excavation just outside the city walls of Jerusalem. Using recently uncovered records from the original expedition and several newly translated sources, True Raiders is the first retelling of this group’s adventures– in the space between fact and faith, science and romance. |
| american ripper history channel: American Eve Paula Uruburu, 2008-05-01 The scandalous story of America’s first supermodel, sex goddess, and modern celebrity—Evelyn Nesbit. By the time of her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was known to millions as the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty, and whose innocent sexuality was used to sell everything from chocolates to perfume. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her. But when Evelyn’s life of fantasy became all too real and her insanely jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, murdered her lover, New York City architect Stanford White, the most famous woman in the world became infamous as she found herself at the center of the “Crime of the Century” and a scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex. |
| american ripper history channel: Fatal Illusions Adam Blumer, 2009 An obsessive woman, a serial killer on the loose, and a sudden winter storm turn a sabbatical in the North Woods into a nightmare that the Thayer family may not escape alive. |
| american ripper history channel: They All Love Jack Bruce Robinson, 2015-10-13 For over a hundred years, the mystery of Jack the Ripper has been a source of unparalleled fascination and horror, spawning an army of obsessive theorists and endless volumes purporting to finally reveal the identity of the brutal murderer who terrorized Victorian England. But what if there was never really any mystery at all? What if the Ripper was always hiding in plain sight, deliberately leaving a trail of clues to his identity for anyone who cared to look, while cynically mocking those who were supposedly attempting to bring him to justice? In They All Love Jack, the award-winning film director and screenwriter Bruce Robinson exposes the cover-up that enabled one of history's most notorious serial killers to remain at large. More than twelve years in the writing, this is no mere radical reinterpretation of the Jack the Ripper legend and an enthralling hunt for the killer. A literary high-wire act reminiscent of Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson, it is an expressionistic journey through the cesspools of late-Victorian society, a phantasmagoria of highly placed villains, hypocrites, and institutionalized corruption. Polemic forensic investigation and panoramic portrait of an age, underpinned by deep scholarship and delivered in Robinson's inimitably vivid and scabrous prose, They All Love Jack is an absolutely riveting and unique book, demolishing the theories of generations of self-appointed experts—the so-called Ripperologists—to make clear, at last, who really did it; and, more important, how he managed to get away with it for so long. |
| american ripper history channel: Just Kill Me Adam Selzer, 2016-08-30 After taking a summer job with a Chicago ghost tour company, eighteen-year-old Megan is interrogated for murder when the reports of real ghost sightings increase--along with the number of missing tourists. |
| american ripper history channel: The Axeman of New Orleans Miriam C. Davis, 2017-03-01 From 1910 to 1919, New Orleans suffered at the hands of its very own Jack the Ripper–style killer. The story has been the subject of websites, short stories, novels, a graphic novel, and most recently the FX television series American Horror Story. But the full story of gruesome murders, sympathetic victims, accused innocents, public panic, the New Orleans Mafia, and a mysterious killer has never been written. Until now. The Axeman repeatedly broke into the homes of Italian grocers in the dead of night, leaving his victims in a pool of blood. Iorlando Jordano, an innocent Italian grocer, and his teenaged son Frank were wrongly accused of one of those murders; corrupt officials convicted them with coerced testimony. Miriam C. Davis here expertly tells the story of the search for the Axeman and of the eventual exoneration of the innocent Jordanos. She proves that the person mostly widely suspected of being the Axeman was not the killer. She also shows what few have suspected—that the Axeman continued killing after leaving New Orleans in 1919. Only thirty years after Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of Whitechapel, the Axeman of New Orleans held an American city hostage. This book tells that story. |
| american ripper history channel: 13 Little Blue Envelopes Maureen Johnson, 2009-10-06 New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson’s funny, heartbreaking, and utterly romantic tale gets a great new cover! Ginny Blackstone never thought she’d spend her summer vacation backpacking across Europe. But that was before she received the first little blue envelope from Aunt Peg. This letter was different from Peg’s usual letters for two reasons: 1. Peg had been dead for three months. 2. The letter included $1000 cash for a passport and a plane ticket. Armed with instructions for how to retrieve twelve other letters Peg wrote—twelve letters that tell Ginny where she needs to go and what she needs to do when she gets there—Ginny quickly finds herself swept away in her first real adventure. Traveling from London to Edinburgh to Amsterdam and beyond, Ginny begins to uncover stories from her aunt’s past and discover who Peg really was. But the most surprising thing Ginny learns isn’t about Peg . . . it’s about herself. Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it’s all because of the 13 little blue envelopes. Look for the sequel, The Last Little Blue Envelope! |
| american ripper history channel: Termination Zone Adam Blumer, 2020-11 In the Justice Club, You're Either All in, or You're Dead Pianist Landon Jeffers has been hiding in Georgia's woods to keep his loved ones safe from the Justice Club, the cybercrime network seeking to control him through his brain implant. But when his means of blocking their controlling signals is compromised and he receives word that a family member may be in danger, he is forced out of hiding. Now Landon covertly works with unexpected allies including the FBI to help shut the Justice Club down from the inside. But when he is prepped during his concert tour for a high-profile hit targeting the highest levels of the US government, the stakes have never been higher. Can he and his allies thwart the Justice Club's mission of violence in time? Even if that means placing the woman he loves in danger? The deadline is coming. And death is certain if he fails. Note: This is a clean Christian thriller. It does not contain profanity, vulgarity, or sexual content. It does contain a suspense story with overt faith elements and mild violence. Don't miss the first book in the series, Kill Order, book 1 in the Landon Jeffers Thriller Series, available from Meaningful Suspense Press. |
Two American Families - Swamp Gas Forums
Aug 12, 2024 · This PBS documentary might be in the top 3 best I have ever watched. Bill Moyers followed 2 working class families from 1991 to 2024, it tells the...
Florida Gators gymnastics adds 10-time All American
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Now that tariff’s have hit China- American manufacturers swamped
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Last American hostage released | Swamp Gas Forums
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Dec 29, 2023 · The Florida Gators signed a solid 2024 class earlier this month and four prospects will now compete in the Under Armour All-American game in Orlando this week. Quarterback …
Countdown to Kickoff 2025 | Page 3 | Swamp Gas Forums
May 3, 2025 · He was an All-American as a senior in 1970, and though he played only one season in the decade, he was named to the SEC’s All-Decade Team for the 1970s. He was a …
Countdown to Kickoff 2025 | Swamp Gas Forums
May 3, 2025 · He was an All-American in 1984 and ’85 and a Butkus Award finalist in ’85. Other notables: All-American defensive end Trace Armstrong, DE Tim Beauchamp, DT Steven …
Two American Families - Swamp Gas Forums
Aug 12, 2024 · This PBS documentary might be in the top 3 best I have ever watched. Bill Moyers followed 2 …
Florida Gators gymnastics adds 10-time All American
May 28, 2025 · GAINESVILLE, Fla. – One of the nation’s top rising seniors joins the Gators gymnastics roster next …
Walter Clayton Jr. earns AP First Team All-American honors
Mar 18, 2025 · Florida men’s basketball senior guard Walter Clayton Jr. earned First Team All-American honors for …
Now that tariff’s have hit China- American manufacturers swa…
May 7, 2025 · It is also unlikely, if not impossible that American manufacturers will be able to keep …
Myles Graham and Aaron Chiles make a statement at Under A…
Jan 3, 2024 · Florida Gators football signees Myles Graham and Aaron Chiles Jr. during the second day of practice …
