As the old saying goes, "You can pick your friends, but not your relatives." In tranquil Northumberland County, Ontario, two families are well acquainted with the grim truth of that innocuous-sounding expression. They are the descendants of the first, and only, man executed in Northumberland's history. In a sordid true-crime tale of poison and philandering in 1850s Ontario, the respected Dr. William Henry King astonished the countryside with the sinister murder of his wife and with his sub...

The sinking of HMS Speedy in 1804 off Presqu’ile Point was more than a tragic loss of the twenty souls on board—it had shocking and far-reaching repercussions for the young colony of Upper Canada.At the centre of it all is Ogetonicut, a Mississauga First Nations man charged with murdering John Sharp, a white trader. As Ogetonicut’s trial drew near, it was moved east to Newcastle for fear of angering the indigenous community that was gathering at York. With the shipping sea...

Governor General Charles Poulett Thomson is in a hurry. In response to the Rebellion of 1837-38, he has been urgently tasked by his masters in England to modernize and improve the governments in the Canadian colonies. In just three months in Toronto, the governor general has managed to pass all the legislation he wants, but with politics heating up in Quebec and his bosses in England dangling a peerage over his head, now he must get to Montreal as fast as he can to do the same thing there....

During the American War of Independence, a wave of British Loyalists moved to Upper Canada with the promise of land. As they arrived in the Bay of Quinte and travelled west to York or Newark, Asa Weller—a resident of the Carrying Place—saw an opportunity.Batteaux—flat-bottomed boats—were commonly used in the late eighteenth century to carry supplies and goods as well as passengers travelling east and west along the north shore of Lake Ontario. At the Bay of Quinte, however, travell...

During the 1790s, Upper Canada’s first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe, promoted the idea of a canal in the area between the Bay of Quinte and Presqu’ile Bay on Lake Ontario, but his idea did not come into fruition until decades later. Why did it take so long?In A History of the Murray Canal, historian Dan Buchanan provides a detailed account of the building of the Murray Canal and how lobbying and politics combined to finally make it happen in 1889.Industries, farm...

In 2007, Dr. Martin MacNeill—a doctor, lawyer, and Mormon bishop—discovered his wife of 30 years dead in the bathtub of their Pleasant Grove, Utah home, her face bearing the scars of a facelift he persuaded her to undergo just a week prior.At first the death of 50-year-old Michele MacNeill, a former beauty queen and mother of eight, appeared natural. But days after the funeral when Dr. MacNeill moved his much younger mistress into the family home, his children grew suspicious. Condu...

Nothing has ever happened like Hungerford. The years do not lessen the shock the nation felt at the news of Michael Ryan’s massacre of innocent people on the streets of this picture-postcard town. What, on Wednesday 19th August 1987, made this loner put on paramilitary kit, arm himself with a Beretta pistol, an M1 carbine and a high-velocity Kalashnikov rifle, and drive the beautiful Savernake Forest to find his first victim? Here he shot dead an ebullient, attractive mother of two...

On May 24, 1977, Trudy Resnick Farber was abducted from her home by a masked, armed intruder, taken to a remote wooded mountainside and buried alive! A million dollar ransom demand was made for her release. The Day the Catskills Cried is the complete and true story concerning a horrific crime that shook the Catskill region of New York.

Heather Barnett's mutilated body was discovered by her son and daughter on their return home from school in Bournemouth one November afternoon. The police quickly ascertained that the murder was premeditated and meticulously planned down to the last macabre detail: the killer had not left one single piece of DNA evidence -- even the bloody footprints from a distinct pair of trainers did not lead out of the house but ended in the front room, without any further trace. As a bizarre and sicke...

"An excellent writer." —True Crime Book ReviewsAnything For LoveWhen nineteen-year-old Steven "Boston" Colver set eyes on beautiful young Tylar Witt, the sparks between them could not be denied. It didn't matter that she was only fourteen. The two saw their love written in the stars. All they wanted was to spend every moment in each other's arms.When Tylar's concerned mother, Joanne Witt, tried to come between them, her efforts only fueled ...

The true-crime story of a Florida woman's violent downfall from viral fame, by the New York Times bestselling author of She Survived: Jane.When she was fifteenn, Jennifer Mee developed an unrelenting case of the hiccups—hiccupping as many as fifty times a minute for months. Soon the Florida teen's strange story went viral. Dubbed the “Hiccup Girl” by the media, she gained international sympathy and appeared on a slew of popular TV shows. Eventuall...

Who committed Toronto's Silk Stocking Murder? Why did a quiet accountant in Guelph, Ontario, murder his wife and two daughters? When did police in Alberta hire a self-styled mind reader to solve a mass murder? How did an American confidence man from Arizona find himself facing a murder charge in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia? These questions and more are answered in Murder: Twelve True Stories of Homicide in Canada, the latest collection of thrilling true Canadian crime stories by Edwa...