Is there such a thing as a criminal type? Are criminals born genetically predisposed to commit crimes, or are they fashioned by their circumstances? Physicians, psychologists and criminologists have been asking these questions for many centuries, without finding a definitive answer.Criminal Profiling is packed with intriguing case histories that demonstrate the variety, sophistication and effectiveness of criminal profiling. The book includes chapters on the search for the ...

Criminal investigators have learned how to interpret vital testimony that is written in the language of fingerprints and flakes of skin, gradients of teeth and bone, splashes of blood, flecks of paint and traces of chemicals, a splinter of glass, or a uniquely striated bullet.Bodies of Evidence is packed with intriguing case histories involving an astonishing variety of forensic evidence, and includes various cases from around the world, including O.J. Simpson, Ted Bundy, J...

Many people believe they have seen ghosts, many others are doubtful, but despite the rationalism of the present day, there has been no decrease in the number of sightings: old ghosts have survived for centuries and have been joined by modern ones, haunted houses retain their eerie reputations, apparitions are studied by parapsychologists, poltergeists still wreak havoc in homes.Ghost Sightings is a wide-ranging guide to ghostly phenomena from all parts of the globe up to 20...

The History of Torture tells the complete story of torture, from its earliest uses right up to the present day. The book explains the tools and techniques of torture, from the first use of the rack in Ancient Greece to the use of modern drugs to elicit confessions. The book also details the fight against torture through the work of international campaigners such as Amnesty International. A subject which – in moral terms at least – permits no shades of grey is dealt with in an objective and...

Bodies of Evidence is an informative examination of the science of criminal investigation. It is packed with intriguing case histories involving a variety of forensic evidence and chronicles the role of those who have made the most significant contributions to the fields of toxicology, serology, fingerprinting, forensic ballistics and psychological profiling.

The Terrifying Story of the Most Monstrous Serial Killers through History.Serial Killers are the most notorious and disturbing of all criminals, representing the very darkest side of humanity. Yet they endlessy fascinate and continue to capture the public's attention with their strange charisma and deadly deeds. From Jack the Ripper to Ted Bundy and the Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, these killers transfix us with their ability to commit utterly savage...

The Terrifying Story of the Most Monstrous Serial Killers through History.Serial Killers are the most notorious and disturbing of all criminals, representing the very darkest side of humanity. Yet they endlessy fascinate and continue to capture the public's attention with their strange charisma and deadly deeds. From Jack the Ripper to Ted Bundy and the Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, these killers transfix us with their ability to commit utterly savage...

For millennia, mankind has devised ingenious and diabolical means of inflicting pain on fellow human beings. This deplorable but seemingly universal trait has eaten away at mankind's very claim to civilisation. Despite how repugnant the practice of torture appears to us today, for at least 3,000 years it formed part of most legal codes throughout Europe and the Far East. The Big Book of Pain is an exploration of the systematic use throughout the ages of various me...

'The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love - only for their fear.'- Heinrich HimmlerThe Schutzstaffel, or SS - the brutal elite of the Nazi Party - was founded by Hitler in 1925 to be his personal bodyguard. From 1929 it was headed by Heinrich Himmler, who built its numbers up from under 300 to well over a million by 1945 as the SS grew to be the backbone of Nazi Germany, ta...

To Thomas T. Noguchi, America's most famous medical examiner, every death is a mystery—until the cause is foundIn his first book, the runaway bestseller Coroner, Dr. Noguchi wrote of his controversial investigations as medical examiner of Los Angeles County. In Coroner at Large, the man who has often been called the "Detective of Death" probes the mysteries surrounding the most celebrated criminal cases in recent American history.Using sophi...

There's nothing more chilling than an unsolved crime, particularly one involving direct harm to human life; be it murder or rape, these are the crimes whose effects extend furthest and cause most pain to humanity: how much worse when they go unsolved and, as such, unpunished?Such crimes, so-called 'cold cases', are all too common, especially in the big cities where hundreds if not thousands of such incidents remain on file. After the initial furore of questioning suspects and analy...

'The sentence of this court is that you be taken from this place to whence you came, and from there to a place of lawful execution, there to be hanged by the neck till you be dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul'-Extract from judicial death sentence, England c.16th-20th centurySocieties throughout history have adopted many and varied methods of meting out the ultimate sanction of capital punishment to their more unruly mem...