On November 8, 1985, 18-year-old Tom Odle brutally murdered his parents and three siblings in the small southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon, sending shockwaves throughout the nation. The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in U.S. history. Odle was sentenced to death and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life. However, Illinois governor George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and later co...

The full story of one of the most shocking crimes of the twenty-first century, now the subject of a BBC drama, The Moorside, starring Sheridan Smith.On 19 February 2008, a nine-year-old girl disappeared while making her way home from a school swimming trip. The 999 call made by her mother alerted the police to the nine-year-old's disappearance and sparked the search for Shannon Matthews that spread from the Dewsbury estate where she lived across the north o...

The sequel to the New York Times bestseller Etched in Sand —the sisters' "courageous and emotionally intense" story of childhood abuse and survival ( Kirkus Reviews ).They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all they had each other. ...

When you are 15 years old and destitute, too unskilled to work and too young to claim unemployment benefit, your body is all you have left to sell.'THE BEST WORK BY ANYONE ON PROSTUTION EVER.' Catherine A. MacKinnonRachel Moran came from a troubled family background. Taken into state care at 14, she became homeless and got involved in prostitution aged 15, ending up isolated, drug-addicted, outside of society.Rachel's experience was one of violence, loneliness, and relentless exploitation ...

Kenneth and Patrick Doyle grew up in a family of nine children in Tullamore, Co. Offaly.Though the home was dysfunctional and all the children suffered at the hands of their parents, Kenneth and Patrick were singled out for horrific abuse at the hands of their mother.Starved, beaten and sent out to steal, their story is a catalogue of abuse. It also implicates the authorities, who had pages upon pages of reports on their situation, and yet never stepped in.

A major search and recovery operation began when a young woman's remains were recovered in the River Aire in May 2010. Police had been investigating the disappearance of Shelley Armitage and Susan Rushworth who had gone missing in 2009; but the remains belonged to Suzanne Blamires and were to unravel a gruesome and horrifying chain of events. 40-year-old PhD student Stephen Griffiths was arrested by West Yorkshire Police after CCTV footage of him attacking Ms Blamires at his block of flats...

Unraveling a twenty-five-year tale of multiple murder and medical deception, The Death of Innocents is a work of first-rate journalism told with the compelling narrative drive of a mystery novel. More than just a true-crime story, it is the stunning expose of spurious science that sent medical researchers in the wrong direction--and nearly allowed a murderer to go unpunished.On July 28, 1971, a two-and-a-half-month-old baby named Noah Hoyt died in his trailer home in a rur...

A compelling story of seven children who suffered immensely in the paternal home. From birth until they moved away, abuse leaped endlessly in their innocent lives. The girls endured even more painful experiences caused by their professed father. The story depicts vivid events endured over years of abusive behaviour that consequently left each child with perpetual scars. A poignant story, indeed!

Caryls story is a rare gift as it provides insight into an epidemic that brews behind closed doors in more homes than we would care to imagine. If statistics are accurate (the prevalence of abuse is much higher because domestic violence is notoriously under-reported), then up to 25% of the female population suffers abuse at home every week. In fact, as much as 80% of violence against women is at the hands of the men who supposedly love them. If we care at all for our humanity, society as a wh...

'I hear people say now, "Oh, this is an historical thing." It's not historical for me. I can reach out my hand and touch it.' Survivor of child abuse at Daingean reformatory In their own words, survivors of institutional abuse outline how they suffered years of mistreatment while incarcerated in industrial schools throughout Ireland. Their experiences reflect what happened to thousands of children who were locked up in institutions run by religious orders. Their stories also illustrate the...

*Examines the lives, legends and legacies of 11 of history's most famous pirates. *Explains how the myths and legends of pirates like Blackbeard created the instantly recognizable pirate stereotypes today. *Includes pictures depicting the pirates and important people, places, and events in their lives. *Includes contemporary accounts of the pirates written by Captain Charles Johnson*Includes Bibliographies *Includes a Table of Contents. The people who have lived outside the boundaries of norm...

A key player in the worst prison riot in British history at Strangeways Prison in April 1990, Alan Lord was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was drawn to trouble like water to a sponge.After experiencing a troubled childhood during which Alan was in and out of children's homes - after being put into care at the tender age of eighteen months old - Alan was a teenager in 1981 when he was sentenced to life in prison for murder during a robbery that had gone badly wrong. He serv...