All the news that no one wants to talk about

1. Bury This by Andrea Portes. A thriller with an interesting premise but I found it to be pretentious and annoying.

2. The Troop by Nick Cutter. This is a horror book about a troop of boys stranded on an island with an unimaginable horror. I really enjoyed this and found it was scary (it's hard for me to find a horror book that actually scares me). I recommended this to my husband to read and he thought it was kind of cheesy and he didn't like it (and it's easier for him to find books that scare him than it is for me) so go figure.

3. Arsenic and Clam Chowder: Murder in Gilded Age New York by James D. Livingston. This is a historical true crime book about a woman on trial for the murder of her mother at the end of the 1800s. It was a very short and quick read. It really evoked old New York City and made you think about the difference sin the criminal justice system (or lack thereof) between then and now. I highly recommend it for those who like historical true crime and reading about old New York.

4. Dark Company: A Novel in Ten Rainy Nights by Gert Loschütz. This is an experimental German novel. It was very short and a quick read that had me glued to the page. That being said, I might be the only person on the planet who actually liked this. I found it very creepy and it filled with a sort of dread and despair that I like to feel when I'm reading. I'm weird, I know.

5. Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach by Laurence Leamer. This is a non-fiction book crammed pack with gossip, money and crime. I really enjoyed it. Some parts are better written than others, but it was extremely fun. A great bathtub light reading book of the rich and famous and sometimes criminal. It talks about more than one murder for true crime buffs, one I actually hadn't remembered ever reading about or watching anything about.

6. A Rose For Her Grave & Other True Cases (Ann Rule's Crime Files) Book #1 by Anne Rule. I had read some of her other crime Files books before this and now after this. This is my favorite one. It's true crime. The first and main story is about a Bluebeard type murderer that's written very well and extremely good at portraying a psychopath and his many victims.

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This is a great website about criminals and crimes of yore. I wish that they had a way to follow posts by email because I forget to check blogs otherwise, but alas they don't. Maybe my posting it here will help me remember!

Murder By Gaslight
http://www.murderbygaslight.com/20…

Jan 6, 2015 By NewsOne Staff

Indiana prosecutors are in the process of deciding whether to pursue the death penalty in the case against alleged serial killer Darren Deon Vann (pictured), according to a report at NWI Times.

The 42-year-old former U.S. Marine and Gary, Ind., resident faces murder charges in the strangling deaths of Afrikka Hardy, 19, and Anith Jones, 35, of Merrillville, Ind. Vann reportedly confessed to killing five other women whose bodies were found in abandoned properties in his hometown.

While Vann’s mental health and competency may complicate the case, it might not deter the Lake County, Ind., prosecutor’s office from seeking the death penalty.

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I'm going to make a book post soon of the crime, true crime and crime fiction, books that I have read 2014. What about you guys? What crime related books did you read in 2014? Feel free to post amazon referral links if you have them, to the books. I know we could all use the extra cash!

Associated Press in Phoenix
Friday 12 December 2014 09.33 EST

Evidence of detective’s misdeeds was not given to Debra Milke’s lawyers
Prosecutors’ actions ‘a severe stain on the Arizona justice system’


The court said a retrial for Debra Milke, who spent 22 years on death row, would constitute double jeopardy but prosecutors plan to appeal to the state supreme court. Photograph: AP

A state appeals court has ordered the dismissal of murder charges against a woman who spent 22 years on Arizona’s death row for the killing of her four-year-old son.

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I remember reading a page on the net several years ago, which was a cartoon detailing a fishing trip with Jeffrey Dahmer and a friend when they were teenagers. On this trip, young Jeff caught a sunfish and, instead of throwing it back as his friend asked, he proceeded to chop it to death with a pocket knife.

I have always remembered this, but have never found the page again.

Just this past Sunday I found out it was part of an actual book called My Friend Dahmer, written by Derf Backderf. So I checked out the Amazon Look Inside bits, and was interested enough to get a copy. It arrived Monday, and I've been through it twice since then.

It's not so much the drawing style, which is basically R Crumb, but the haunting story it tells of Dahmer before he became a serial killer, when he was a child and something might have been done for him, if the adults around him had only looked up from their own self-absorption and seen there was something terribly terribly wrong. Backderf makes no bones about his sympathy (pity, really) for Dahmer ending when Dahmer committed his first murder; however, he also draws an unflinching picture of Dahmer's loneliness, his isolation from others and from his family, and his (Backderf's) own participation in making Dahmer feel less than human.

I'm a contemporary of the kids depicted in this book -- I graduated high school in 1975, they graduated in 1978. I was an outcast, and was bullied about as badly as Dahmer. I was pretty much ignored by my parents and the teachers. But why didn't I become a serial killer? Why am I reasonably well adjusted, and have been a contributing member of society for lo, these 40 some odd years since graduation? What makes one person become an average wife/mom/worker bee, and one person the worst serial killer in recent history?

I think those are all questions that keep me turning back to this book, and that make me recommend it to all y'all out there. There are no graphic depictions of murder, death or gore -- a couple of illustrations of roadkill and one incident which shows that Dahmer, even in his descent into madness, still retained a core of humanity and kindness many "normal" people don't have.

Well worth the money, well worth the read.

I'm running super late so I don't have time to copy an paste the article and such, but it has been awhile, so I wanted to post SOMETHING.

Convicted killer Paul Bernardo set to marry: report
By Irene Ogrodnik Global News

http://globalnews.ca/news/1429674/…


What do you all think about this?

From the website:

'Building Safer Communities

This portal is dedicated to helping law enforcement agencies provide the public with valuable information about crime activity by neighborhood. Our goal is to assist police departments in reducing crime through a better informed citizenry. We work directly with each agency and never scrape data from other sites!'

http://www.crimemapping.com

DeathPenaltyUSA

The database of executions in the United States of America
http://deathpenaltyusa.org/index.h…

Has a list of executions in the United States from the 1600s to the present.

By CRIMESIDER STAFF
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 29, 2014, 12:46 PM

MILAN, Italy - An Italian court that convicted Amanda Knox in her roommate's 2007 murder said in lengthy reasoning made public Tuesday that the victim's wounds indicate multiple aggressors, and that the two exchange students fought over money on the night of the murder.

The appellate court in Florence explained the January guilty verdicts in the second trial of the American student and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito in a 337-page document that examined both the evidence and the motive. The court said that a third person convicted in the murder, Rudy Hermann Guede, did not act alone, and cited the nature of the victim's wounds.

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