home | about | text only | newsletter | contact | legal stuff spacer
  spacer
serial killer news | crimeline | forensic glossary | books | vhs | dvd | links spacer
   
Serial Killer Index Short List
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Serial Killer Index
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
   
serial killer books - true cases subtopics
   
Support crimeZZZ.net by ordering your crime literature here!
I have selected the most exciting books about serial killers and crime investigation for you. Clicking on the title of a book brings you to amazon.com and a detailed description of the book. Whenever you buy a book, vhs or dvd through this gateway, crimeZZZ.net earns a commission of 5%.
Don´t you think, this is an exciting way to support my work?;o))
The following list is sorted by serial killer names.

Collection of True Cases
The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
From Jack the Ripper to the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP), The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers gives readers an exhaustive overview of what is undoubtedly the most macabre and fascinating branch of crime and modern criminology. The book details individual cases of serial murder, law enforcement agents and their techniques, the factors that contribute...

Collection of True Cases
The Serial Killer Files
Hollywood’s make-believe maniacs like Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal Lecter can’t hold a candle to real life monsters like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and scores of others who have terrorized, tortured, and terminated their way across civilization throughout the ages. Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon...

Black Dahlia - Elizabeth Short
Black Dahlia Avenger
For 56 years, the Black Dahlia murder case remained one of the most notorious and high-profile unsolved crimes of the 20th century. Now, Steve Hodel, a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, believes he has finally solved the case. On January 15, 1947, 22-year-old Elizabeth Short—"The Black Dahlia"—was found dead in a vacant lot in Los Angeles, her body horribly mutilated, bisected at the waist, and posed in a bizarre manner. The horrific crime shocked the country and commanded headlines for months as the killer taunted the police with notes and phone calls. Despite the massive manhunt, the murderer was never found...

BTK Strangler
Nightmare in Wichita
In 1974 a serial killer began a fourteen-year murder spree in Wichita, Kansas. Joining the ranks of Ted Bundy, the elusive sex murderer taunted authorities with clues, puzzles, and obscene letters. Then in 1988, he vanished, the killings stopped, and one of the longest and most baffling manhunts in the annals of crime came to a dead end. But in 2004, a letter- and a grisly clue-arrived at a local Wichita paper. And with it, a terrifying implication: BTK was back...

BUNDY Theodore Robert "Ted"
The only living Witness
Michaud and Aynesworth are a reporter and an investigator team who interviewed serial killer Ted Bundy while he was on death row in Florida. This volume chronicles his activities throughout several states but is at its best in a long section of transcripts from the interview in which, while he never admits his quilt, Bundy offers vivid details of the crimes and commentary on the mindset of a serial killer. This revised edition includes some additional information...

BUNDY Theodore Robert "Ted"
Ted Bundy
Michaud and Aynesworth spent weeks interwiewing psycho sex killer Bundy before Florida authorities executed him. Bundy's story was detailed by the duo in their chilling volume The Only Living Witness (Classics Returns, LJ 11/1/99). The best portion of that title was the excerpts from those interviews. Originally released in 1989, the book contains the full transcripts from those conversations...

CLARK Richard Mathew
Broken Doll
Burl Barer picks his cases carefully, and each book takes us not only into the minds of killers and the broken lives affected by his or her actions, but into the very fabric of American society. BROKEN DOLL tells of Richard Mathew Clark, family "friend" who kidnaps, rapes and murders innocent 7-year old Roxanne, then actually goes camping with Roxanne's father. The lives and families of both victim and perpetrator are fully illumined, and we see with horrid clarity that the humanity of Clark was probably kidnapped...

EVANS Gary C.
Every Move you make

In December 1989, in upstate New York, Gary C. Evans, 35, a master of disguise and career criminal who had befriended David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, began weaving a web of deadly lies. Evans told a female friend that Damien Cuomo, the father of her child, had deserted her. Of that he could be certain, since he’d killed Cuomo, and subsequently struck up a ten-year romance with the woman while tricking her into believing Cuomo was still alive...


EVONITZ Richard Marc
Into the Water
To authorities she spilled the shocking details of a night of horror. It was the lead they'd been desperate for in a multi-state manhunt for an elusive serial killer. Where the witness took them was to the last man anyone would have suspected.
Richard Marc Evonitz was beloved by friends and family...

GACY John Wayne, "Killer Clown"
Burried Dreams
This is the absorbing and disturbing story of John Wayne Gacy, the suburban Chicago businessman sentenced to death in 1980 for the murders of 33 young boys, most of whose bodies were buried in the crawlspace under his home. Cahill, aided in his research by TV reporter Ewing, recreates Gacy's unhappy childhood with a violent father; his seemingly respectable life as a successful contractor and civic leader; and his five-year spree as a murderer who raped and tortured his victims...

GACY John Wayne, "Killer Clown"
Chicago Killer
This is a chilling true police story about the capture of John Wayne Gacy, one of America's most prolific serial killers. The story is told by the former Chief of Detectives for the Des Plaines, Illinois Police Department, Joseph R. Kozenczak and was co-authored with Karen M. Henrikson. The book offers two additional Bonus Chapters regarding the Use of Psychics in a serial Murder Investigation, along with an insight into the use of a lie-detector which helped in cracking the case...

GALLEGO Gerald & Charlene
Sex Slave Murders, The
Barely five feet tall and innocent looking, Charlene Gallego used all of her charms to entice pretty young schoolgirls into the back of a van, where her husband, Gerald, lay waiting. A killer couple bound together... Married six times and still in his early thirties, Gerald Gallego found his perfect companion in Charlene...

GASKINS Donald "PeeWee"
Final Truth
"Author-journalist Wilton Earle spent fifteen-months eliciting from Donald 'Pee Wee' Gaskins. this graphic version of Gaskins life and crimes. The result is a remarkable book that enables the reader to better understand the thoughts and emotions of a man who killed from a psychopathic need to identify with his victims through the joining of his own pain with theirs. Final Truth provides rare insight into a killer's tortured mind. I recommend it to psychiatrists, psychologists, and anyone in the forensic field."...

GILBERT Kristen
Perfect Poison
Author M. William Phelps did a marvelous job of researching and writing this truly terrifying account of nurse Kristen Gilbert, who chose to dispense death instead of offering compassion and care to her charges. Little did the hapless patients at the Veterans Medical Center know that their very lives were at stake, were they unlucky enough to be placed under the "care" of nurse Gilbert...

GREEN RIVER KILLER - RIDGWAY Gary Leon
Gary Ridgway
The story of America's most prolific serial murderer, told by the reporters who covered the case from the beginning.
Gary Ridgway got away with murder for more than two decades. When he was finally brought to justice, the Seattle-area truck painter pleaded guilty to strangling 48 girls and young women, while leading the double life of a married man with a steady job...

GREEN RIVER KILLER - RIDGWAY Gary Leon
Green River Running Red
Veteran crime writer Ann Rule is uniquely qualified to chronicle the grisly career of Gary Ridgeway, the man convicted of being the "Green River Killer," the most prolific serial killer in American history. Not only is she one of the more successful true-crime authors, but for nearly 20 years, Rule was exceptionally close to the case, reporting on it for a Seattle newspaper...

GREEN RIVER KILLER - RIDGWAY Gary Leon
Riverman
Robert D. Keppel was the chief consultant to the Green River Murders Task force who helped develop the strategy behind the arrest of current suspect Gary Ridgway. He has since retired as the chief criminal investigator for the Washington State Attorney General's Office, and is currently on the faculty of the University of Washington...

JACK the RIPPER
Jack the Ripper
The murder and mutilation of at least five prostitutes in the Whitechapel district of London in the fall of 1888 continues to fascinate students of true crime, largely because the perpetrator, Jack the Ripper, was never caught. The slayings have prompted dozens of books, and more than 100 identities for the killer have been suggested...

JACK the RIPPER
Portrait of a Killer
"I knew the identity of a murderer and couldn't possibly avert my gaze," declares bestselling author and Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine chairman of the board Cornwell (The Last Precinct). Claiming to have cracked the unsolved case of Jack the Ripper, the author, combining superb investigative skills...

JESPERSON Keith Hunter, "Happy Face Killer"
I - The Creation of a Serial Killer
Veteran true-crime writer Olsen (Salt of the Earth, etc.) takes the profiling of a psychopath a step farther than usual; drawing on interviews and his subject's own diaries to intimately reveal the life and inner workings of Keith Hunter Jesperson, currently serving life in prison for the murders of eight women in the 1990s. Jesperson was called the "Happy Face Killer" for his token symbol on taunting letters sent to authorities. Cutting between Jesperson's rough rural childhood in the Pacific Northwest...

KIBBE Roger
Trace Evidence
Because of a composite drawing and his assault of a prostitute, Roger Kibbe was the prime suspect in a series of abductions and sex stranglings over several years in the vicinity of Sacramento, California. Without hard evidence, though, the investigation of the "I-5 Killer" dragged on and the murders continued until trace-evidence specialist Faye Springer entered the case...

LYNCH Susan & KLENNER Fritz
Bitter Blood
This book recreates a complex case that claimed nine lives, one of the more shocking crimes of recent years. The links in all the deaths were Susan Lynch and her cousin Fritz Klenner, each from a prominent, upper-middle-class Southern family. The murders began with the shootings of Lynch's ex-mother-in-law and ex--sister-in-law in Kentucky, and continued with the slayings of her parents and grandmother in North Carolina...

MUDGETT Hermann aka HOLMES H.H.
Beast of Chicago
In this graphic novel series, Geary covers some of history's most famous murders in meticulously researched, beautifully drawn volumes. This one takes on H.H. Holmes, one of America's first serial killers, whose "murder castle" shocked and stunned the era. It's 1886, and Holmes arrives in Chicago, a seemingly clean and enterprising young man but actually a murderous con artist with a spectacular ability to talk people into trusting him...

MUDGETT Hermann aka HOLMES H.H.
Devil in the White City
Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor...

MUDGETT Hermann aka HOLMES H.H.
Depraved
Herman Mudgett, who called himself Dr. H. H. Holmes, seemed the epitome of the late 19th century "Golden Age": he was a well-dressed, charismatic, self-made entrepreneur (think Andrew Carnegie). Unfortunately for his many victims, he was also a liar, bigamist, debtor, con man, and murderer. The setting for several of his murders was the bizarre urban "castle" he built in Chicago...

NELSON Earle Leonard
Bestial
Earle Leonard Nelson may well have been America's first serial killer. In the winter of 1926, he began a string of murders that spanned the U.S. and Canada, horrifying and confounding both the public and the police. Bestial tells the story of Nelson's life--from his bizarre childhood to his ignoble end--sparing no graphic detail in the process. If there is an answer to the question of why this man murdered, it is in this book somewhere...

POMMEROY Jesse
Fiend
You've probably never heard of Jesse Pomeroy unless you've read Caleb Carr's 1994 novel, The Alienist, which features a brief prison interview with "America's most famous lifer." But this legendary bogeyman will be hard to forget after you read his life story. Pomeroy tortured and murdered children in Boston in the 1870s. He was himself a child at the time, only 14 when he was finally arrested. Author Harold Schechter, a New York literature professor who...

RAMIREZ Richard
Night Stalker
Research is the strong suit of this book about darkly handsome Richard Ramirez, who terrorized Los Angeles for 14 months in 1984-85 with his penchant for breaking into homes dressed all in black, where he fiercely assaulted, sodomized, robbed, and (in 13 cases) murdered his victims. Carlo spent more than 100 hours interviewing Ramirez on death row, more than a month in El Paso, Texas, talking to Ramirez's family and friends, and another month hanging out with the two detectives who solved the case. He made visits to all 19 crime scenes in the middle of the night...

ROBINSON John Edward
Anyone you want me to be
The Internet has made many enterprises easier since its rise to popularity in the mid-90s: book sales, personal correspondence, and, in the case of John Robinson, serial murder. Even before he ever went online, Robinson had forged a life consistent with a killer's profile. Despite being fired and arrested numerous times for fraud and theft, he wriggled out of serious trouble thanks to a smooth charm and cunning intelligence...

ROGERS Dayton Leroy
Bloodlust
Though sometimes burdened with cliches, this is an effective, workmanlike account of the worst serial killer in Oregon's history. Owner of a small business in Portland and apparently happily married, Dayton Leroy Rogers was known among local streetwalkers as a violent john who liked kinky sex and bondage. Through interviews with investigators and witnesses, King reconstructs Rogers's brutal murder of a prostitute in 1987...

SEDA Heriberto
Sleep my little Dead
Twenty-two-year-old Eddie Seda lived with his mother and sister in an apartment in Brooklyn. He had no job, no wife, no girlfriend, no friends. He was desperate to become somebody important. The person he chose to "be" was the infamous Zodiac killer who haunted San Francisco during the late 1960s. Between 1990 and 1995 Seda shot nine people in a pattern according to their zodiac signs...

SILVERIA Robert jr.
Murder on the Rails
Retired California police detective Palmini's account of the career murderer Robert Silveria Jr., dubbed the Boxcar Serial Killer, is long on splatter and short on insight. Palmini himself is like a figure from a David Lynch movie—a veteran cop who received a government grant to "do Elvis impersonations to promote traffic safety among California teens and their families" through a group called Elvis and the Lawmen...

TOPPAN Jane
Fatal
No one knew of Jane's past: of her mother's tragic death, of her brutal upbringing in an adoptive home, of her father's insanity, or of her own suicide attempts. No one could have guessed that during her tenure at a Massachusetts hospital the amiable "Jolly Jane" was morbidly obsessed with autopsies, or that she conducted her own after-hours experiments on patients, deriving sexual satisfaction in their slow, agonizing deaths from poison...

WUORNOS Aileen Carol
Dead Ends
"I killed so many guys. Like, I feel guilty, you know?
Other times I'm happy. I feel good. Like a hero."
In 1989, Aileen Wournos cruised Florida's I-95 for strangers and free rides. By 1990, seven of the men who crossed her path met their fate at the end of her .22 caliber pistol...

ZODIAC Killer
This is the Zodiac speaking
California was thrown into a paralysis of fear in 1969, horrified by the elusive Zodiac serial killer. The Zodiac became the most enigmatic and frustrating adversary ever encountered by the law enforcement community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Over 30 years later, the Zodiac killings remain unsolved. The authors analyze the Zodiac's crimes and supply psychological insight to his letters providing a glimpse into the mind of a mysterious murderer...

ZODIAC Killer
ZODIAC Unmasked
Graysmith was employed at the San Francisco Chronicle in 1968, when the serial killer known as Zodiac began methodically brutalizing and murdering random victims across California. Zodiac, who was something of an egomaniac, communicated with authorities via the Chronicle. In addition to gloating over the inability of law enforcement to capture him, he would often describe how he intended to kill his next victim or would recount in chilling detail the last moments of someone he had savagely slain...

 
general
true cases
written by serial killers
fiction
more crimeZZZ

Copyright 1995-2005 by Elisabeth Wetsch
spacer spacer
spacer