The author takes us on a journey into the past, investigating thirteen true stories of the dark side of local history. Drawing upon years of original research, often uncovering new clues, learn some of Western New York's most shocking crimes.

Inevitable death and our agony to attain Utopia have made existence a form of pathology. We are left with the secret need for redemption which few of us will understand or witness. This need still lives in acts of love, courage and art. In the images included in this book it is found in the conjoined destinies of artist and subject, phantoms on either side of that curtain we call photography. Implicit in these photographs is the brutal extreme of their purpose and an intimation however distant to their makers that something was manifested beyond the event itself.

An indispensable introduction to the darker side of life, revealing the often strange and grisly stories behind the world's most infamous murderers, swindlers and crooks. 100 Most Infamous Criminals is an astounding compendium of crimes and their perpetrators. The range of crimes is extraordinary, from the bizarre to horrific, and from the heart-breaking to the ridiculous. The book tells in vivid detail the story of the history's most infamous criminals; lives they led, the crimes they committed, and the destruction and sorrow left in their wake. • Jack the Ripper, the man who terrorized Victorian London. • Ted Bundy, the serial killer beloved by his neighbours. • Jeffrey Dahmer, the creator of real-life zombies. • Al Capone, the king of gangsters. • Harold Shipman, Britain's angel of death.

Jack Randell, skipper of a Lunenburg-based rum-running schooner, sparked a diplomatic row in 1929 when he tried to outrun the United States Coast Guard. Henry More Smith was a nineteenth-century thief so brazen that he swiped law books from the office of a Halifax judge, then returned them to collect a reward. Samuel Herbert Dougal was a monster who preyed on women and likely murdered two of his wives while serving with the British Army in Halifax in the 1880s. And Irish-American terrorists hatched a fiendish plot to blow up a Royal Navy warship anchored in Halifax Harbour in 1883. Their target? Prince George of Wales, a midshipman on board who would one day ascend to the British throne as King George V. Madness, Mayhem and Murder, the sequel to 2020's bestselling Daring, Devious & Deadly, is a collection of sixteen more true tales of crime and justice. The stories are drawn from almost two centuries of Nova Scotia's history, from the province's first murder case in 1749 to its last execution in 1937. The cast includes pirates and privateers, terrorists, shadowy Confederate agents, and a motley crew of smugglers, thieves, killers, duel-fighting gentlemen and a few people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. These are stranger-than-fiction tales of crime and punishment, tragedy and redemption, and guilt and innocence, with a lot to say about the past - and the unending quest for justice.

A beautiful island lying in the northern part of the Irish Sea between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, the Isle of Man was once a popular holiday destination. It is perhaps better known today for the TT motorcycle races held there, its tailless cats and Manx kippers. However, it also has its darker side. Manx Murders is a collection of gripping and mysterious murder cases committed on the Island over the last 150 years, from the brutal slaying of a spinster one dark night on a lonely track near Ramsey to the infamous 'Golden Egg Murder' in central Douglas. The cases that have caused shock and sensation throughout two centuries of the Island's history are recorded here as the author reveals the events behind the last hanging on the Island, a deathbead confession, the harrowing story of a murderous father and the cases that remain unsolved to this day. The Island's political importance as a wartime holding area for prisoners of war is also explored through the account of a bizarre, seemingly motiveless killing in 1916 and the stabbing of a Finnish prisoner during the Second World War. Using information obtained from newspapers, inquest records and trial transcripts whenever these were available, each murder is described against the backdrop of contemporary events to give the reader a distinct flavour of life at the time of the crime. While each case is unique, all share an overwhelming sadness and tragedy that will never be forgotten.

A journey through Memphis’ troubled past: the shocking crimes and the brutal killings that led to it being dubbed the “Murder Capital of the World.” With its alluring hospitality, legendary cuisine and transcendent music, Memphis is truly a quintessential Southern city. But lurking behind the barbeque and blue suede shoes is a dark history checkered with violence and disarray. Revisit the mass murder of 1866 that took more than fifty lives, the infamous Alice Mitchell case of the 1890s and a string of unthinkable twentieth-century sins. Author and lifelong Memphian Teresa Simpson explores some of the River City’s most menacing crimes and notorious characters in this riveting ride back through the centuries. Includes photos!

In 1856 William Dove, a young tenant farmer, was tried and executed for the poisoning of his wife Harriet. The trial might have been a straightforward case of homicide, but because Dove became involved with Henry Harrison, a Leeds wizard, and demonstrated through his actions and words a strong belief in magic and the powers of the devil, considerable effort was made to establish whether these beliefs were symptomatic of insanity. It seems that Dove murdered his wife to hasten a prediction made by Harrison that he would remarry a more attractive and wealthy woman. Dove employed Harrison to perform various acts of magic, and also made his own written pact with the devil to improve his personal circumstances. The book will study Dove’s beliefs and Harrison’s activities within the rural and urban communities in which they lived, and examine how modern cultures attempted to explain this largely hidden mental world, which was so sensationally exposed. The Victorian period is often portrayed as an age of great social and educational progress. This book shows how beliefs dismissed by some Victorians as ‘medieval superstitions’ continued to influence the thoughts and actions of many people, viz most famously Conan `table tapper' Doyle.

"a new supernatural-whodunit-polyphonic thriller for those not of the faint of heart" --Fort Worth Telegram "Pinborough's fiction moves at a breakneck pace. Once you start, you can't stop." --Sarah Langan, author of The Keeper and The Missing Already frustrated in their attempts to capture serial murderer Jack the Ripper, the detectives of Scotland Yard are suddenly confronted with a new monster, dubbed the Torso Killer for his habit of leaving behind neatly wrapped parcels of his victims' body parts, minus the heads. With the terrible increase in mutilated corpses to examine, the highly regarded police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond has lost the ability to sleep. True, a growing dependency on opium affords him some solace in his loneliest and most desperate hours, but he also fears the grip of the drug. During Dr. Bond's nightly tours of London's underbelly in search of pharmaceutical respite from the horrors that plague him by day, he encounters a mysterious Jesuit priest scouring the opium dens himself, clearly in search of someone--or something. The doctor at first rejects the strange priest's unnatural theories about the Torso Killer as an affront to scientific thought. But over time Dr. Bond's opium-addled mind begins to crumble under the growing impression that there might be some awful truth to the Jesuit's ideas. As the police struggle to capture two serial killers, the troubled forensics expert begins to suspect that he may actually know the Torso Killer personally. If he is right, Dr. Bond will need all the strength he can muster to save his small circle of loved ones from falling victim to the bloody depravities of this twisted creature.

The Blackest-Hearted Villains from Irish History The Irish are celebrated at home and abroad as explorers, freedom fighters and great writers and artists, but for every Tom Crean, Bernardo O'Higgins or James Joyce, there is a Hugh Gough, Antoine Walsh or Luke Ryan. This book is about the Irish slavers, grave-robbers, duellists, conmen, drug-lords and killers who wreaked havoc around the world ... Includes Beauchamp Bagenal from Carlow, an eighteenth-century duellist, hell-raiser, heart-breaker Burke & Hare grave-robbers turned murderers who supplied cadavers to the medical schools of nineteenth-century Edinburgh Antoine Walsh from Kilkenny who amassed huge fortunes in the French slave trade Luke Ryan, a pirate & buccaneer born in Rush in 1750 Sir Hugh Gough, a Limerick man who commanded the British troops in the first Opium war against China James 'Sligo' Jameson who was rumoured to have fallen into madness and cannibalism in the Congo in 1888 ... and many more!