The notorious true crime story of a sex party that ended in double murder in the woods of Chattanooga County, Georgia. On December 12th, 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. Then they brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder had been a professor of pharmacology at Chicago’s Loyola University before he and his boyfriend Joey Odom moved to Georgia and built their own home in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Scudder had absconded with twelve thousand doses of LSD and had a very particular vision for their “castle in the woods.” It included a “pleasure chamber,” and rumors of Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. But when Scudder and Odom welcomed West and Brock into their strange abode, they had no idea the men were armed and dangerous. When the evening of kinky fun turned to a scene of gruesome slaughter, the murders set the stage for a sensational trial that engulfed the sleepy Southern town of Trion in shocking revelations and lurid speculations.

In 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to notorious Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. They brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder and companion Joey Odom built the "castle in the woods" in the Trion forest after Scudder left his position as professor at Loyola. He brought with him twelve thousand doses of LSD. Rumors of drug use and Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. The murders set the stage for a trial vibrant with local lore. Author Amy Petulla uncovers the curious case that left two men dead and the incredible story still surrounded by controversy, speculation and myth.

In 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to notorious Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. They brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder and companion Joey Odom built the castle in the woods in the Trion forest after Scudder left his position as professor at Loyola. He brought with him twelve thousand doses of LSD. Rumors of drug use and Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. The murders set the stage for a trial vibrant with local lore. Author Amy Petulla uncovers the curious case that left two men dead and the incredible story still surrounded by controversy, speculation and myth."

On December 12th, 1982, a strange house in the remote mountains of North West Georgia became a bloody slaughterhouse for two men and their dogs. One of the victims-an accomplished scientist and university professor-experimented with the occult. A self-portrait found at the crime scene appeared to depict the professor gagged with gunshot wounds to his head, exactly as his body was discovered by investigators. Had he gazed into the future and witnessed his own death-or had the painting inspired the murder?The case became a media sensation with allegations of satanic cults, supernatural curses, and mind control experiments. The only thing stranger than the murders themselves was the legal odyssey that followed, resulting in four Supreme Court decisions and revelations that would stun the judicial system.After years of research involving court transcripts, audio recordings, and interviews with the participants in the case-including the murderers themselves-author Daniel Ellis peels back the layers of legend to reveal the truth behind one of the most bizarre true crime cases ever to emerge from the dark Southern woods-Corpsewood: A True Crime Like No Other.

In the town of Santa Claus, Georgia, the holiday spirit lived all year round...until Jerry Scott Heidler came to town... In Santa Claus, Georgia, the streets were named Candy Cane Road and December Drive. Christmas was the lifeblood of the people. One terrible night in December 1997, Heidler broke into the home of his former foster family and brutally murdered them. Doug Crandell describes the harrowing incident that changed this one town forever.

Nestled deep in the north Georgia woodlands are the ruins of an estate appropriately and ironically named Corpsewood. The conservative residents of the small towns nearby all know of the two men who came from Chicago to live among them. When the blood drenched bodies of the men were discovered there not long before Christmas, the whole area is shocked by the heartless, vicious nature of the crime. They can't imagine who among them would commit such cold-blooded murders and they are even more shocked when a pretty teenaged girl comes forward to say that she was an eyewitness and willing to tell what she knows. The victims were two openly gay men, and rumors soon circulated that they were devil-worshippers who experimented with LSD and conducted Satanic rituals on the estate. It was said they participated in wild, sex-filled orgies and even had their own "pleasure palace" built onto their home. The buildings that once stood on the isolated grounds are now only brick remnants, covered in ivy and slowly being absorbed back into the woods, but strange tales persist and those who are brave enough to wander down the rutted dirt road and venture deep into the woods to explore the grounds tell stories of strange curses and hauntings. Even now, some thirty-three years after what happened there, nearly everyone in the area calls the place "the devil worshippers' house." What was the truth of that night? Only four people left alive really know what happened in that prophetically named house in the North Georgia hills, no matter what others might claim. The two murderers, still sitting in prison, have their self-serving stories. The other eyewitness isn't talking. Only one of the eyewitnesses, the former Teresa Lynn Hudgins, is stepping forward again to tell the truth.

In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.

"On a sultry August morning in 1970, the battered body of a young woman was hoisted from a dry well just outside Hogansville, Georgia. Author and investigator Clay Bryant was there, witnessing the macabre scene. Then fifteen, Bryant was tagging along with his father, Buddy Bryant, Hogansville chief of police. The victim, Gwendolyn Moore, had been in a violent marriage. That was no secret. But her husband had connections to a political machine that held sway over the Troup County Sheriff's Office overseeing the case. To the dismay and bafflement of many, no charges were brought. That is, until Bryant followed his father's footsteps in law enforcement and a voice cried out from the well three decades later"--Cover, page [4].

A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2013 A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013 An Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Nominee An explosive, sweeping account of the scandal that has sent the Catholic Church into a tailspin -- and the brave few who fought for justice In the mid-1980s a dynamic young monsignor assigned to the Vatican's embassy in Washington set out to investigate the problem of sexually abusive priests. He found a scandal in the making, confirmed by secret files revealing complaints that had been hidden from police and covered up by the Church hierarchy. He also understood that the United States judicial system was eager to punish offenders and those who aided them. He presented all of this to the American bishops, warning that the Church could be devastated by negative publicity and bankrupted by its legal liability. They ignored him. Meanwhile, a young lawyer listened to a new client describe an abusive sexual history with a priest that began when he was ten years old. His parents' complaints were downplayed by Church officials who offered them money to go away. The lawyer saw a claim that any defendant would want to settle. Then he began to suspect he was onto something bigger, involving thousands of priests who had abused countless children while the Church had done almost nothing about it. The lawsuit he filed would touch off a legal war of historic and global proportions. Part history, part journalism, and part true-crime thriller, Michael D'Antonio's Mortal Sins brings to mind landmark books such as All the President's Men, And the Band Played On, and The Informant, as it reveals a long and ferocious battle for the soul of the largest and oldest organization in the world.

Rebecca and Ronald Akins and their three daughters appeared to be a typical suburban family in 1970 Macon, Georgia, but the attractive facade hid a family in crisis. The girls suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their mother. Although he sometimes worked three jobs, Ronnie was never able to provide Becky the lifestyle she wanted. After their 1974 divorce, Becky took the children to South Florida where she pursued a life of gambling and partying. Fueled by popular books and films, she wanted to live in what she believed was the exciting world of organized crime and changed her name to Machetti. In only a few months, she found two men who joined her in her murderous fantasy which culminated in two deaths. The resulting legal proceedings went on for more than a decade. This is the story of Rebecca Machetti, a cold-blooded woman whose prosecutor described as pure evil and her three daughters who lived through years of abuse before finally finding peace and normal lives.