NUREMBERG and THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST—Jack El-Hai

On a cool, spring day in 1897, Alfred Haney left his Williamston, Michigan home to earn a day's wage. He knew his wife's peculiar behavior had become more frequent, and he had planned on her seeing the town doctor, but she assured him she was feeling much better. They would go the following day instead. When he returned home later that day, he discovered a macabre murder so bizarre that it shook the entire community to its core. His mother's severed head was set on the dinner table, adorned with a knife and fork on either side. Lying nearby was the old woman's body, soaked in kerosene and set ablaze. Screaming, Alfred Haney ran from the house in search of the law, and while neighbors tried to extinguish the smoldering, beheaded corpse, Haney's wife, Martha, removed herself to the back yard and began digging wildly with her hands. Shortly after the discovery, a sheriff's deputy arrived, taking Martha into custody and lodging her in the local jail at the village hall. Ingham County Sheriff John Rehle, known as J. J. among his constituents, arrived by train and surveyed the carnage. He and his deputy discovered the murder weapon, an axe, hidden behind some boards under the rear stoop. Rehle organized a Coroner's Inquest that was held inside the house where the old woman's body lay. In an attempt to determine her state of mind at the time of the crime, local doctors interviewed the murderess. She told them she spoke frequently with her own dead mother, and her mother had told her to kill the old woman. Over the next several days, court hearings decided her ultimate fate. A panel of three doctors was commissioned to determine her sanity. In the end, there would be no prosecution. Deemed insane, she was sentenced to the Michigan Home for the Dangerous and Criminally Insane in Ionia. What made Martha Haney snap and behead her mother-in-law? TO HELL I MUST GO: The True Story of Michigan's Lizzie Borden-Rod Sadler Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

30 Juli 20151h 12min

The gray ranch along Third Avenue in the sleepy Midwestern town of less than 400 people was the recurring site of screaming, mad chaos and horrific domestic violence. Then one day, abusive husband Scott Shanahan was gone. Some thought he packed his bags and left town. Weeks passed. Months went by. Still no sign of the volatile wife beater. But what really happened to him was so shocking and so unbelievable that even grizzled, long-time law enforcement officials were aghast by the sight and awful smell. The town wondered why Dixie Shanahan managed to live with her husband’s rotting body inside her master bedroom — for fourteen months. "This fascinating story will leave you asking yourself one question, was the punishment that Dixie received in her case justified?  DIXIE'S LAST STAND-Was It Murder or Self-Defense?-John Ferak Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

23 Juli 20151h 40min

To his neighbors, Anthony Sowell was a friendly and helpful former Marine. But they didn't know about his dark side -- or the gruesome secret inside his house. Sowell's secret life was revealed to the nation on Oct. 29, 2009 when a Cleveland Police SWAT team entered his house to arrest him for an alleged rape. They didn't find Sowell, but they encountered a nightmarish scene -- two decomposed bodies in his third-floor living room. Eight more bodies were hidden throughout the house and buried in the back yard. In the basement, they discovered a human skull. All of the bodies were female and all appeared to have been bound and strangled.    Two days later, police captured Sowell, a sexual sadist who had served a 15-year prison sentence for kidnapping, raping and torturing a 21-year-old pregnant woman. House of Horrors exposes the shocking details of Sowell's depraved crimes and twisted psyche. He preyed on neighborhood women, luring them to his home with alcohol and drugs. Sowell then murdered the women and lived among their corpses. At least five other women were attacked by Sowell, but managed to escape. After a dramatic trial in the summer of 2011, Sowell was convicted and sentenced to death. In House of Horrors, readers are given a rare glimpse inside the mind of a serial killer -- through interviews with Sowell's neighbors and relatives, his surviving victims, and exlusive interviews with Sowell himself. HOUSE OF HORRORS-The Shocking True Story of Anthony Sowell, The Cleveland Strangler-Rob Sberna Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

17 Juli 20151h 37min

Lance Herndon was at the top of his game in 1996. At age forty-one he was a self-made millionaire, the owner of Access, Inc., a successful information-systems consulting company. As a prominent member of Atlanta's young, wealthy, and powerful set, he was surrounded by black Atlanta's "beautiful people." But when he failed to show up for work one day, friends and family started to worry. Their worry soon turned to horror when he was found murdered in his own home, his head smashed in—in what appeared to be either an act of jealousy-fueled rage or a seedier sex crime. With a laundry list of ex-wives and lovers, competitors, critics, and admirers in hand, detectives had to break through the city's upper crust to discover his killer. Journalist Ron Stodghill tells the riveting, true story of this investigation.Part investigative thriller, part sociological commentary, Redbone offers a truly intriguing story that channels insight into one of America's great metropolises. REDBONE: The Millionaire and the Gold Digger-Ron Stodghill Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

3 Juli 20151h 28min

From the author of VAMPIRE: The Richard Chase Murders  and The Bundy Murders comes an excursion into the truly weird and the bizarre: from a medieval-esque murder in a small town museum to the jilted boyfriend who decided that his former girlfriend needed to die on her twenty-first birthday.  And then there’s the demented son who returns home to live with his mother and stepfather, and one night in their beautiful mansion sitting atop a high bluff overlooking the Ohio River, slaughters them. KENTUCKY BLOODBATH: Ten Bizarre Tales of Murder from the Bluegrass State Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

26 Juni 20151h 3min

Hitchhiking from Eugene, Ore., through northern California in 1977, 20-year-old Colleen Stan thumbed a ride into hell. Her kidnappers a sadistic lumber mill worker, Cameron Hooker, and his battered wife Janice subjected her to seven years of torture and sensory deprivation. She was made a sex slave, kept locked in a wooden box and brainwashed into believing that an underground network of sadists would recapture her if she attempted to escape. Did Colleen fall in love with Cameron and make herself a willing partner in a love triangle, as the Hookers' defense lawyer asserted? The jury found otherwise, convinced by the evidence marshalled by coauthor McGuire, state prosecutor in the case, a trial that journalist Norton attended in 1984. Not for the squeamish, this harrowing tale shuttles between the courtroom and the grisly doings in the Hookers' basement. PERFECT VICTIM-The True Story of "The Girl In The Box" by the D.A. Who Prosecuted Her Captor-Carla Norton Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

18 Juni 20151h 28min

A survivor's firsthand account of attempted murder in St. Francisville, Louisiana. A former warden of Angola Prison shoots his wife five times with a pistol, then sits down to watch her die on her plantation home porch. The victim, author Anne Butler, survives to tell this true crime story, detailing the unraveling of her seven-year marriage and how it led to her near-murder. Interspersed with simple black and white snapshots, this stranger-than-fiction story of murder, survival, and forgiveness offers keen insights into the mind of both victim and criminal. WEEP FOR THE LIVING-Anne Butler Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

11 Juni 20151h 22min

First came the unsettling Ouija board prophesy that Robin Adams would die before her 17th birthday. When a minister was summoned to rid the house of frightening phenomena blamed on the Ouija board, he was taunted and denounced by a neighbor and suspected Satanist. Thus, the die was cast for one of the most bizarre murder cases in Michigan history. In 1976, when Robin vanished without a trace from the village of Caro, police were left without a body, witnesses or anything remotely resembling a crime scene. The case went cold for six years. Then, when a rookie state police detective was assigned to reopen the investigation, what followed reads like chapters from a Stephen King novel -- right down to the claim that the killer's grandmother was practicing black magic to avenge efforts to bring him to justice. FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE-Richard Carson Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

5 Juni 20151h 36min