Crime Files: Books on The Criminal Mind and Infamous Criminals

Part of the fascination with criminals and the crimes they commit is trying to understand what brings these people to do things that the 'average' person would not do. The books in this section give some insight into the workings of the criminal mind. Whether you're looking for books on the life and crimes of an individual criminal or a study of particular crimes, we've got a great range of books about criminals for you to browse.

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	The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd by Jeffery S. King Hardcover: 272 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.87 x 9.35 x 6.28 Publisher: Kent State Univ Pr; ISBN: 0873385829; (March 1998)	More books about Pretty Boy Floyd.
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Book Description When Pretty Boy Floyd died in a hail of gunfire in 1934, he was a media star whose funeral "was a circus with the mob eating peanuts, drinking corn liquor, spreading picnic lunches, carrying pistols, upsetting gravestones, trampling graves, and ripping down fences as they tried to hear the sermon and catch a glimpse of the notorious outlaw." King's biography is curiously wide-ranging and tightly focused. He trots out much dazzling detail, then doesn't pursue it; for instance, he makes much of Kenny Barker as Floyd's accomplice but fails to discuss Barker's other affiliations or even that he is the famous Ma Barker's son. King allows many other 1930s miscreants to take a bow, but Floyd is in the crosshairs, after all. King's close documentation of Floyd's life and career provides true-crime fans with a gritty portrait of a notorious American and his times that especially attends to the mythologizing effects of the popular media of the day. Thoroughly enjoyable, informative, and suitably bloody.

	Eye of the Beast: The True Story of Serial Killer James Wood by Terry Adams, Mary Brooks-Mueller, Scott Shaw Paperback: 300 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.80 x 8.42 x 5.48 Publisher: Addicus Books; ISBN: 1886039321; (December 2001)
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Book Description In the summer of 1993, James Wood brought terror to the unassuming town of Pocatello, Idaho. Little did the friendly community realize it had opened its arms to serial killer. Wood, the stranger in town, was polite and soft-spoken. He looked quite ordinary-he was a master at appearing normal. In late June, Wood abducted and murdered Jeralee Underwood, the eleven-year-old daughter of a devout Mormon family. The entire region was shocked and outraged. Now in Eye of the Beast author Terry Adams teams with lead investigator Scott Shaw and forensic psychologist Mary Brooks-Mueller to bring readers a unique perspective on this case. Shaw takes us into the heart of an exhaustive investigation, while Brooks-Mueller shows us the mind of a true sexual psychopath. Having spent years researching this case, the authors are skilful in recreating this true story about James Woods-one of the nation's most unusual serial killers. The case that rocked the Mormon Church.

	The Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World and Led the Feds on One of the Most Publicized Manhunts in History by Ellen Joan Pollock Hardcover: 276 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.03 x 9.60 x 6.35 Publisher: Wall Street Journal; ISBN: 0743204158; 1st edition (January 1, 2002)	Looking for other books about Martin Frankel?
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Amazon.com Ellen Joan Pollock's The Pretender is a biography of Martin Frankel, an unsavoury financial savant whose vast illicit empire reached into very high places on two continents before collapsing with thundering suddenness. By the time of his arrest in 1999, Frankel had bilked various insurance companies out of $200 million via an elaborate (and oddly haphazard) Ponzi scheme. Pollock chronicles not only Frankel's phantom stock trades, fictional portfolios, asset skimming, and money laundering, but his mind-boggling personal extravagances--both financial and sexual. (His Greenwich, Connecticut, headquarters served both as business office and home to a shifting harem devoted to Frankel's sadomasochistic interests.) Pollock is a scrupulous writer, but for those unversed in financial subtleties, her novelistic treatment too rarely steps back to present overviews of the tangled crimes and their implications. Absent as well, finally, is any compelling psychological portrait of the bizarre and saurian Frankel.

	Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden Hardcover: 400 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.05 x 9.28 x 6.38 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr; ISBN: 0871137836; (April 25, 2001)	Click here to check out other books about Pablo Escobar.
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Book Description Killing Pablo is the story of the fifteen-month manhunt for Colombian cocaine cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar, whose escape from his lavish, mansion like jail drove a nation to the brink of chaos. In a gripping, up-close account, acclaimed journalist Mark Bowden exposes the never-before-revealed details of how U.S. military and intelligence operatives covertly led the mission to find and kill the world's most dangerous outlaw. Drawing on unprecedented access to the soldiers, field agents, and officials involved in the chase, as well as hundreds of pages of top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden creates a narrative that reads as if it were torn from the pages of a Tom Clancy techno thriller. Killing Pablo also tells the story of Escobar's rise, how he built a criminal organization that would hold an entire nation hostage -- and the stories of the intrepid men who would ultimately bring him down.

	In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences by Truman Capote Paperback: 343 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.83 x 8.02 x 5.24 Publisher: Vintage Books; ISBN: 0679745580; Reprint edition (February 1994)
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Book Description On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. Five years, four months and twenty-nine days later, on April 14, 1965, Richard Eugene Hickock, aged thirty-three, and Perry Edward Smith, aged thirty-six, were hanged from the crime on a gallows in a warehouse in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansa. In Cold Blood is the story of the lives and deaths of these six people. It has already been hailed as a masterpiece.

What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? The Story of a Child Turning Violent
by Jennifer Toth
Hardcover: 306 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.94 x 9.58 x 6.28
Publisher: Free Press; ISBN: 0684855585; (February 2002)

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Book Review
Jennifer Toth tells the ghastly story of Johnnie Jordan, a 14-year-old boy from "Toledo's ghetto" who had worked his way through 19 foster homes before finding himself placed with Charles and Jeannette Johnson, an elderly couple who agreed to take him in. For reasons that remain obscure, Jordan murdered Mrs. Johnson. Toth presents him as an example of "an apparently new phenomenon of young, rage-filled killers taking lives with motiveless passion or no remorse." They've struck all over the country--Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; and Littleton, Colorado.

What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? is exhaustively researched and includes detailed interviews with people who touched Jordan's life--family, psychologists, lawyers--plus Jordan himself, from behind bars. Jordan may be a monster, but Toth identifies plenty of other villains, such as the social-service agencies responsible for him that still refuse to accept any blame for what happened. When society fails vulnerable children such as Jordan, it allows them to become "super predators," writes Toth. "There is never justification for murder. But there are reasons why children kill and why, if we do not heed their cries of pain and intervene decisively to help them, we will see countless more children who murder," she concludes. This is a troubling book, but one that we ignore at our peril.

	The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick by Jonathan Littman Paperback: 416 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.11 x 8.18 x 5.52 Publisher: Little Brown & Co (Pap); ISBN: 0316528692; (January 1997)	More books about Kevin Mitnick.
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Book Description The Fugitive Game introduces Kevin Mitnick moments before the fugitive hacker surrenders himself to FBI agents who have located him with the help of the so-called cybersleuth, Tsutomu Shimomura. The prologue to Jonathan Littman's book kicks off with the epic climax that came to tantalize movie producers and video game designers and launch magazine covers worldwide. However, this is not another version of Takedown. The Fugitive Game is a compelling, journalistic look at the events that led up to the capture of Kevin Mitnick, and no portion of the folklore surrounding the case is left untouched by the book's critical eye. The real gold of this volume comes from the nearly 200 pages of conversations with Kevin Mitnick himself, most of which were transcribed while he was fleeing from the law. Over the course of Mitnick's flight from justice, Littman documents and examines the public transformation of Mitnick into Public Enemy Number One, mostly through the efforts of the New York Times writer John Markoff. Markoff's involvement in the eventual capture of Mitnick by Shimomura is also scrutinized at length. Littman even questions the now-legendary Christmas Day break-in of Shimomura's computer, citing reports that the "IP spoofing technique," which Markoff claimed was so ingenious, was in fact a well-known method of gaining access to systems for years. This is a brilliant look at a compelling individual and also the manufacturing of media events and the inept efforts of law enforcement to prepare for the next wave of high-tech crime.

Final Confession : The Unsolved Crimes of Phil Cresta
by Brian P. Wallace, Bill Crowley, Gilbert Geis (Introduction)
Hardcover: 239 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.98 x 9.31 x 5.97
Publisher: Northeastern Univ Pr; ISBN: 155553449X; (November 2000)

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Book Description
Phil Cresta was no run-of-the-mill thief. Mastermind of the legendary Brink's armoured truck robbery and a string of countless other high-stakes heists, he stole more than ten million dollars in escapades that often were breathtakingly daring and at times marvellously inventive. The robberies baffled both police and fellow outlaws for decades, and most of the crimes remain unsolved today. Now the open case files of these memorable thefts can be closed as Cresta himself provides the true story on how they were planned and carried out.

Born in Boston's North End in 1928, Cresta was raised in an abusive household. He was sent to Concord Reformatory as a teenager, where he learned the craft of picking locks, a skill later honed during stays at the Charlestown and Walpole prisons in Massachusetts. Following the Brink's robbery in 1969, he was put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, but eluded the law for five years, living in Chicago under an assumed name. After serving time at Walpole for the Brink's job, Cresta died penniless in Chicago in 1995. Yet shortly before his death, he revealed the full extent of his astonishing capers to co-author Bill Crowley, a retired Boston police detective.

Drawing from their extensive conversations, this riveting page-turner chronicles how Cresta, along with partners "Angelo" and "Tony," pulled off robberies of jewellers, rare coin dealers, furriers, and armoured trucks, detailing the meticulous planning that marked his criminal career and made him a master at outwitting police. Cresta's final accounting is brimming with vivid tales of betrayal, murder, and intrigue as well as a colourful cast of characters, including mob bosses, wise guys, informants, paid "ears," corrupt judges, a Hollywood starlet, and even the Mayor of Chicago.

	Dead Run : The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America by Joe Jackson, William F., Jr. Burke, William Styron (Introduction) Paperback: 299 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.93 x 8.19 x 5.40 Publisher: Walker & Co; ISBN: 0802775993; (October 2000)
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Amazon.com Dead Run is the story of Dennis Stockton, mastermind of one of the most daring mass prison breaks in American history. It begins with his conviction for a crime he maintained that he didn't commit and weaves through his troubled life, his perpetual incarcerations, and his often brilliant, often comical escapades within the prison system. With frequent excerpts from Stockton's prolific diaries, the book reveals not only much about its surprisingly insightful protagonist but about the prison system in general, including institutionalised corruption, power-hungry guards, inmates, and prison officers. There's more than enough intrigue, action, and disturbing comedy to fill several thrillers, but Dead Run is a true story of a man who refused to sit still and wait for the hour of his death.

	Unabomber : Desire to Kill by Robert Graysmith Hardcover: 550 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.39 x 9.31 x 6.30 Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc.; ISBN: 0895263971; (November 1997)	Click through and check out other books about the Unabomber.
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Ingram From bestselling author Robert Graysmith, this is the complete story of Theodore Kaczynski--Harvard graduate, mathematics professor, hermit...and subject of the longest, most expensive manhunt in FBI history. Now, with 40 additional pages of updated information, this book offers not only a fascinating profile of the killer--but a suspenseful, compelling account of the events surrounding his arrest after he eluded police for nearly 18 years.


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