Frank Carlson Library

She was seventeen years old, a beautiful girl with a Hollywood smile and luminous brown eyes. Sprawled in a culvert just off the gravel road like an abandoned doll, she wore only toe socks, a sweatshirt, and a necklace. She was not the killer's first victim. Nor would she be the last. The lush, green hills that mark the border of North and South Carolina are home to a close knit community. When the savaged remains of high spirited Heather Catterton...

On a December night in 2004, a 911 operator in Nodaway County, Missouri, received a frantic call from a woman who'd found her pregnant 23-year-old daughter in a pool of blood on the living room floor. Most shocking of all, the dying woman's unborn baby had been viciously ripped from her womb. Across the border in Melvern, Kansas, Lisa Montgomery showed off a beautiful newborn she proudly claimed as her own. While some shared her excitement, others...