Frank Carlson Library

In America today, upwards of forty thousand people are dead and unaccounted for. These murder, suicide, and accident victims, separated from their names, are being adopted by the bizarre online world of amateur sleuths. It's DIY CSI. The web sleuths pore over facial reconstructions (a sort of Facebook for the dead) and other online clues as they vie to solve cold cases and tally up personal scorecards of dead bodies. The Skeleton Crew delves into...

Readers will thrill to the persistence and ingenuity evidenced by these accounts of bringing infamous criminals to justice--and even exonerating the wrongly convicted. It blends true crime and institutional history to make must reading for all aficionados of danger.

On July 16, 1989, Kaitlyn Arquette was shot to death in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The police gave up, but her mother would not . . .
In this tragic memoir and investigation, Lois Duncan searches for clues to the murder of her youngest child, eighteen-year-old Kaitlyn Arquette. Duncan begins to suspect that the official police investigation of Kaitlyn’s murder is inadequate when detectives ignore her daughter’s accidental connection...

"London, 1876: When newlywed barrister Charles Bravo ingests a rare poison, the evidence suggests suicide. But in one of the most infamous inquests of all time, a coroner finds it to be an unlawful murder. So what really happened that day? The fourth book in Antony M. Brown's popular Cold Case Jury series picks apart the notorious case that gripped Victorian Britain--and continues to spark debate to this day. Why did Bravo refuse any help, even when...

Barb Thompson never for one moment believed her daughter committed suicide. Neither did Detective Jerry Berry or ballistics expert Marty Hayes or attorney Royce Ferguson or dozens of Ronda's friends. For eleven grueling years, through the ups and downs of the legal system and its endless delays, these people and others helped Barb Thompson fight to strike that painful word from her daughter's death certificate. "From true-crime legend Ann Rule comes...

The author presents another collection of fascinating and disturbing true-crime stories drawn from her real-life personal files.

"Frances Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the 1870s, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she developed a fascination with the investigation of violent crimes and made it her life's work. Best known for creating the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dioramas that appear charming-until you notice the macabre little details: an overturned chair,...

America's foremost expert on criminal profiling provides his uniquely gripping analysis of seven of the most notorious murder cases in the history of crime -- from the Whitechapel murders to JonBenet Ramsey -- often contradicting conventional wisdom and legal decisions. Jack the Ripper. Lizzie Borden. The Zodiac Killer. Certain homicide cases maintain an undeniable, almost mystical hold on the public imagination. They touch a nerve deep within us...

The salacious and scandalous murders of a series of couples on Texarkana's 'lovers lanes' in seemingly idyllic post-WWII America created a media maelstrom and cast a pall of fear over an entire region. What is even more surprising is that the case has remained cold for decades. Combining archival research and investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize nominated historian James Presley reveals evidence that provides crucial keys to unlocking this decades-old...

In 1934, the nation’s most legendary crime-fighter–fresh from taking on the greatest gangster in American history–arrived in Cleveland, a corrupt and dangerous town about to host a world's fair. It was to be his coronation, as well as the city's. Instead, terror descended, as headless bodies started turning up. The young detective, already battling the mob and crooked cops, found his drive to transform American policing subverted by a menace...