True Crime

The state of Michigan is home to Great Lakes and greater mysteries.

What made Paige Renkoski abandon her running car on the side of the freeway in broad daylight? Who murdered Eddie Hollman while he slept at his parents’ home? Greg McRoberts died in a hit-and-run accident. Will a mysterious letter writer with knowledge of the crime ever come forward? Ten-year-old Valerie Bishop was murdered after visiting the corner store. Could untested evidence reveal the identity of her killer? Why did Connie Royce walk away from a busy nightclub never to be seen again?

Nina Innsted, host of the Already Gone podcast, leads a journey through the missing, the mysterious, and the unsolved in a quest for answers and justice.

Lovers of true crime and Ohio history will find themselves riveted by these crimes of passion.

There is a thin line between love and hate, and when intense passion threatens that border, blood will flow. Northern Ohio has had its share of people who felt that line snap. In Canton, the Phantom-Flapper Killer shot down her lover in cold blood after he threatened to expose her infidelity to the world. In Toledo, Dorothy Brown’s married boyfriend brutally attacked her when he learned that she was expecting. Max Amerman of Medina was willing to kill for the girl of his dreams, and when Cleveland’s Matilda Waldman believed that her husband was cursed by a witch, she took out the she-devil by way of a pistol.

Author Wendy Koile examines these relationships once bound by love, unraveled by lies, and cut off by murder.

In this revised and expanded edition, a harrowing new arrest in the cold case, intense trial and key developments are presented alongside the original narrative.

Friday, August 15, 1975, began as a typical summer day in the suburbs. Young children played with their friends; adults prepared for work or planned for their vacation at the Jersey Shore...

That all changed in the hours before noon, when Gretchen Harrington, the eight-year-old daughter of a Presbyterian minister and his wife, was kidnapped while walking to a Vacation Bible School less than a quarter mile from her house. Her body was found by a jogger in a state park nearly two months later. The crime forever changed the lives of the children who were about Gretchen’s age and their parents, many of whom chose to live in Marple Township because they considered it a safe refuge from the crime-ridden streets of Philadelphia.

Journalists Mike Mathis and Joanna Falcone Sullivan examine the kidnapping, murder, nearly five-decade-long investigation.

Authors Cary O’Dell and Richard L. Sprehe lead a literary investigation of a brutal cold-case murder. 

In May 1975, in the small Southern Illinois town of Centralia, the body of one of its best-known residents, John Shakespeare, was found nearly nude, bound, and shot, execution-style, in the basement of his home. Shakespeare, sixty-nine, was a wealthy bachelor, an eccentric, an heir to the Shakespeare fishing fortune, a world-renowned collector of vintage cars, and, maybe, a possessor of a few secrets.

Despite the victim being well liked in the community, state and local police, and eventually even the FBI and Interpol, found a plethora of suspects while investigating the crime. Could it have been his longtime business associate? Or the mysterious hitchhiker seen in town just days before his body was found? Or a long-ago name from his past?

Without reservation, she opened the door. Without hesitation, she hopped into the car, adjusting the skirt of her summer-weight navy blue suit to keep it unwrinkled as she sat down.

And just like that, 19-year-old Frances Cochran jumped into the void. 

On July 17, 1941, in Lynn, Massachusetts, attractive nineteen-year-old Frances Cochran stepped off a commuter bus and into a mysterious black automobile. Three days later, police discovered her mutilated body in a Salem lovers' lane.

Her murder made national headlines on the eve of World War II. Investigators checked twelve thousand cars and interviewed almost two thousand witnesses. They scrutinized a “Peeping Tom” men’s club. Despite leads that spanned the continent, decades passed and the killer was never caught. Like a poisonous vine, the death of Frances Cochran is tangled with other unsolved murders, including the 1947 Los Angeles Black Dahlia case.

As local author Rob Fitzgibbon reveals, it is also a story shrouded in the "Salem Factor,” the odd and inexplicable coincidences that occur in an area notorious for witchcraft and hauntings.

A Baffling and Brutal Case

Sunday, July 18, 1965, started out like any other hot summer day in Texas. Shirley Ann Stark and Susan Rigsby, Chi Omega sorority sisters at the University of Texas at Austin, left their Dallas homes early and drove together in Shirley’s Corvair to Austin. Little did they know the fate that awaited them later that afternoon as they visited the apartment of a friend and fellow UT student. The following day, the women were reported missing. A twelve-day nationwide search ensued, ending with the discovery of their bodies in a north Austin field. As one Associated Press reporter would later write, “The story held all the elements of a classic murder case: Campus beauties, youth, mystery, terror, and social standing.’’ Author Alan Burton revisits the forgotten, gruesome, and tragic double homicide that shook the Lone Star State. 

A True Crime Mystery Four Decades in the Making

On the cold night of January 27, 1976, twenty-two-year-old college student Kyle Clinkscales vanished after leaving his bartending shift at the Moose Club in LaGrange, Georgia. His disappearance baffled investigators and devastated his parents, John and Louise, who spent decades chasing rumors, suspects, and false leads in one of the South’s most haunting cold cases.

For years, Kyle’s story became a staple in true crime circles, a case that blended small-town secrets, whispers of foul play, and the agony of parents who refused to give up. Then, in 2021, a shocking discovery was made: Kyle’s car submerged in an Alabama creek, with his remains inside. Suddenly, the case once thought frozen in time was thrust back into the spotlight.

Was Kyle’s tragic end the result of a simple accident? Or was it a carefully staged cover-up, concealing a brutal murder that eluded justice for nearly half a century? With modern forensic analysis and renewed investigative efforts, this chilling mystery raises more questions than answers.

Dive deep inside the twists and turns of Kyle Clinkscales’s disappearance and discovery—exploring law enforcement missteps, local rumors, and the enduring fight of a family unwilling to surrender hope. More than just a Southern true crime story, Kyle’s case helped inspire legislative reform for families of the missing, proving that even decades-old mysteries can change lives.

Author James B Longshore details the forty-plus-year ordeal. 

When the police caught up with Johann Hoch, he’d already proposed to what they believed would have been wife number fifty-five.

For a decade, he traveled the country, marrying and deserting desperate women—and five of his wives were lying in their graves. He married Marie Walcker in Chicago in 1904, and when Marie died five weeks later, he proposed to her sister while the corpse lay on the bed. The sister agreed, only to be swindled out of her savings. Adam Selzer trails jovial, big-talking Hoch through a twisting tale of Chicago journalism, Chicago justice and the coming together of some of most daring and corrupt characters the city had to offer.

Discover the South's Most Notorious Murders, Mysteries, and Criminal Masterminds

Journey from Texas to Virginia in this gripping collection of haunting criminal cases. Follow a relentless serial killer as he leaves a bloody trail across Louisiana and beyond, witness a cunning lonely-hearts swindler terrorize Texas, and uncover Arkansas's bizarre wave of strychnine poisonings that baffled investigators. Experience the supernatural when a West Virginia murder is revealed through dreams and meet a one-armed conjure-man whose murder-for-hire schemes shocked North Carolina.

Watch forensic science evolve as crimefighters expand their arsenal of detection tools in this compelling tour of the South's most notorious crimes, where fact proves stranger than fiction.

Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist’s eye to the sinister South and its defining—and quirky—crime stories.

A Century of Murder Upstate

Nestled in the heart of upstate New York, Steuben County’s rural scenery belies a sinister past.

Since the hanging of Robert Douglass in 1825, the county has been the center of a series of murders that resulted in controversial outcomes. Seaman Simons, part of an alleged love triangle, cheated his death sentence after killing his rival. “The Wayland Murderess” Mary Hess inexplicably shot her neighbor and brother within minutes of each other. David Dunn became the only person from the county to die in Auburn Prison’s electric chair, and Hugh Bray’s delusions about a young man breaking up his landlord’s home climaxed in a fatal scene.

R. Marcin, author of Murder and Mayhem in the Finger Lakes, presents a century of this picturesque county’s darkest history.

The state of Michigan is home to Great Lakes and greater mysteries.

What made Paige Renkoski abandon her running car on the side of the freeway in broad daylight? Who murdered Eddie Hollman while he slept at his parents’ home? Greg McRoberts died in a hit-and-run accident. Will a mysterious letter writer with knowledge of the crime ever come forward? Ten-year-old Valerie Bishop was murdered after visiting the corner store. Could untested evidence reveal the identity of her killer? Why did Connie Royce walk away from a busy nightclub never to be seen again?

Nina Innsted, host of the Already Gone podcast, leads a journey through the missing, the mysterious, and the unsolved in a quest for answers and justice.

Join author Tim Younkman for a wild ride into Bay City’s wicked side.

From unscrupulous lumber barons to Hell's Half Mile, Bay City history casts a sinister shadow. Pope Leo XIII was forced to intervene when rioting Catholic immigrants seized St. Stanislaus Catholic Church and battled one another in the city's streets. The police discovered prostitute Lou Hall nearly beaten to death in the Block of Blazes. And respected publishing mogul Edwin T. Bennett's secret life led to the death of a young woman in a Bay City hotel room.

“Recounts all the twists and turns of the case . . . two jury trials, a surprising appellate court ruling . . . and, decades later, a shocking development” (Visalia Times Delta).

One October morning in 1979, a stamp and coin dealer was gunned down in his Visalia shop. There were no witnesses. Persistent police efforts across jurisdictional lines connected it to another death. Two months earlier, the body of a Fresno coin dealer was found locked in the trunk of his car. The trail of evidence led to a most unlikely suspect.

Author Ronn M. Couillard, retired judge and former Visalia district attorney, lays out the facts in this compelling case from the investigation to the court proceedings and the surprise that almost derailed the conviction.

Prepare to be surprised and unnerved as the dark side of Charlotte is brought to life by native and long-time writer David Aaron Moore. Learn about Nellie Freeman, who nearly decapitated her husband with a straight razor in 1926. Discover how the ghosts of Camp Green infantrymen, the doughboys of World War I, still scream in the Southern night. Read about the seventy-one passengers who lost their lives as Eastern Airlines Flight 212 fell to the earth one foggy night in 1974. Come along and experience the grisly past of the City of Churches.

Jail breaks, kidnappings, and a cult leader.

Tacoma, the city where the rails meet the sails, has always been a place of innovation and rule-breakers. When the railroad came in the 19th century, business boomed, and so did smuggling, bootlegging, and prostitution. Men such as Peter Sandberg walked the line between criminal and respectable. Police in the growing town had their hands full not just with human criminals, but stray cows, ducks, and the occasional bear. Rumor has it that in the 1920s, gangsters Lucky Luciano and Frank Nitti were sent to cool their heels in the port city and may have been behind a smoke bomb attack on a movie theater.

Join author Karla Stover as she delves into the wild and colorful past of the City of Destiny.

A rowdy red-light district, secret tunnels, and scathing newspaper editorials. 

Once home to sheep herders and ranchers, the railroad brought a new breed of pioneer to Flagstaff. Entrepreneurs and outlaws alike flocked to the growing town, some finding success and others finding their end at Greenwood Cemetery. When saloons and bawdy houses rebelled against new blue laws, quick-thinking mayor Thomas E. Pollock found a compromise that appeased most locals. Incorrigible characters like Commodore Perry Owens and Ben Doney could be found in town at the Parlor Saloon, while Dutch May Prescott kept the red-light district in the black. 

Author Susan Johnson uncovers the weird and wicked side of Flagstaff. 

The Darker Side of Hampton County   

Founded as a “white county” during the violence and political turmoil of Reconstruction, Hampton County’s roots are steeped in wickedness and blood. From the “Wild East” days of gunfights, train robbers, rustlers and rough-and-tumble timber towns to the shadowy era of moonshining and infamous solicitor “Buster” Murdaugh’s involvement in the “Great Whisky Conspiracy,” the county is rich with true tales of murder, crime and corruption. Meet colorful characters such as the banker who befriended a notorious bank robber and courageous heroes like the jailer’s teen daughter who saved an accused Black prisoner from death at the hands of a vigilante lynch mob. Travel this historical journey with award-winning storyteller, journalist and local author Michael M. DeWitt Jr.

Caryl Hopson and Susan R. Perkins collect historic narratives of murder and mayhem in Herkimer County.

Herkimer County is steeped in history, from the settlement of the Mohawk Valley by Palatine German settlers to the flood of western migration with the opening of the Erie Canal. But the region also boasts an infamous history of high-profile homicides and crimes. Roxalana Druse murdered her abusive husband and became the last woman to be hanged in New York in 1887. The death of Grace Brown on scenic Big Moose Lake became one of the most famous cases in the country in 1906, inspiring author Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy. Psychological tests of intelligence were admitted into court for the first time in an acquittal of sixteen-year-old Jean Gianini in 1914.

Present-day Fishers, Indiana, is one of the safest places to live in the U.S., but this respectable city has a rough and rowdy past.

Starting off as a small railroad community, Fishers attracted its fair share of drifters, and the whiskey flowed like water. It may have been small, but the lawless town made national headlines on more than one occasion. A two-day bar brawl led to one death and dozens of injuries and required the Sheriff to restore order. A sensational trial exposed mass grave robberies and led to legislative changes. James Redwine became the town's first homicide victim over a Christmas turkey shootout. Author Robert Bowling explores the history of this once small town and the misdeeds that thrust it into the national spotlight.