Will mankind ever understand its own mind? Only if it one day learns to do so will the crimes of Edmund Emil Kemper III begin to make any sort of sense. Perhaps the splendour of his name gives a clue to the ambitions his mother had for the new born baby, who emerged into the world just a week before Christmas in 1948. Perhaps the hint in that name of a sort of Hollywood-esque cum Hammer House of Horror quality, just the wrong side of the furthest...

Truth stranger than fiction? We've all heard the phrase. Actually, it's a bit of a falsehood. Invention acting as truth. Reality always wins out in the end. Doesn't it? But, in the case of Valerie McDaniel, truth runs even the most bizarre fiction close. Had Valerie survived her darkest days of 2017, she may well now be serving time behind bars. Certainly, prosecutors in Houston, Texas, have little doubt about that. Then again, it is the prosecutors'...

Young love is infectious. The future is an open book, each page to be filled as the couple go along. Hope blossoms; everything is rosy. Amy Wroe Bechtel and her husband Steve were an active, outdoor adventure type couple making the small town of Lander, Wyoming a perfect location for their second home together. They had only recently moved into their compact ex miner's cottage on Climbers Row when their paradise was punctured. Because, on July 24th,...

On July 20, 1984, fifty-eight-year-old Father John Kerrigan of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Ronan, Montana, disappeared. He had been assigned to the church for only four days... On the evening he went missing, he visited a bakery across the street from the church and chatted with some of the parishioners. He left to go back to the church and that was the last time anyone ever seen him... The next day, several bloody clothes were found along...

Juanita Jean Nelson was blonde, beautiful and popular. But unlike Natalee Holloway, her disappearance went widely unnoticed even in her own hometown of Boulder Creek, California. Boulder Creek is not the kind of place where girls go missing as a result of criminal activity, even ones who, like Juanita, had a history of running away from home. Indeed, when her mother reported Juanita missing, shortly after she was last seen, the police were slow to...

The Jamisons disappeared on a warm October day. It would be four years before their bodies were discovered. They were not missed for several days; neither worked and Madyson was home schooled. They were known for setting off at short notice and without informing friends and family. Nobody really noticed their absence, at first. When their disappearance finally reached the ears of the police, they set out to find what had happened to the family. The...

"How To Murder Your Husband" - an essay by Nancy BrophyThat's how it started...with an online essay written by an aspiring romance author named Nancy Crampton-Brophy. But Nancy is not John Grisham or J.K. Rowling or E.L, James. Nor is she Barbara Cartland or, for that matter, Jackie Collins. But she aspired to be as successful as these names from popular literature. No doubt, she would have loved to see her works on stands in airport bookshops or...

Martha Marek was a black widow before her time, seeing murder as a means of collecting insurance money. She murdered her husband, daughter, and elderly relative all of whom had benefits that would be bequeathed to her after their deaths. After she killed one of her roommates, the state sentenced her to death by way of guillotine... But what inspired her murders? Her own husband had initially coached Martha on how to defraud insurers... by chopping...

Some problems become more troublesome the longer they are left. The aching molar which remains untended; the lawn which is left uncut. The same might be said of the case of Ray Gricar. Although, of course, the disappearance and possible death of a man, one with a high local profile, is much more serious than sore teeth or an unkempt yard. Gricar was last seen on Friday April 15th 2005. It was a glorious day—one of the first of the year in which...

From the side angle of his most recent mugshot, Harvey the Hammer still looks like the murderer he is. Flat of nose, shaven headed, protruding chin on his jowly, hanging face, this now old man still retains the features of a childhood nightmare. But from front on, we see his eyes. They are overhung by flabby eyebrows, and sitting deep inside their sockets, seem dark and broody. There is a half-smile on his face. Not a smirk, not a smile of smugness,...