Showing results by publisher "HarperAudio" in True Crime

Australian Ghost Stories is a spine-tingling collection of true crime tales that will leave you feeling haunted long after you've heard the last word. From the ghostly apparitions that haunt historic landmarks to diabolical presences in everyday suburban houses, these are stories of ordinary Australians and their encounters with the unexplainable.

In the long-awaited return to his bestselling true crime series on life behind bars, James Phelps has finally turned his attention to HM Prison Pentridge—the bluestone behemoth that was home to Victoria's worst criminals for more than a century. Beginning with a gang of guards and a handful of convicts, for more than 145 years Pentridge housed a who's who of Australian criminals and Melbourne's underworld including Ned Kelly and Mark 'Chopper' Read. This is gritty true crime storytelling, on steroids—about what life was really like behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge.

Here I am: tall and broad, shaved head, had my nose broken three times fighting. Black suit, white shirt, the big-city homicide detective. I've led investigations into serial killings, child abductions, organized crime hits and domestic murders. But beneath the suit, I've got an Om symbol in the shape of a Buddha tattooed on my right bicep. It balances the tattoo on my left ribs: Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. That's how I choose to live my life. As a cop, I got paid to catch killers. They tell you not to let a case get personal, but I think it has to.

As a cop, I used to sit on one side of the interview room table facing murderers, child abductors and rapists. Now I'm sitting on the other side: disgraced, forced out of the police and judged to be a criminal. I want to show you what the world looks like from here.

New Zealand is now one of the most lucrative illicit drug markets in the world. Organized crime is about making money. It's a business. But over the past 20 years, the dealers have graduated from motorcycle gangs to Asian crime syndicates and now the most dangerous drug lords in the world - the Mexican cartels. In Gangland, award-winning investigative reporter Jared Savage shines a light into New Zealand's rising underworld of organized crime and violent gangs.

The Lady Vanishes is an engrossing story of how a small team of seasoned investigative journalists and storytellers, a daughter's intuition, and a team of listener super-sleuths uncovered a web of intrigue spanning nine decades and three continents, and how—after 57 episodes, 20 million downloads, and sparking a coronial inquiry—they discovered at the heart of the mystery a stranger-than-fiction international man of mystery who could hold the key to what really happened to Marion.

Melbourne's gangland war was an era dominated by murders, stings, hits, drug busts, corruption and greed - inspiring best-selling books and even a popular TV series, Underbelly. It took the police a decade to curtail the violence and bring down criminal kingpins Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel, and their accomplices.

Dulcie Bodsworth was the unlikeliest serial killer. She was loved everywhere she went, and the townsfolk of Wilcannia, which she called home in the late 1950s, thought of her as kind and caring. The officers at the local police station found Dulcie witty and charming, and looked forward to the scones and cakes she generously baked and delivered for their morning tea. That was one side of her. Only her daughter Hazel saw the real Dulcie. And what she saw terrified her.

At the entrance of Sydney Harbor, the cliffs rise fourteen stories above the Pacific, like a gigantic skirt made of sandstone. North Head, one of the most memorable cliffs, is a gorgeous place to watch the sunrise. But it's an unforgiving place to lose your footing. When Steve Johnson's younger brother Scott went over the edge in 1988, he hit an outcrop on the way down and exploded on the rocks below. The police deemed it a suicide. But Steve Johnson never believed his brother would take his own life.

The much anticipated follow-up to the bestseller that exposed the escalation of organized crime in New Zealand, Gangster's Paradise is about drugs, guns, gangs and money. Lots of money. Jared Savage's bestselling book Gangland was about the evolution of gangs in New Zealand. Gangster's Paradise is about the deadly escalation.

From a rare and deadly amniotic avalanche to a victim of roasted peanuts ... The bestselling author of The Cause of Death and The Quick and the Dead returns with more stranger-than-fiction stories of death, disease and murder—as well as new perspectives on high-profile cases, including the disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope, the trial of Mark Lundy, and the ill-fated journey of Ansett Flight 703.

Worshippers stream out of an Midwestern synagogue after sabbath services, unaware that only a hundred yards away, an expert marksman and avowed racist, antisemite and member of the Ku Klux Klan, patiently awaits, his hunting rifle at the ready. A riveting, cautionary tale rooted in history that continues to echo today, The Killer's Shadow is a terrifying and essential exploration of the criminal personality in the vile grip of extremism and what happens when rage-filled speech evolves into deadly action and hatred of the “other" is allowed full reign.

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert - after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life - went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene - of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap.

Presented for the first time in audio format, the chilling transcript of Stephen G Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth's interviews with notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, as seen on the hit Netflix documentary series Conversation with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes - based on their New York Times best-selling book.

Narrated by the visionary founding member, Hell's Angel provides a fascinating all-access pass to the secret world of the notorious Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club. Sonny Barger recounts the birth of the original Oakland Hell's Angels and the four turbulent decades that followed. Hell's Angel also chronicles the way the HAMC revolutionized the look of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and built what has become a worldwide bike-riding fraternity, a beacon for freedom-seekers the world over.

Juan Martinez, the fiery prosecutor who convicted notorious murderess Jodi Arias for the disturbing killing of Travis Alexander, speaks for the first time about the shocking investigation and sensational trial that captivated the nation. Through two trials, America watched with bated breath as Juan Martinez fought relentlessly to convict Jodi Arias of murder one for viciously stabbing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, to death.

In Deal with the Devil, five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Peter Lance draws on once-secret FBI files and exclusive new interviews to disclose the epic saga of Colombo family capo Gregory Scarpa, Sr., who spent more than 30 years as a paid Top-Echelon FBI informant while wreaking havoc as a drug dealer, loan shark, bank robber, hijacker, high-end securities thief - and killer. A Mafia capo who "stopped counting" after 50 murders, Greg Scarpa was enlisted by the FBI as early as 1960.

On June 15, 1862, a gang of bushrangers held up a gold escort at Eugowra, just east of Forbes, NSW. They escaped with a pile of cash and 77 kilograms of gold, worth about $10 million today. It remains the largest gold robbery in Australian history. In this riveting recreation of the events, James Phelps finally tells the full story of how Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall, John O'Meally, Johnny Gilbert, Henry Manns, Alexander Fordyce, John Bow and Dan Charters planned and executed the robbery - and what happened to all that gold.

Years before the name Alex Murdaugh was splashed across every major media outlet in America, local South Carolina journalist Mandy Matney had an instinct that something wasn’t right in the Lowcountry. The powerful Murdaugh dynasty had dominated rural South Carolina for generations. No one dared to cross them.

On the morning of March 27, 1995, four quick shots cracked through Milan’s elegant streets. Maurizio Gucci, heir to the fabulous fashion dynasty, had been ambushed, slain on the steps to his office by an unknown gunman. Two years later, Milan’s chief of police entered the sumptuous palazzo of Maurizio’s ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani - nicknamed “the Black Widow” by the press - and arrested her for the murder. Did Patrizia kill her ex-husband because his spending was wildly out of control? Or is it possible Patrizia didn’t do it at all?