Showing results for "John" in Abductions, Kidnapping & Missing Persons

How does a man shake the hand of the First Lady of the United States in May, then drive home and bury a teenage boy under his linen cupboard before midnight? How does a Polish picnic organiser, a precinct captain, a children's hospital clown, run twenty seven young men into the dirt beneath his own kitchen floor across six straight years on a quiet suburban street, while his neighbours bring round Christmas hampers and the postman calls him by his first name?

As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown. But in the winter of 1978-79, he became known as one of many so-called “sex murderers” who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s.

John Edward Robinson was a 56-year-old grandfather from rural Kansas. An entrepreneur and Eagle Scout, he was even honored as "Man of the Year" at a Kansas City charity. To some of the women he met on the internet, he was known as Slavemaster - a sexual deviate with a taste for sadomasochistic rituals of extreme domination and torture...even killing. 

A much-loved mother, teacher and friend steps on a plane for an overseas adventure and is never seen again. When Marion Barter disappeared in 1997, police initially dismissed it as the actions of a divorced mother abandoning her family. In this book, the creators of the addictive global hit...

John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Conti was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news. Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, difficult, and haunting client.

He was a trusted neighbor, a respected businessman, and a smiling clown who entertained children. But beneath the floorboards of his quiet suburban home, a nightmare festered. When police entered 8213 Summerdale Avenue in 1978, they expected answers about a missing teenage boy. What they found was a house of horrors. One body. Then another. Then another. By the end of the excavation, the remains of twenty-six young men and boys had been pulled from the crawl space.

In this meticulous and authoritative account of the trial and the times of the Lindbergh kidnapping, Robert Zorn clears away decades of ungrounded speculation surrounding the case. Inspired by his father's relationship with the actual accomplices—including the mastermind—he presents the clearest ever picture of a criminal partnership that would shake every class and culture of American society.

In July 2002, the Eastlake police discovered a decomposed body in a modest studio apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. It appeared to be a suicide by firearm. The man was Joseph Newton Chandler III, a retiree whom neighbors and former colleagues described as quiet, secretive, and strange. But as the investigation progressed, less and less about Joseph's life and identity made sense. In 2018, thanks to scientific advances in DNA, the man's true identity was finally discovered: Robert Ivan Nichols.

This book is going to look at a variety of cases of missing people. They will have unresolved endings in many of the cases. In some there are conspiracy theories and improbable suggestions for what might have happened. In others, there is every reason to believe in foul play and deeply sinister motives.