True Kidnapping

The people in these twelve cases didn't see it coming. A husband walking the dog at dawn. A boy sent away to be saved. A man opening a package addressed to him by name. Each trusted something ordinary, and each was destroyed by it.

The close knit community in San Miguel de Allende Mexico was plagued by a string of sophisticated kidnappings for nearly a decade. When the police finally made an arrest the townspeople were shocked by who was accused of masterminding the criminal enterprise. It's everyone's favorite neighbor and a pillar of the community, Ramon Guerra. Except Ramon isn't who he says he is.

Returning to his days as a reporter for El Espectador, Gabriel García Márquez chronicles, with consummate skill, the period in late 1990 when Colombian security forces mounted a nationwide manhunt for Pablo Escobar, the ruthless and elusive head of the Medellin cartel. Ten men and women were abducted by Escobar’s henchmen and used as bargaining chips against extradition to the United States. From the testimonies and diaries of the survivors, García Márquez reconstructs their bizarre ordeal with cinematic intensity, breathtaking language, and rigor.

This is the inspiring and “page-turning” (Booklist) true story of a man who discovered that he had been kidnapped as a baby—and how his quest to find out who he really is upturned the genealogy industry, his own family, and set in motion the second longest cold case in US history. In 1964...

Held against her will and raped by her 38-year-old boss, 19-year-old Anna tries to make sense of her unbelievable situation. How did an innocent friendship with her boss turn into weeks of forced sex and the inability to leave her oppressor's side? Furthermore, what happens when weeks of rape result in a pregnancy? This true-life novel depicts a graphic and raw recounting of the unimaginable horrors of the Summer of 2010.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of A Kim Jong-Il Production, by Paul Fischer, read by Stephen Park. Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's film industry. He directed every film made in the country but knew they were...

When he was 10 years old, Paul Fronczak was snooping around for Christmas presents in a crawl space in his family’s Chicago home. There, he found hundreds of old newspaper clippings about the kidnapping of a one-day-old infant in a hospital in 1964. He also learned that, two years later, the boy was found and returned to his family - and that the boy was him. Nearly 50 years later, Paul, acting on long-held suspicions, took a DNA test that proved he was not the kidnapped boy. In an instant, he found himself at the center of two half-century-old mysteries.

True crime is not for everyone. However, there is a small subset of us that, for some reason or another, finds themselves drawn to true crime stories. Perhaps it’s a desire for truth and justice, an obsession with understanding the criminal mind, or just curiosity about how the cases were solved.

Beautiful, bubbly, 20-year-old Kim Antonakos was returning to her New York City apartment after a night of clubbing with a friend. A business major with wild black hair, long polished fingernails, and a new Honda her loving father had bought her, Kim took good care of herself and looked forward to a bright future. But on her way home in the early morning darkness of that Ash Wednesday, Kim was abducted - and her mysterious kidnappers would be the last people to see her alive. Kim's father, wealthy computer executive Tommy Antonakos, launched a widespread search for his daughter.

If you’re a fan of true crime, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the big-name cases: Ted Bundy, BTK, David Berkowitz, Christopher Watts, Diane Downs, Casey Anthony. The list of well-known, notorious cases throughout history is seemingly endless. Books, websites, podcasts, streaming television series, and magazines are filled with their abhorrent tales of mayhem. They’re some of the most foul killers the world has ever known. In this volume, you’ll find 12 assorted true crime stories ranging in date from the 1950s to 2020.

Astonishingly more key evidence is accessible today than was presented at the death penalty trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the kidnap/murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. You get to judge for yourself who committed the "crime of the century". This shocking but true story is told in dozens of short, riveting chapters you can't put down. In the depths of the Depression, millions worldwide followed every twist and turn of the Lindbergh baby kidnap/murder.

He promised salvation. What he built was a prison. Gary Heidnik looked like a man of authority. He presented himself as a preacher, a leader, and a figure of purpose. Behind the walls of his Philadelphia home, he was creating something far darker. Women disappeared into his world. Inside that house, Gary Heidnik turned fear into routine, isolation into control, and obedience into a weapon. What appeared ordinary from the outside concealed a nightmare that would become one of Philadelphia’s most disturbing criminal cases.

The Great Depression was a time of desperation in America - parents struggled to feed their children and unemployment was at a record high. Adding to the lawlessness of the decade, thugs with guns and corrupt law-enforcement officers ran rampant. But amidst this panic, there was one surefire way to make money, one used by criminals and resourceful civilians alike: kidnapping. The Kidnap Years is a thoughtfully reported pause-resister that chronicles the sweep of abductions that afflicted all corners of the country as desperate people were pushed to do the unthinkable.

It’s a total crime wave: A mini encyclopedia of true crime, packed with stories of killers, cons, survivors, forensics and more! More than 200 stories of killers, con artists, master thieves, and brazen kidnappers—and strong survivors, detectives, forensic breakthroughs, and legal minds on...

The incredible true story of one of America's largest ransom cases - and the massive FBI and police manhunt to bring the radical captors to justice.   

In the depths of the Depression, millions worldwide followed every twist and turn of the Lindbergh baby kidnap/murder. Yet what was reported was largely fake news. Nearly a century after undocumented immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed for the dastardly crime, questions still linger. If the wrong man was convicted, who did it? When? Why? Where? How? The shocking answers have eluded all prior authors.

Cold Cases: A True Crime Collection features case file facts, fascinating details, and chilling testimonies of the world's most famous cold cases. Written for true crime junkies and armchair detectives, this book delves into the investigations of JonBenét Ramsey, the Black Dahlia, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, the Cleveland Torso Murders, and more.

A true-life adventure sure to shock as well as inspire. AK47s, masked thugs, and brutal urgency erupt from Roy Hallums' account of his abduction in Iraq, shredding through those frequently sterile cable news reports revealing that another "American contractor is being held hostage . . ." Hallums...

When a famous guest goes missing from one of San Francisco’s most luxurious hotels, mayhem and murder ensue in this witty historical mystery. This second book in the Murder Most Fowl Mysteries is perfect for fans of Only Murders in the Building. San Francisco, 1905. Renowned for its daily duck...

Featuring cameos by Abby and her kidnapper! A true crime classic that made headlines around the world, shocking and moving everyone including some of the biggest celebrities—among them tough guy crooner Frank Sinatra still pained by his own son's kidnapping a decade before.