Download or read book Convicted A True Story written by Jody Babydol Gibson and published by . This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Convicted, after her high profile trial as a Hollywood Madam, this book is a psychological journey of the heart and mind, written with gut wrenching detail by former Hollywood Madam Jody Babydol Gibson, as she takes you through her journey in the most severe maximum security state penitentiary in the state of California, Central California Womens Facility, otherwise known as "Chowchilla' aka 'Chowkilla'. A True Story, it is a blueprint of how an upper middle-class, girl from a privileged entertainment family, educated in private school from Westchester County, New York, navigated her way mercilessly, through the most severe maximum security state prison system in California, that houses the only Death Row for women in the state. Unlike her first book "Secrets of a Hollywood Super Madam" (amazon), this book is a follow up, and took ten years to write. No A-List names or celebrity stories. It's terrifying, violent, severe, you will not be able to put this book down. Completely ill prepared for such a challenging journey, Ms. Gibson takes you on a roller coaster ride through Hell. You are privy to thoughts from the moment she opened her eyes, until the moment she went to sleep. Inmates like Slick, Devious, and Scrappy, show you what it was like for her to be 'descended upon' like a "target," having come in from a high-profile Hollywood criminal case about money, celebrities, and sex. Chapter 6: THE ROOM, is so compelling you thought this could happen only in the movies. With lesbians, psychos, murderers, and everything else you ever heard, or had nightmares about. Chapter 4; A-YARD, read how the psycho abusive prison gynecologist, rams his fist up your Vagina while his whacko wife watches. Read about the hot Latina Lifer, and her forte in Lesbian sex. In Chapter 21; ADSEG; WELCOME to SOLITARY, Jody terrifies us as to what it feels like to be in solitary confinement, placed in a human cage, as some twisted form of prison protection from being jumped and assaulted by other inmates. And amusing stories like smuggling in her desperately needed contact lenses, in her sister's under wire bra. However, through it all this book is a story about survival; a tale of finding an inner strength, while overcoming adversity. She shows you how she tried desperately to hang on to herself, and remember that she really had a values-based, goal-oriented life; hard to do while living inside a culture designed to extinguish hope. CONVICTED will show you that no matter how impossible the situation may seem, no matter how dark a moment you are in, with your will you can survive it. Jody Babydol Gibson is living proof that you can...
Download or read book The Innocent Man written by John Grisham and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime story that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence. • LOOK FOR THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES “Both an American tragedy and [Grisham’s] strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true.”—Entertainment Weekly In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death—in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man’s already broken life, and let a true killer go free. Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, The Innocent Man reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book no American can afford to miss. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
Download or read book What Set Me Free The Story That Inspired the Major Motion Picture Brian Banks written by Brian Banks and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the unforgettable and inspiring true story—that inspired the major motion picture Brian Banks—of a young man who was wrongfully convicted as a teenager and imprisoned for more than five years, only to emerge with his spirit unbroken and determined to achieve his dream of playing in the NFL. At age sixteen, Brian Banks was a nationally recruited All-American Football player, ranked eleventh in the nation as a linebacker. Before his seventeenth birthday, he was in jail, awaiting trial for a heinous crime he did not commit. Although Brian was innocent, his attorney advised him that as a young black man accused of rape, he stood no chance of winning his case at trial. Especially since he would be tried as an adult. Facing a possible sentence of forty-one years to life, Brian agreed to take a plea deal—and a judge sentenced him to six years in prison. At first, Brian was filled with fear, rage, and anger as he reflected on the direction his life had turned and the unjust system that had imprisoned him. Brian was surrounded by darkness, until he had epiphany that would change his life forever. From that moment on, he made the choice to shed the bitterness and anger he felt, and focus only on the things he had the power to control. He approached his remaining years in prison with a newfound resolve, studying spirituality, improving his social and writing skills, and taking giant leaps on his journey toward enlightenment. When Brian emerged from prison with five years of parole still in front of him, he was determined to rebuild his life and finally prove his innocence. Three months before his parole was set to expire, armed with a shocking recantation from his accuser and the help of the California Innocence Project, the truth about his unjust incarceration came out and he was exonerated. Finally free, Brian sought to recapture a dream once stripped away: to play for the NFL. And at age twenty-eight, he made that dream come true. Perfect for fans of Just Mercy, I Beat the Odds, and Infinite Hope, this powerful memoir is a deep dive into the injustices of the American justice system, a soul-stirring celebration of the resilience of the human spirit, and an inspiring call to hold fast to our dreams.
Download or read book Manifest Injustice written by Barry Siegel and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable legal page-turner, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Barry Siegel recounts the dramatic, decades-long saga of Bill Macumber, imprisoned for thirty-eight years for a double homicide he denies committing. In the spring of 1962, a school bus full of students stumbled across a mysterious crime scene on an isolated stretch of Arizona desert: an abandoned car and two bodies. This brutal murder of a young couple bewildered the sheriff 's department of Maricopa County for years. Despite a few promising leads—including several chilling confessions from Ernest Valenzuela, a violent repeat offender—the case went cold. More than a decade later, a clerk in the sheriff 's department, Carol Macumber, came forward to tell police that her estranged husband had confessed to the murders. Though the evidence linking Bill Macumber to the incident was questionable, he was arrested and charged with the crime. During his trial, the judge refused to allow the confession of now-deceased Ernest Valenzuela to be admitted as evidence in part because of the attorney-client privilege. Bill Macumber was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The case, rife with extraordinary irregularities, attracted the sustained involvement of the Arizona Justice Project, one of the first and most respected of the non-profit groups that represent victims of manifest injustice across the country. With more twists and turns than a Hollywood movie, Macumber's story illuminates startling, upsetting truths about our justice system, which kept a possibly innocent man locked up for almost forty years, and introduces readers to the generations of dedicated lawyers who never stopped working on his behalf, lawyers who ultimately achieved stunning results. With precise journalistic detail, intimate access and masterly storytelling, Barry Siegel will change your understanding of American jurisprudence, police procedure, and what constitutes justice in our country today.
Download or read book Convicted written by Jameel Zookie McGee and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER BOOK AWARD • “A must-read for anyone who longs for the day when the dividing lines of race, class, and bigotry are finally overcome by the greater forces of love, forgiveness, and brotherhood.”—Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Racial tensions had long simmered in Benton Harbor, a small city on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, before the day a white narcotics officer—more focused on arrests than justice—set his sights on an innocent black man. But when officer Andrew Collins framed Jameel McGee for possession of crack cocaine, the surprising result was not a race riot but a transformative journey for both men. Falsely convicted, McGee spent three years in federal prison. Collins also went to prison a few years later for falsifying police reports. While behind bars, the faith of both men deepened. But the story took its most unexpected turn once they were released—when their lives collided again in a moment brimming with mistrust and anger. The two were on a collision course—not to violence—but forgiveness. As current as today’s headlines, this explosive true story reveals how these radically conflicted men chose to let go of fear and a thirst for revenge to pursue reconciliation for themselves, their community, and our racially divided nation.
Download or read book The Innocent Killer A Wrongful Conviction and Its Astonishing Aftermath written by Michael Griesbach and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-19 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conviction written by Denise Mina and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true crime podcast sets a trophy wife's present life on a collision course with her secret past in this "blazingly intense" Reese Witherspoon book club pick and New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year (A. J. Finn). The day Anna McDonald's quiet, respectable life exploded started off like all the days before: Packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone. Reeling, desperate for distraction, Anna returns to the podcast. Other people's problems are much better than one's own -- a sunken yacht, a murdered family, a hint of international conspiracy. But this case actually is Anna's problem. She knows one of the victims from an earlier life, a life she's taken great pains to leave behind. And she is convinced that she knows what really happened. Then an unexpected visitor arrives on her front stoop, a meddling neighbor intervenes, and life as Anna knows it is well and truly over. The devils of her past are awakened -- and they're in hot pursuit. Convinced she has no other options, Anna goes on the run, and in pursuit of the truth, with a washed-up musician at her side and the podcast as her guide. Conviction is "daredevil storytelling at its finest" (NPR's Fresh Air), a breathtaking thriller from one of the most "superbly talented" writers of our time (Hank Phillippi Ryan, bestselling author of Trust Me).
Download or read book Real Justice Fourteen and Sentenced to Death written by Bill Swan and published by Lorimer. This book was released on 2012-03-14 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At fourteen, Steve Truscott was a typical teenager in rural Ontario in the fifties, mainly concerned about going fishing, playing football, and racing bikes with his friends. One summer evening, his twelve-year-old classmate, Lynne Harper, asked for a lift to the nearby highway on his bicycle and Steve agreed. Unfortunately, that made Steve the last person known to see Lynne alive. His world collapsed around him when he was arrested and then convicted of killing Lynne Harper. The penalty at the time was death by hanging. Although the sentence was changed to life in prison, Steve suffered for years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit. When his case gained national attention, the Supreme Court of Canada reviewed the evidence -- and confirmed his conviction. It took over forty years and a determination to prove his innocence for him to finally clear his name. He has since received an apology and compensation for his ordeal. In this book, young readers will discover how an innocent boy was presumed guilty by the justice system, and how in the end, that same justice system, prodded by Truscott and his lawyers, was able to acknowledge the terrible wrong done to him. [Fry reading level - 4.8
Download or read book Precious Angels written by Barbara Davis and published by Onyx. This book was released on 1998-12-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 6, 1996, the tranquillity of Rowlett, Texas was forever shattered by a frantic 911 phone call from Darlie Routier to police, claiming an intruder had broken into her home and stabbed her two little boys to death. But the subsequent investigation revealed a darker truth -- the murder of two innocent children by their own mother. Through meticulous research and exclusive sources, "Precious Angels" presents the complete story of this shocking crime.
Download or read book Ghost of the Innocent Man written by Benjamin Rachlin and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the Best Books of 2017: National Public Radio, San Francisco Chronicle, Library Journal, Shelf Awareness "Remarkable . . . Captivating . . . Rachlin is a skilled storyteller." --New York Times Book Review "A gripping legal-thriller mystery . . . Profoundly elevates good-cause advocacy to greater heights--to where innocent lives are saved." --USA Today "A crisply written page turner." --NPR A gripping account of one man's long road to freedom that will forever change how we understand our criminal justice system During the last three decades, more than two thousand American citizens have been wrongfully convicted. Ghost of the Innocent Man brings us one of the most dramatic of those cases and provides the clearest picture yet of the national scourge of wrongful conviction and of the opportunity for meaningful reform. When the final gavel clapped in a rural southern courtroom in the summer of 1988, Willie J. Grimes, a gentle spirit with no record of violence, was shocked and devastated to be convicted of first-degree rape and sentenced to life imprisonment. Here is the story of this everyman and his extraordinary quarter-century-long journey to freedom, told in breathtaking and sympathetic detail, from the botched evidence and suspect testimony that led to his incarceration to the tireless efforts to prove his innocence and the identity of the true perpetrator. These were spearheaded by his relentless champion, Christine Mumma, a cofounder of North Carolina's Innocence Inquiry Commission. That commission--unprecedented at its inception in 2006--remains a model organization unlike any other in the country, and one now responsible for a growing number of exonerations. With meticulous, prismatic research and pulse-quickening prose, Benjamin Rachlin presents one man's tragedy and triumph. The jarring and unsettling truth is that the story of Willie J. Grimes, for all its outrage, dignity, and grace, is not a unique travesty. But through the harrowing and suspenseful account of one life, told from the inside, we experience the full horror of wrongful conviction on a national scale. Ghost of the Innocent Man is both rare and essential, a masterwork of empathy. The book offers a profound reckoning not only with the shortcomings of our criminal justice system but also with its possibilities for redemption.
Download or read book Devil s Knot written by Mara Leveritt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a true story, this edition of Devil's Knot will tie-in to a major motion picture starring Academy Award winners Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth. This riveting portrait of a small Arkansas town recounts the all-too-true story of a brutal triple murder and the eighteen-year imprisonment of three innocent teenagers. For weeks in 1993, after the grisly murders of three eight-year-old boys, police in West Memphis, Arkansas, seemed stumped. Then suddenly, detectives charged three teenagers - alleged members of a satanic cult - with the killings. Despite the witch-hunt atmosphere of the trials and a case that included stunning investigative blunders, the teenagers, who became known as the West Memphis Three, were convicted. Jurors sentenced Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley to life in prison and Damien Echols, the accused ringleader, to death. The guilty verdicts were popular in their home state - even upheld on appeal - and all three remained in prison until their unprecedented release in August 2011. In Devil's Knot, award-winning investigative journalist Mara Leveritt presents the most comprehensive, insightful reporting ever done on this story - one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in American legal history. In-depth research, meticulous reconstruction of the investigation and close-up views of its key participants unravel the many tangled knots of this endlessly shocking case.
Download or read book Conviction written by Peter D. Tattersall and published by . This book was released on 1980-09 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Death Sentence written by Jerry Bledsoe and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2014-05-18 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “true story that reads like a novel,” the #1 New York Times–bestselling author reveals the facts behind a notorious Southern murder case (Library Journal). When North Carolina farmer Stuart Taylor died after a sudden illness, his forty-six-year-old fiancée, Velma Barfield, was overcome with grief. Taylor’s family grieved with her—until the autopsy revealed traces of arsenic poisoning. Turned over to the authorities by her own son, Velma stunned her family with more revelations. This wasn’t the first time she had committed cold-blooded murder, and she would eventually be tried by the “world’s deadliest prosecutor” and sentenced to death. This book probes Velma’s stark descent into madness, her prescription drug addiction, and her effort to turn her life around through Christianity. From her harrowing childhood to the crimes that incited a national debate over the death penalty, to the final moments of her execution, Velma Barfield’s life of crime and punishment, revenge and redemption, this is crime reporting at its most gripping and profound. “A painfully intimate, moving story about the life and death of the only woman executed in the U.S. between 1962–1998 . . . With graceful writing and thorough reporting, it makes the reader look hard at something dark and sad in the human soul . . . Breathes new life into the true crime genre.” —The News & Observer “Undertakes to answer the questions about the justice system and the motives that drive women to kill.” —The Washington Post Book World “An extraordinary piece of writing . . . The most chilling description of a legal execution that we are ever likely to get.” —Citizen-Times “Taut and engrossing on the nature of justice and the death penalty as well as on guilt and responsibility.” —Booklist
Download or read book The Sun Does Shine written by Anthony Ray Hinton and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit"--
Download or read book Full Circle A True Story Of Murder Lies And Vindication written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It began as a robbery. A man dressed as a phone repairman knocked on the door of coin collector Ed Davies. Once inside, the stranger pulled a gun on Ed and his wife, Grace, handcuffed and hogtied the couple and opened the door for his partner. After filling six suitcases with silver and gold coins, they fatally shot Davies in the head twice and his wife once, then fled. Hours later, with a bullet lodged in her head, Grace crawled out to the sidewalk where a neighbor found her. Eventually the killers were found, tried and convicted of murder. Trying to get a reduced sentence, one told the prosecutor that a third year law student named Gloria Killian was the mastermind of the crime. The prosecutor went after her with zeal, and she was tried, convicted and sent to jail, all the while proclaiming she knew nothing of the crime. While in jail, she began advocating for the humane treatment and release of women in prison. Ten years later, one of the defense attorneys discovered massive exculpatory evidence, hidden documents, prosecutorial misconduct and perjury. Then Gloria Killian's own fight for freedom began. Full Circle, tells for the first time, the riveting story of a shocking murder that involves Hells Angels, misguided cops, backroom deals, profound lies and life and death sentences. Relentless, exciting and gripping, this true story shows how a life can be ruined in a split second. Finally, Full Circle makes the terrifying point that what happened to Killian can happen to anyone.
Download or read book Trell written by Dick Lehr and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the co-author of Black Mass comes a gripping YA novel based on the true story of a teenage girl’s murder — and a young father’s false imprisonment for the crime. On a hot summer night in the late 1980s, in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, a fourteen-year-old African-American girl was sitting on a mailbox talking with her friends when she became the innocent victim of gang-related gunfire. Amid public outcry, an immediate manhunt was on to catch the murderer, and a young African-American man was quickly apprehended, charged, and — wrongly — convicted of the crime. Dick Lehr, a former reporter for the Boston Globe’s famous Spotlight Team who worked on this story three decades ago, brings the case to light once more with Trell, a page-turning novel about the daughter of the imprisoned man, who persuades a reporter and a lawyer to help her prove her father’s innocence. What pieces of evidence might have been overlooked? Can they manage to get to the truth before a dangerous character from the neighborhood gets to them?
Download or read book True Story written by Michael Finkel and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The improbable but true story of a man accused of murdering his entire family and the journalist he impersonated while on the run In 2001, Mike Finkel was on top of the world: young, talented, and recently promoted to a plum job at the New York Times Magazine. Then he made an irremediable slip: Under extraordinary pressure to keep producing blockbuster stories, he fabricated parts of an article. Caught and excommunicated from the Times, he retreated to his home in Montana, swearing off any contact with the media. When the phone rang, though, he couldn’t resist. At the other end was a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, whom Finkel congratulated on being the first in what was sure to be a long and bloodthirsty line of media watchdogs. The reporter was puzzled. In Waldport, Oregon, Christian Longo had killed his young wife and three children and dumped their bodies into the bay. With a stolen credit card, he fled south, making his way to Cancun, where he lived for several weeks under an assumed identity: Michael Finkel, journalist for the New York Times. True Story is the tale of a bizarre and convoluted collision between fact and fiction, and a meditation on the slippery nature of truth. When Finkel contacts Longo in jail, the two men begin a close and complex relationship. Over the course of a year, they exchange long letters and weekly phone calls, playing out a cat-and-mouse game in which it’s never quite clear if the pursuer is Finkel or Longo—or both. Finkel’s dogged pursuit of the true story pays off only at the end, in the gripping trial scenes in which Longo, after a lifetime of deception, finally tells the whole truth. Or so he says.
