Download or read book Principal Suspect written by William C. Costopoulos and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early hours of June 25, 1979, a gruesome scene unfolded. The body of Susan Reinert, a suburban Philadelphia high school teacher, was found jammed into the hatchback of a car. She was in the fetal position. She was naked. Her two young children were missing. Thus began one of the most prominent murder cases in Pennsylvania's history. The Main Line murders, as they came to be known, would grip the nation and become the target of a seven-year investigation by the FBI and the Pennsylvania State PoliceDthe most massive homicide investigation in American history. The main suspect in the brutal murder turned out to be Jay Smith, the Principal of Upper Merion High School, where Reinert taught. The local and national media went on a rampage, especially as rumors of Smith's bizarre sexual habits emerged. There was one sensational headline after another about the "Prince of Darkness". There was a TV miniseries. Yet the truth, the whole truth, was never told. Until now. This legal drama is about crossing the fine. It's about fixing cases, rigging testimony, plandng evidence, and overzealous prosecutors. William Costopoulos, Smith's lawyer, takes you inside the case, right to the heart of the cover-ups, the corruption, and finally to the floor of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. You'll read portions of the actual transcripts. You'll meet the players in the case. You'll hear Costopoulos argue for Smith's life and fight for truth. Even if you know the outcome, this story will grip you with breathtaking suspense, and at times, make you want to rage at a legal system that went haywire. To this day, Susan Reinert's murderer has never been conclusively identified. The bodies of her childrenhave never been found. Many people think they know exactly who the real murderer is. But ultimately, when a legal system fails so miserably, it is you who must weigh the evidence. Did Jay Smith do it? It is you who must decide.t

Download or read book Engaged to Murder written by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 1987 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of a Philadelphia school teacher and her two children who were callously murdered, apparently as part of an insurance scheme.

Download or read book Echoes in the Darkness written by Joseph Wambaugh and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2013-08-28 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 25, 1989, the naked corpse of schoolteacher Susan Reinert was found wedged into her hatchback car in a hotel parking lot near Philadelphia's "Main Line." Her two children had vanished. The Main Line Murder Case burst upon the headlines--and wasn't resolved for seven years. Now, master crime writer Joseph Wambaugh reconstructs the case from its roots, recounting the details, drama, players and pawns in this bizarre crime that shocked the nation and tore apart a respectable suburban town. The massive FBI and state police investigation ultimately centered on two men. Dr. Jay C. Smith--By day he was principal of Upper Merion High School where Susan Reinert taught. At night he was a sadist who indulged in porno, drugs, and weapons. William Bradfield--He was a bearded and charismatic English teacher and classics scholar, but his real genius was for juggling women--three at a time. One of those women was Susan Reinert. How these two men are connected, how the brilliant murder was carried off, and how the investigators closed this astounding case makes for Wambaugh's most compelling book yet.

Download or read book Murder and Blueberry Pie written by Frances Lockridge and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two murders lead NYC detective Nathan Shapiro out of the city and into the country in this mystery from the authors of the “excellent” Mr. and Mrs. North series (The New Yorker). Nathan Shapiro might be the gloomiest member of Manhattan’s finest, but that doesn’t stop the dour detective from getting the job done when the going gets tough . . . Lois Williams of Glenville, Connecticut, is going about her business when she’s abruptly asked to bear witness to the signing of a wealthy elderly woman’s will. She is just as quickly rushed out, and is disturbed when she learns that Abigail Montfort died less than thirty minutes after her departure. Lois can’t get the strange incident out of her head and confides her suspicions in newspaperman Bob Oliver, who agrees that something strange is afoot. As they investigate a young woman who may have been posing as Abigail Montfort, their search takes them to New York City and into the path of Det. Nathan Shapiro. While Shapiro doesn’t much like leaving Manhattan, a mugging death in town seems to be linked to the old woman’s death in the country. Soon, he finds himself chasing leads with the two amateur sleuths—and what they discover is a mystery that belongs on the front page . . . Murder and Blueberry Pie is the 2nd book in the Nathan Shapiro Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Download or read book Little Black Book of Murder written by Nancy Martin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Society columnist Nora Blackbird is thrust into the world of celebrity tabloid gossip when a billionaire buys the farm…. Nora’s assigned to write a profile on billionaire fashion designer Swain Starr, who recently retired to build a high-tech organic farm with his new wife, Zephyr, a former supermodel. But before Nora can get the story, the mogul is murdered. And now her boss wants her to snap up an exclusive on who killed Starr before the cops do. But solving this murder won’t be easy with a family as colorful as Nora’s. Mick, her sort-of husband, is associating with unsavory characters from his past. Her sister Libby is transforming into a stage mom for her diabolical twins. And Emma, the youngest Blackbird, is mysteriously kicked out of the house by Mick. Nora’s home life may be hogging the spotlight, but there’s also a matter of Starr’s missing pig, which just might be the key to solving this mystery and the way Nora can bring home the bacon….

Download or read book The Main Line Is Murder written by Donna Huston Murray and published by Ravenhill Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon after her husband becomes headmaster of struggling Bryn Derwyn Academy, Ginger Barnes learns that a murder on the campus can kill a school’s reputation in a heartbeat. To move the scandal off the front page before the school goes under, Gin attempts to hurry the investigation along. Will her amateur sleuthing save her husband’s career and her family’s new home? Or will risking the wrath of a killer prove to be the most dangerous thing she’s ever done? Writer's Digest Award Winning Author

Download or read book True Crime Philadelphia written by Kathryn Canavan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Serial killer H.H. Holmes built his murder castle in Chicago, but he met the hangman in Philadelphia. Al Capone served his first prison sentence here. The real-life killers who inspired HBO’s Boardwalk Empire lived and died here. America’s first bank robbery was pulled off here in 1798. The country’s first kidnapping for ransom came off without a hitch in 1874. A South Philadelphia man hatched the largest mass murder plot in U.S. history in the 1930s. His partners in crime were unhappy housewives. Catholics and Protestants aimed cannon at each other in city streets in 1844. Civil rights hero Octavius V. Catto was gunned down on South Street in 1871. Take a walk with us through city history. Would you pass Eastern State Penitentiary on April 3, 1945, just as famed bank robber Willie Sutton popped out of an escape tunnel in broad daylight? Or you might have been one of the invited guests at H.H. Holmes’ hanging at Moyamensing Prison on a gray morning in May 1896. It still ranks as one of the most bizarre executions in city history. Or, if you walked down Washington Lane on July 1, 1874, would you have been alert enough to stop the two men who lured little blond Charley Ross away with candy? You might have stopped America’s first kidnapping for ransom, the one that gave rise to the admonition, “Never take candy from a stranger.” The case inspired the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping. Then there was the bank robber whose funeral drew thousands of spectators and the burglary defendant so alluring that conversation would stop whenever she entered the courtroom. Mix in murderous maids, bumbling burglars, and unflinching local heroes and you have True Crime Philadelphia.

Download or read book Engaged to Murder written by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel and published by Jove Publications. This book was released on 1988 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of a Philadelphia schoolteacher and her two children who were callously murdered apparently as part of an insurance scheme

Download or read book Murder Most Texan written by Bartee Haile and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of sixteen ruthless killings from Lone Star history and the dirty details that have shocked and bewildered Texans for decades. Texas has long boasted of its iron fist and strict treatment of criminals. Nevertheless, a number of homicidal scoundrels and fiends have slipped through the state’s justice system despite even the best efforts of the legendary Texas Rangers. In 1877, Texas saw its first high-profile murder case with the slaying of a woman in Jefferson and the subsequent “Diamond Bessie” trial. More than a century later, state legislator Price Daniel Jr., was shot in cold blood by his wife at their home in Liberty, TX. True crime writer and historian Bartee Haile unburies these and other stories from Texas’s murderous past. With these stories and more—from senseless roadside murders to political assassinations—discover the seedy underbelly of the Lone Star State’s murderous past.

Download or read book Murdered by Mumia written by Maureen Faulkner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New and updated in paperback! Maureen Faulkner is the widow of police officer Danny Faulkner, infamously murdered in Philadelphia in 1981 by Wesley Cook, who goes by the name of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Although Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982, in May of 2007 his attorneys appealed his sentence once more (the federal appeals court has not yet ruled). The defendant has become an international cult figure, who has been supported by such Hollywood activists as Ed Asner, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon. Faulkner and radio-host Smerconish tell the other side of the story: the widow's anguish and grief and her attempts to bring closure to her husband's murder more than 25 years later. Smerconish (who is also a lawyer) has studied the 5,000 pages of trial transcripts (transcripts Asner readily admits he has never looked at), and outlines and analyzes the issues and evidence. The case is compelling, and the reader comes away convinced – as is Smerconish – that Abu-Jamal is guilty as charged. It is a latter-day In Cold Blood.

Download or read book The Cases That Haunt Us written by John Douglas and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-25 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certain criminal cases have a life of their own. Despite the passage of years they continue their hold on the public imagination, either because of the personalities involved, the depravity of the crime, doubts over whether justice was done, or the tantalizing fact that no one was ever caught... Now John Douglas, the foremost investigative analyst and criminal profiler of our time, turns his attention to eight of the greatest mysteries in the history of crime, including those of Jack the Ripper, The Boston Strangler and JonBenet Ramsey. Taking a fresh look at the established facts, Douglas and Olshaker dismantle the conventional wisdom regarding these most notorious of crimes and rebuild them - with astonishing results.

Download or read book Cloaked in Doubt written by Michael Diamondstein and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2006-06-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jimmy DiAnno is a thirty-four-year-old, hard-charging prosecutor in the homicide unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. A talented trial attorney, he takes great pride in his ethical responsibility to see that justice is served. Jerry T. Savitch is not just the mayor of Philadelphia-he is "America's" mayor. He took a shattered city on the brink of fiscal and social ruin and turned it into a thriving metropolis. In Philadelphia, there is no one more beloved-or with more political connections-than Jerry T. Savitch. When Mayor Savitch is charged with a brutal murder, DiAnno is the man tapped to try the case. But for DiAnno, this will not be a simple test of his trial skills. He will learn that there is little difficulty in choosing between right and wrong; but, when faced with two wrongs, the true difficulty lies in choosing which wrong is more right.

Download or read book The Murderers written by W.E.B. Griffin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1995-11-01 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Philadelphia narcotics cop is shot dead in his home. A bar owner's wife and partner are gunned down during an attempted robbery. And in a beautiful mansion, a young woman dies of a heroin overdose. At first the crimes seem unconnected. But these four deaths are about to trigger a massive convergence of corruption, cops, and the mob that could tear the Philadelphia Police Department apart from the inside out. All the way to the top...

Download or read book What Doesn t Kill You written by Donna Huston Murray and published by Ravenhill Press. This book was released on with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book could easily sit on the shelf with traditionally published novels and beat them hands down." Judge #18, Honorable Mention in genre fiction, Writer’s Digest Lauren Beck’s friends, phone, home, credit, and credibility are gone, severed with surgical precision by an enemy intent on framing her for murder. Is it one of the insureds she was hired to investigate? The fellow employee she upstaged? Does the daughter of her landlady and dear friend, Corinne Wilder, hate her even more than she thought? An ex-cop who survived cancer knows how to fight for her life, but can she rely on her wits to outsmart this cunning criminal? "Strong and feisty, Lauren also displays a tender side that is sweetly sentimental." Publisher's Weekly "...a real gem of a novel...This book should be picked up and savored!" Judge, Writer’s Digest "Brave and determined, humorous despite it all...an admirable, down-to-earth heroine." Kirkus Review "Murray's delightful Pennsylvania mystery pits tough but compassionate Lauren Beck, insurance investigator and ex-cop, against unknown adversaries following the death from cancer of her friend Corinne...Murray's characterization and resourcefulness create a consistent persona that supports the central narrative role...convincing, well-phrased detail sustains atmosphere and keeps the plotting vigorous." The BookLife Prize in Fiction "The fascinating story line contains more than one villain and enough twists and turns to keep you guessing until its dazzling conclusion. An exemplary and intriguing sleuth novel...impossible to put down." 5* Susan Sewell for Readers’ Favorite

Download or read book The Young Manhood of Johnny Burke written by J. C. Berkery and published by . This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johnny Burke begins our story as an 18-year-old orphaned, homeless and delinquent youth roaming the hard-scrabble streets of Philadelphia's factory-filled, blue-collar Kensington neighborhood, struggling to survive during the decade following the end of WWII. Burke's milieu is the corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, Kensington's main intersection, or K&A, as the locals have dubbed it; it is also the time of the genesis of what would later become known to press and police alike as the “K&A Gang”, originally a group of disaffected war vets and reform-school graduates, mostly of Irish-American descent, who would rise from street-fighting and stealing car batteries to become some of the most prosperous and proficient professional jewel thieves in America, plundering affluent suburbs from Maine to Florida and the Mid-and-Southwest of copious amounts of diamonds, furs, silverware, bearer bonds, and cash, for well over a decade. Burke's mentor and surrogate big brother at K&A is Billy “Willie” Sears, a rock-jawed,iron-fisted street battler, and leader of the group. As their fortunes advance and eventually diverge, the Sears's move to the South Jersey seashore, having bought a cocktail lounge, The Tropics, nearby; the Burkes move to a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia and Burke gets involved in the Philly night-club scene and in loansharking. Along the way, he meets the flamboyant and gorgeous Jewish ex-chorus girl Lillian Reis, who operates a club nearby. The Blaney brothers are arrested for a burglary in Philadelphia in 1959 and Richie Blaney, a notorious police informer, is jailed for parole violation Some of the guys he put inside are just waiting for him to come into the general popul-ation. Richie spins the publicity-hungry Captain Ferguson a tale of an alleged half-million dollar burglary at the home of a Sicilian millionaire coal operator named appropriately John B. Rich. Richie Blaney identifies the perpetrators as his old enemy Burke, Lillian Reis, her boyfriend, his brother, Barney, and another Kensington nobody. The pairing of his two worst enemies, Ferguson and Richie Blaney, creates a perfect storm for Burke to deal with. The press goes into a feeding frenzy due to the glamorous and photogenic Reis and the size of the alleged 'score'. Meanwhile, Burke has become friendly with Felix John “Skinny Razor” DiTullio, the most feared gangster in the Philadelphia underworld, rumored to have many notches in his belt from the gang wars of the Thirties, During the Summer preceding the trial, one of the defendants in the Pottsville case, is found on the parking lot of a hospital nearly dead; he has been beaten to a pulp, shot, and stabbed numerous times. When questioned, he refuses to cooperate further with Ferguson in Pottsville, Burke is held as a material witness due to the fact that he was the last person known to have been with the victim prior to the attack. Barney Blaney, turns up in the Atlantic Ocean off Atlantic City, wrapped in chains and shot in the back of the head. On the afternoon of July 27th, 1961, Richie Blaney turns on the ignition of his car and is blown to smithereens. The car's hood is found on a rooftop two blocks away. It is his 27th birthday. That same evening, State Sen. Ben Donolow, Burke's lawyer, offers Burke for questioning, along with Lillian Reis and “Junior” Staino. After a few hours of grilling, all are released. The public and the news media, however, see Blaney's demise as of little loss to society. Finally, on January 20th, 1964, Burke's last bailable appeal is denied.. A month later, Billy Sears is murdered in his Cadillac in Atlantic City ironically by an old has-been. Burke's conviction is finally reversed and Burke soon gets word that LCN Boss Angelo Bruno wants to see him. In Book Two, Burke eventually becomes the highest-ranking non-member of the Philly LCN, and soon finds himself smack in the middle of the bloodiest Philly mob war since Prohibition.

Download or read book Murder in the Schoolhouse written by William E. McLeod and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "William E. "Bill" McLeod was born and raised in Chapleau, Ontario. He holds an Honors Degree in Business Administration (Wilfrid Laurier University) and a Master's Degree in Business Administration (Michigan State University). He spent most of his working life on the faculty at Cambrian College of Applied Arts & Technology in Sudbury, Ontario. He retired in 1998."--http://www3.sympatico.ca/wemcleod/

Download or read book Murder in the Maple Woods written by Claire Ackroyd and published by . This book was released on 2020-07 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A boy dies in the Maine woods. His death is judged an accident, but suspicions are raised. Set in the remote maple sugar camps of northwestern Maine, the story unfolds around the maple sugar industry and its producers.