Teenager Lucas Leonard made shocking admissions in front of the altar – he'd practiced witchcraft, conspired to murder his parents, and committed unspeakable crimes. The confessions earned him a brutal beating by a gang of angry church members, including his parents and sister. Lucas was brought to the hospital dead, awakening the sleepy community of Chadwicks, New York, to the horror that had been lurking next door. Nine members of Lucas&a ...
America is a nation founded on justice and the rule of law. But our laws are too complex, and legal advice too expensive, for poor and even middle-class Americans to get help and vindicate their rights. Criminal defendants facing jail time may receive an appointed lawyer who is juggling hundreds of cases and immediately urges them to plead guilty. Civil litigants are even worse off; usually, they get no help at all navigating the maze of technic ...
The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dan ...
He Used A Hand Saw. . . On Valentine's Day 2007, in a suburb of Detroit, stay-at-home dad Stephen Grant filed a missing person's report with the local sheriff. Grant's wife Tara had disappeared five days earlier. He'd been searching for her ever since–or so he claimed. He Started With Her Hands. . . Over the next two weeks, police questioned Grant. He lashed out, accusing them of harassment, pleading his innocence in televi ...
On an August night in 1986, Jennifer Levin left a Manhattan bar with Robert Chambers. The next morning, her strangled, battered body was found in Central Park. Linda Wolfe goes beyond the headlines and media hype to re-create a story of a teenager whose immigrant mother was determined to make a better life for her son, a petty thief and drug user who'd been expelled from the best schools. It's all here, from the initial police investig ...
Deeply Loved, Sadly Missed Blonde, 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger was raised in a close-knit religious family. On a summer morning in Oregon, while cleaning lampposts at an apartment complex managed by her sister, Brooke vanished. One moment she was there, the next moment all that was left were her flip flops and the echo of her scream. Her family suffered five long years to learn that their worst fears were true. Brooke's life had been snat ...
The most hated woman in Belgium sits in her prison cell preparing for imminent release. Between brief interludes of counsel from Sister Virginie and Anouk, the prison psychiatrist, Odette is left alone to labor through the memories of her former life. Obsessive and reflective, yet crucially lacking in remorse, Odette's testimony is a tricky script to untangle. Based on the real-life events of Michelle Martin, ex-wife of the notorious child ...
The Face Of Death On the night of November 12, 1998, in San Luis Obispo, California, attractive blonde college student Rachel New house was walking home alone when suddenly a stranger appeared in front of her. His visage was a skull-face: a grotesque Halloween mask. Beating her unconscious with his fists, the attacker threw her into his pick-up truck, took her to his secluded canyon cabin and raped her – still wearing the mask. Newhouse was hog ...
Case seen on 20/20 "Everybody Loved John. . ." Mary Jean Pearle and John Battaglia's marriage seemed picture perfect from the outside. With their two young daughters, Faith and Liberty, they made their home in a wealthy Dallas suburb. John was handsome, charming, and successful–but behind his mask of normality lay a vicious, violent abuser who'd brutally beaten his first wife–and who made Mary Jean the new target of his irratio ...
