A mother and her three young children are found hacked to death in their beds. The apparent weapons, an ax and butcher knife, are found nearby. A month later the husband and father, who was away on a business trip when the bodies were found, is accused of the killings. Police believe he methodically murdered his wife and children before he left. But why? A successful businessman and devoted member of a fundamentalist religious group, David Hendricks has the total support of his extended family. Police paint a darker picture, and prosecutors face the daunting task of convicting him on a case based on completely circumstantial evidence. A New York Times best-seller, this book has now been updated with additional content and photos. Readers often comment they must continually remind themselves that this story is real, that Reasonable Doubt is testament to the fact truth is stranger than fiction. The book has also been used in college-level criminal justice courses to explain and illustrate the legal concept of reasonable doubt.

Reasonable Doubt

Biographies & Memoirs

Vogel, Steve

True Crime

St. Martin's True Crime Classics

On Easter Sunday, multimillionaire Dale Ewell, his wife, and 24-year-old daughter were gunned down one by one as they returned home from their beach house. The stone-cold killer waited on a sheet of plastic to avoid leaving clues and calmly retrieved all the bullet casings before leaving the house of blood. The Ewells' tony Fresno community was shocked by the grisly murder of the socially prominent family. Only the son, handsome 21 year-old Dana, seemed strangely unaffected except for his outrage at not receiving his slaughtered family's entire multimillion-dollar fortune immediately. Although the father Dale Ewell, was a ruthless businessman with a score of enemies, Detective John Souza immediately suspected the spoiled son with the new airplane and the Armani suits. But the brilliant college student sneered at the veteran investiagtor's efforts and appeared to have an airtight alibi. But Souza knew there has to be a hole and when he found it he would bring a cold-blooded killer to justice.

Seeds of Evil (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

Politics & Social Sciences

Smith, Carlton

Social Sciences

Bright and magnetic, Tina Biggar was an all-American girl from a picture-perfect family. She studied hard and played hard, and when a subject interested her, she couldn't let it go. At college, Tina worked on a research project, interviewing prostitutes about AIDS awareness. Later, she explored on her own the seedy world of the high-class call girl, and walked into a nightmare she's never return from. Living off-campus with her boyfriend, Todd, Tina's interest has taken a dangerous turn. One of her family and friends suspected that the twenty-three-year-old blonde was secretly working as a call girl for three shadowy escort services, providing sexual favors to strangers for one hundred dollars an hour. Then one day Tina was gone. Four weeks later, police found her decomposed body behind a vacant house--hidden there by a forty-one-year-old treacherous ex-con and regular client who would be charged with her violent death. Only with her tragic murder did the twisted story of Tina's shocking double life emerge before the horrified eyes of those who knew and loved her.

The Co-ed Call Girl Murder

Weinstein, Fannie

WILSON, MELINDA

A lovely teenage girl's final goodbye... "I love you and I'm going to bed," were the last words Elyse Pahler ever said to her parents. But she would never dream again, for the pretty blond 15-year-old was about to begin a walking nightmare that would end in her grisly stabbing murder. Three depraved schoolboys' deadly fantasies... Later that night Elyse slipped out of her parent's house for a bit of forbidden fun. She never suspected that three local boys - two of whom rode the school bus with her - were outside in the dark waiting...waiting to perform a human sacrifice - in the name of Satan. An unspeakable atrocity that stunned a nation... The DA claims that teenagers Royce Casey, Jacob Delashmutt, and Joe Fiorella - all in a band called Hatred - believed they had found the ultimate offering to make to the Prince of Darkness. They would sacrifice an innocent young girl, a virgin. Prosecutors say the three boys dragged a terrified Elyse to a deserted area they believed was the devil's altar, where, after being drugged, and attacked, she died of multiple stab wounds. For eight months Elyse's body lay hidden in a eucalyptus grove until an unexpected tip to police revealed the ghastly crime. In The Name of Satan is an unthinkable American tragedy, a horrifying voyage into deepest evil imaginable.

In the Name of Satan

Clarkson, Wensley

He Made Them Feel Beautiful, Special and Adored... Tall, blond and strikingly handsome with penetrating icy green eyes, Glen Rogers could use his knee-weakening charm to entice lonely women out of romantically lit bars and into the night. Each one thought she had found the perfect man-until Roger got her alone and turned on her in a bloddy rage that would end in her own violent death... Then He Lead Them Like Lambs to the Slaughter... In all, four women would find out too late the deadly truth. For underneath his Prince Charming facade, Roger hid a twisted fury that could only be sated by strangling or stabbing beautiful, vulnerable women. Finally, after a gruesome six-week killing spree that shocked the nation and landed Rogers on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list, he was caught in a grueling twenty-mile high-speed chase. Smooth Operator Here is the fascinating true story of one of the most notorious serial killers in history--a man who used his fatal charms to lure innocent women into a cruel date with destiny... With 8-pages of startling photographs.

Smooth Operator: The True Story of Seductive Serial Killer Glen Rogers (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

Linedecker, Clifford L.

On January 22, 1994, two-year old Renee Goode played happily with her sisters and cousin, as the four of them enjoyed an impromptu "slumber party" at the home of her father, Shane Goode. The next day she was dead.
The local medical examiner could not determine the cause of little Renee's death. But her mother Annette and grandmother Sharon were convinced she'd been murdered--and that they knew the identity of Renee's killer: her handsome father, Shane Goode, a manipulative, emotionally abusive man who displayed virtually no interest in Renee--until he took out a $50,000 insurance policy on her life.
With the help of a courageous female police investigator and Assistant DA, Sharon launched a case against Shane and had Renee's tiny coffin, lovingly filled with her favorite stuffed animals, exhumed from its final resting place. And her small corpse revealed what her grandmother had suspected all along: cold, calculating Shane Goode had murdered his own daughter to cash in on her death.
To the Last Breath is the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

To The Last Breath: Three Women Fight For The Truth Behind A Child's Tragic Murder

Stowers, Carlton

A Deadly Affair

HENDERSON, TOM

History

An army brat-turned-marine, he saw combat in Vietnam, and returned a decorated soldier. An avid reader, his dreams of being an acclaimed novelist came true. His desire to find love was fulfilled when he married brilliant executive Kathleen Atwater, the first female student accepted at Duke University's School of Engineering. The Petersons seemed the ideal academic couple- well-respected, prosperous, and happy.

Written in Blood

FANNING, DIANE

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Books by St. Martin's True Crime Classics