FOR VIEWERS OF THE NO.1 NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY - A TWISTING TALE OF MURDER AND SCANDAL
'Murdaugh Most Horrid...' Telegraph
'Readers will be swept up in this account.' -Booklist
'Glatt has produced the equivalent of a juicy John Grisham novel, featuring a lead more 'dark and totally devoid of conscience' than anyone he's ever researched. This real-life Southern noir lingers.' Publishers Weekly
In Tangled Vines, bestselling true crime author John Glatt reconstructs the rise of the prestigious Murdaugh family and the shocking double murder that led to the downfall of its patriarch, Alex Murdaugh.
Among the lush, tree-lined waterways of South Carolina low country, the Murdaugh name means power. A century-old, multimillion-dollar law practice has catapulted the family into incredible wealth and local celebrity--but it was an unimaginable tragedy that would thrust them into the national spotlight. On June 7th, 2021, prominent attorney Alex Murdaugh discovered the bodies of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, on the grounds of their thousand-acre hunting lodge. The mystery deepened only months later when Alex himself was discovered shot in the head on a local roadside.
But as authorities scrambled for clues and the community reeled from the loss and media attention, dark secrets about this Southern legal dynasty came to light. The Murdaughs, it turned out, were feared as much as they were loved. And they wouldn't hesitate to wield their influence to protect one of their own. As bombshells of financial fraud were revealed and more suspicious deaths were linked to the Murdaughs, a new portrait of Alex Murdaugh emerged: a desperate man on the brink of ruin who would do anything, even plan his own death, to save his family's reputation.
In a quiet community of million dollar homes and shiny SUVs, the Nyce family projected the very image of success. Dr. Jonathan Nyce, an asthma sufferer, had achieved medical breakthroughs that made him rich-and offered hope to countless people. Michelle's beauty made her an object of desire. And adultery was her husband's worst nightmare.
Police found Michelle's Land Cruiser floating in a frigid creak near the family home. When forensic investigators examined Michelle's horribly battered body, they knew she had not died in the car. Or by accident.
Soon, the truth began to emerge. Of a brilliant man whose beautiful wife had a lover she could not stay away from. Of a family-including three innocent children-pushed to the breaking point. And of one brutal moment, when a man finally ended his torment by horrifically murdering the woman he loved . . .
Greg DeVillers was a top biotech executive, and Kristen Rossum was embarking on a career in toxicology at the San Diego Medical Examiner's office. They seemed to be happily married, living the American dream. But only months shy of their second anniversary, Kristen found her handsome husband dead from a drug overdose-his corpse sprinkled with rose petals. By his side was their wedding photo. The scene was reminiscent of American Beauty, one of Kristen's favorite movies. Authorities deemed it a suicide.
Until they discovered that the rare poison found in Greg's body was the same poison missing from Kristen's office. Until they discovered the truth about Kristen's lurid affair, about her own long-time drug addiction, and about the personal and professional secrets she would kill to keep hidden-secrets that would ultimately expose the beautiful blonde as the deadly beauty she really was . . . a Deadly American Beauty.
At first, the residents of Kauai Beach Resort took little notice of their new neighbors. The glamorous blonde and her tall husband fit the image of the ritzy gated community. The couple seemed to keep to themselves-until the police knocked on their door with a search warrant. Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell had fled to Hawaii in the midst of being investigated for the disappearance of Lori's children back in Idaho-Tylee and JJ-who hadn't been seen alive in five months.
For years, Lori Vallow had been devoted to her children and her Mormon faith. But when her path crossed with Chad Daybell, a religious zealot who taught his followers how to prepare for the end-times, the tumultuous relationship transformed her into someone unrecognizable. As authorities searched for Lori's children, they uncovered more suspicious deaths with links to both Lori and Chad, including the death of Lori's third and fourth husbands, her brother, and Chad's wife. In June 2020, the gruesome remains of JJ and Tylee were discovered on Chad's property, and the newlyweds were arrested and charged with murder. And in a shocking development, horrifying statements revealed that the couple's fanatical beliefs had convinced them the children had become zombies-a belief that may have led to their deaths.
John Edward Robinson was a fifty-six-year-old grandfather from rural Kansas. An entrepreneur and Eagle Scout, he was even honored as 'Man of the Year' at a Kansas City charity. To some of the women he met on the Internet, he was known as Slavemaster-a sexual deviate with a taste for sadomasochistic rituals of extreme domination and torture . . . even killing.
Masquerading as a philanthropist, he promised women money and adventure. For fifteen years, he trawled the Web, snaring unsuspecting women. They were never seen again. But in the summer of 2000, the decomposed remains of two women were discovered in barrels on Robinson's farm, and three other bodies were found in storage units. Yet the depths of Robinson's bloodlust didn't end there. For authorities, the unspeakable criminal trail of Slavemaster was just beginning . . .
Depraved is a true story of sadistic murder in the Heartland, told by true crime master John Glatt.
By all accounts, Thomas Gilbert Jr. led a charmed life. The son of a wealthy hedge fund manager and a financier, he grew up surrounded by a loving family and all the luxury an Upper East Side childhood could provide: education at the elite Buckley School and Deerfield Academy, summers in a sprawling seaside mansion in the Hamptons. He was strikingly handsome, moving with ease through glittering social circles and following in his father's footsteps to Princeton. His friends saw him as a leader; his parents adored him.
But Tommy always felt different, and the cracks in his façade began to show. What started as quiet exhaustion turned into warning signs of OCD, increasing paranoia, and-most troubling-an indescribable, inexplicable hatred of his father. As his parents begged him to seek psychiatric help, Tommy pushed back by self-medicating with drugs and escalating violence. When a fire destroyed his recently-estranged best friend's Hamptons home, Tommy was the prime suspect-but he was never charged. Just months later, he arrived at his parents' apartment, calmly asked his mother to leave, and shot his father point-blank in the head.
With exclusive access to sources close to Tommy, including his own mother, author John Glatt constructs the agonizing spiral of mental illness that led Thomas Gilbert Jr. to the ultimate unspeakable act.
A beautiful nurse. A lethal injection. A gruesomely charred corpse.
Nothing could have shocked the sleepy community of Morgantown, West Virginia, more than the lurid details that surfaced after a house fire claimed the life of Shelly Michael's husband Jimmy. Local authorities suspected possible arson. Then they discovered that Jimmy had been dead before the fire even started-paralyzed by a fatal dose of muscle relaxant . . .
Did Shelly Michael, a respected nurse and mother, kill her second husband and torch her own home? Were the rumors true that she'd had an affair with her husband's employee only two weeks before the murder? Or did she kill Jimmy simply for the insurance money? Charged with first-degree murder and first-degree arson, Shelly would never stop claiming her innocence-even to this day
A MARRIAGE: DESTROYED
They were a picture-perfect family-until a bitter divorce drove Darren Mack over the edge. A Reno millionaire, Mack was ordered by the court to pay his wife $10,000 a month in alimony. Instead, he stabbed her in the garage while their daughter watched TV upstairs.
A JUDGE: TARGETED
The only person Mack hated more than his wife was the family court judge who presided over their divorce. So, after killing his wife, he loaded his gun and went after the judge . . . and headed for Mexico with a stash of concealed weapons.
A KILLER: WANTED
So began an international manhunt for a rage-filled fugitive-featured on America's Most Wanted-that eventually ended in Mack's capture. In a dramatic trial, the public would learn shocking details of the swinging lifestyle that ended his marriage, the ugly divorce that fueled his anger, and the final straw that triggered his bloody spree.
He had a successful career, a selfless wife, and three loving children.
When high school sweethearts Karen and Richard Sharpe married, they shared an interest in medicine, a desire for family, and a dream for the future. For Karen, that dream became a nightmare. After years of abuse at the hands of her physician husband, she put an end to their twenty-six-year marriage. Fearing a crushing divorce settlement, Richard ended the marriage first by unloading a .22-caliber rifle into Karen's chest. The murder revealed more about the millionaire doctor-and his double life-than polite Boston society was prepared for.
He also had a secret that shot his picture-perfect world to hell.
Behind the doors of their upscale Massachusetts home, Dr. Sharpe was a compulsive cross-dresser with a penchant for his own daughter's underwear-a respected family man who had not only been taking hormones to grow breasts, but who stole his wife's birth control pills to supplement them. But not even his own family could have imagined that it would take cold-blooded murder to finally reveal the good doctor's disturbing secrets, and shatter forever the prosaic facade of an all-American family.
In the early morning hours of August 13th, 2018, Shanann Watts was dropped off at her Frederick, Colorado home by a colleague after returning from a business trip. It was the last time anyone would see her alive. By the next day, Shanann and her two young daughters, Bella and Celeste, had been reported missing, and her husband, Chris Watts, was appearing on the local news, pleading for his family's safe return.
But Chris Watts already knew that he would never see his family again. Less than twenty-four hours after his desperate plea, Watts made a shocking confession to police: he had strangled his pregnant wife to death and smothered their daughters, dumping their bodies at a nearby oil site. Heartbroken friends and neighbors watched in shock as the movie-star handsome, devoted family man they knew was arrested and charged with first degree murder. The perfect mask Chris had presented to the world in his TV interviews and the family's Facebook accounts was slipping-and what lay beneath was a horrifying image of instability, infidelity, sexual ambivalence, and boiling rage.
In this first major account of the case, bestselling author and journalist John Glatt reveals the truth behind the tragedy and constructs a chilling portrait of one of the most shocking family annihilator cases of the 21st century.
One by one, three waterlogged suitcases were pulled from the Chesapeake Bay. In each were body parts of a man. In a forensics room, the truth was discovered: William McGuire had been horribly murdered and dismembered.
William and his loving wife, a registered nurse named Melanie, had just closed on their New Jersey dream home. Little did William know about the nightmare that was in store . . . For Melanie had been involved in a long-term affair with a married doctor at the fertility clinic where she worked-and she had plans for the future that didn't include William.
Investigators believe that on April 29, 2004, Melanie first drugged her husband, then murdered him in cold blood. Three years after America witnessed the details of the suitcase incident unfold-on 48 Hours, Dateline NBC, and ABC Primetime, and in People magazine, among other news outlets-Melanie was convicted of first-degree murder and desecrating human remains. To Have and to Kill is the true story of a marriage that turned deadly . . .
In the fall of 1999, a twenty-two-year-old woman was discovered naked and bleeding on the streets of a small New Mexico town south of Albuquerque. She was chained to a padlocked metal collar. The tale she told authorities-of being beaten, raped, and tortured with electric shock-was unthinkable. Until she led them to fifty-nine-year-old David Ray Parker, his thirty-nine-year-old fiancee Cindy Hendy, and the lakeside trailer they called their 'toy box.' What the FBI uncovered was unprecedented in the annals of serial crime: restraining devices, elaborate implements of torture, books on human anatomy, medical equipment, scalpels, and a gynecologist's examination table. But these horrors were only part of the shocking story that would unfold in a stunning trial . . .
