True Crime Audiobooks | Non-Fiction

The Injustice System: A Murder in Miami and a Trial Gone Wrong

The maverick public defender who inspired John Grisham tells the story of his most frustrating case. A man accused of a murder he didn't commit languishes on death row. A crusading lawyer is determined to free him. This powerful book reads like a compelling legal thriller with one crucial difference: Justice is not served in the end. In 1986, Kris Maharaj was arrested in Miami for the murder of his ex-business partner. A witness swore he saw him pull the trigger and a jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. But he swears he didn't do it. Twenty years later, he's bankrupted himself on appeals and been abandoned by everyone but his wife. Enter Clive Stafford Smith, a charismatic public defender with a passion for lost causes who calls up old files and embarks on his own investigation. It takes him from Miami to Nassau to Washington as he uncovers corruption at every turn. Step by step, Clive slowly dismantles the case, guiding us through the whole scaffolding of the legal process and revealing a fundamentally broken system whose goal is not so much to find the right man as to convict. A bombshell whose final chapter should re-open a long closed case, The Injustice System will appeal to fans of true crime and anyone who has served on a jury.

Clive Stafford Smith (Author), Jonathan Cowley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Black Mass

In this gritty New York Times best-seller, the true story of a crooked deal between the FBI and the Irish Mob is exposed. By providing a penetrating look into the mean streets of mid-1970s South Boston, the author shows how two kids from the neighborhood cross paths again years later, ending in the biggest informant scandal in FBI history.

Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill (Author), Christopher Evan Welch, John Rubinstein (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald

Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and former private detective Errol Morris examines the nature of evidence and proof in the infamous Jeffrey MacDonald murder case. Early on the morning of February 17, 1970, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a Green Beret doctor named Jeffrey MacDonald called the police for help. When the officers arrived at his home they found the bloody and battered bodies of MacDonald's pregnant wife and two young daughters. The word "pig" was written in blood on the headboard in the master bedroom. As MacDonald was being loaded into the ambulance, he accused a band of drug-crazed hippies of the crime. So began one of the most notorious and mysterious murder cases of the twentieth century. Jeffrey MacDonald was finally convicted in 1979 and remains in prison today. Since then a number of bestselling books-including Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision and Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer, along with a blockbuster television miniseries-have attempted to solve the MacDonald case and explain what it all means. In A Wilderness of Error, Errol Morris, who has been investigating the case for nearly two decades, reveals that almost everything we know about that case is ultimately flawed, and an innocent man may be behind bars. In a masterful reinvention of the true-crime thriller, Morris looks behind the haze of myth that still surrounds these murders. Drawing on court transcripts, lab reports, and original interviews, Morris brings a complete forty-year history back to life and demonstrates how our often desperate attempts to understand and explain an ambiguous reality can overwhelm the facts. A Wilderness of Error allows the listener to explore the case as a detective might, by confronting the evidence as if for the first time. Along the way Morris poses bracing questions about the nature of proof, criminal justice, and the media, and argues that MacDonald has been condemned not only to prison, but also to the stories that have been created around him. In this profoundly original meditation on truth and justice, Errol Morris reopens a famous closed case and reveals that, forty years after the murder of MacDonald's family, we still have no proof of his guilt.

Errol Morris (Author), John Pruden (Narrator)

Audiobook

Midnight in Peking: The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Paul French's Midnight in Peking, a gripping, true murder mystery story read by the actor Crawford Logan. Who killed Pamela Werner? On a frozen night in January 1937, in the dying days of colonial Peking, a body was found under the haunted watchtower. It was Pamela Werner, the teenage daughter of the city's former British consul Edward Werner. Her heart had been removed. A horrified world followed the hunt for Pamela's killer, with a Chinese-British detective team pursuing suspects including a blood-soaked rickshaw puller, the Triads, and a lascivious grammar school headmaster. But the case was soon forgotten amid the carnage of the Japanese invasion... by all but Edward Werner. With a network of private investigators and informers, he followed the trail deep into Peking's notorious Badlands and back to the gilded hotels of the colonial Quarter. Some 75 years later, deep in the Scotland Yard archives, British historian Paul French accidentally came across the lost case file prepared by Edward Werner. Unveiling an undercover sex cult, heroin addicts and disappearing brothels, the truth behind the crime can now be told - and is more disturbing than anyone could imagine. Not just the unputdownable story of a savage murder, Midnight in Peking is a sweepingly evocative account of the end of an era.

Paul French (Author), Crawford Logan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mickey Cohen: The Life and Crimes of L.A.'s Notorious Mobster

Tere Tereba (Author), Kate Reading (Narrator)

Audiobook

Gangster Squad: Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles

A harrowing, edge-of-your-seat narrative of murder and secrets, revenge and heroism in the City of Angels the real events behind the blockbuster Warner Brothers film starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. GANGSTER SQUAD chronicles the true story of the secretive police unit that waged an anything-goes war to drive Mickey Cohen and other hoodlums from Los Angeles after WWII. In 1946, the LAPD launched the Gangster Squad with eight men who met covertly on street corners and slept with Tommy guns under their beds. But for two cops, all that mattered was nailing the strutting gangster Mickey Cohen. Sgt. Jack O'Mara was a square-jawed church usher, Sgt. Jerry Wooters a cynical maverick. About all they had in common was their obsession. So O'Mara set a trap to prove Mickey was a killer. And Wooters formed an alliance with Mickey's budding rival, Jack The Enforcer” Whalen. Two cops -- two hoodlums. Their fates collided in the closing days of the 1950s, when late one night The Enforcer” confronted Mickey and his crew. The aftermath would shake both LA's mob and police department, and signal the end of a defining era in the city's history. In 2008, award-winning journalist Paul Lieberman's seven-part Los Angeles Times series Tales from the Gangster Squad” was optioned by Warner Bros. He spent over a decade tracking down surviving members of the real police unit as well as families and associates of the mobsters they pursued. GANGSTER SQUAD is a tour-de-force narrative reminiscient of LA Confidential.

Paul Lieberman (Author), Robert Petkoff (Narrator)

Audiobook

People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo-and

Lucie Blackman-tall, blond, twenty-one years old-stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo in the summer of 2000 and disappeared. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. The seven months in between had seen a massive search for the missing girl involving Japanese policemen, British private detectives, and Lucie's desperate but bitterly divided parents. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult or snatched by human traffickers? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? And what did her work as a hostess in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo really involve? Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, followed the case from the beginning. Over the course of a decade, as the rest of the world forgot but the trial dragged on, he traveled to four continents to interview those connected with the story, assiduously followed the court proceedings, and won unique access to the Japanese detectives who investigated the case. Ultimately he earned the respect of the victim's family and delved deep into the mind and background of the man accused of the crime-Joji Obara, described by the judge as "unprecedented and extremely evil." The result is a book at once thrilling and revelatory. "A masterpiece of writing this surely is, but it is more than that-it is a committed, compassionate, courageous act of journalism that changes the way we think. Everyone who has ever loved someone and held that life dear should read this stunning book, and shiver."-Chris Cleave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Little Bee

Richard Lloyd Parry (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer

At home, Richard Kuklinski was a dedicated suburban family man; on the street, he was the Iceman, a professional hit man and lethal scam artist, a man so heartless he kept one of his victims frozen for over two years to disguise the time of death. His personal body count was over one hundred, but the police couldn't touch him. Then undercover agent Dominick Polifrone posed as a mobster and began a deadly game of cat and mouse. The Iceman chronicles Kuklinski's grisly career and exposes his murderous double life.

Anthony Bruno (Author), Bronson Pinchot (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer

Anthony Bruno (Author), Bronson Pinchot (Narrator)

Audiobook

Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival

Not Lost Forever is Carmina Salcido's remarkable story of survival and healing following the 1986 murderous rampage by her father, Mexican immigrant Ramon Salcido in the wine country of Sonoma Valley, California. Left for dead at three years old-her throat brutally slashed-Carmina miraculously survived what is widely considered one of California's most notorious crimes: the unthinkable attack that savagely destroyed seven innocent lives, including Carmina's entire family. At once a harrowing true crime story and the inspirational first-person account of a young girl's strength, heart, and determination in the nightmare's aftermath, Not Lost Forever is a shocking and profoundly moving tale of perseverance and hope, and of a precious life regained.

Carmina Salcido, Steve Jackson (Author), Xe Sands (Narrator)

Audiobook

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

In the last days of old Peking, where anything goes, can a murderer escape justice? Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and the discovery of Pamela Werner's body sends a shiver through already nervous Peking. Is it the work of a madman? One of the ruthless Japanese soldiers now surrounding the city? Or perhaps the dreaded fox spirits? With the suspect list growing and clues sparse, two detectives-one British and one Chinese-race against the clock to solve the crime before the Japanese invade and Peking as they know it is gone forever. Can they find the killer in time, before the Japanese invade? Historian and China expert Paul French at last uncovers the truth behind this notorious murder, and offers a rare glimpse of the last days of colonial Peking.

Paul French (Author), Erik Singer (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Stranger Beside Me

THE DEFINITIVE WORK OF AMERICAN TRUE CRIME FROM "AMERICA'S BEST TRUE-CRIME WRITER" (Kirkus Reviews) Utterly unique in its astonishing intimacy, as jarringly frightening as when it first appeared, Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me defies our expectation that we would surely know if a monster lived among us, worked alongside of us, appeared as one of us. With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually executed for three of those cases. Drawing from their correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.

Ann Rule (Author), Lorelei King (Narrator)

Audiobook

True Crime Audiobooks in Non-Fiction