BTK KILLER'S DAUGHTER RELEASES HER NEW BOOK JAN 29

The BTK Killer with his daughter

Poor Kerri Rawson has spent a horrible 14 years trying to move on after that shocking morning in February 2005 when an FBI agent showed up at her front door with devastating news. Her father Dennis Rader, was the Bind Torture Kill (BTK), a serial killer.  Her life would never be the same.

Now, Rawson, 40, has written a book — A Serial Killer’s Daughter — that chronicles how her horror and anger were complicated by the love she’d felt for her father, as well as the terrible toll his double-life has taken on her family. (Rawson’s book comes out Jan. 29.)

In 2005, Kerri Rawson heard a knock on the door of her apartment. When she opened it, an FBI agent informed her that her father had been arrested for murdering ten people, including two children.

It was then that she learned her father was the notorious serial killer known as BTK, a name he’d given himself that described the horrific way he committed his crimes: bind, torture, kill. As news of his capture spread, Wichita celebrated the end of a thirty-one-year nightmare.

For Kerri Rawson, another was just beginning. She was plunged into a black hole of horror and disbelief. The same man who had been a loving father, a devoted husband, church president, Boy Scout leader and a public servant had been using their family as a cover for his heinous crimes since before she was born. Everything she had believed about her life had been a lie.

Written with candor and extraordinary courage, A Serial Killer’s Daughter is an unflinching exploration of life with one of America’s most infamous killers and an astonishing tale of personal and spiritual transformation.

For all who suffer from unhealed wounds or the crippling effects of violence, betrayal, and anger, Kerri Rawson’s story offers the hope of reclaiming sanity in the midst of the madness, rebuilding a life in the shadow of death, and learning to forgive the unforgivable.

“No easy answers here. No platitudes. Only raw honesty, written with the gracious authority of one who has glimpsed hell. Kerri Rawson shares her earned wisdom and hope that has been bought with tears and nightmares. This book is a gritty must-read in the library of hope.”

—Paul J. Pastor, author of The Face of the Deep and The Listening Day

BTK Killer Responds To Daughter’s Book

SAMUEL LITTLE MAY BE MOST PROLIFIC SERIAL KILLER IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Kristv 6 Samuel Little 78 is serving a life sentence for three murders in California. He was extradited to Texas earlier this year to face charges of killing Denise Brothers in Odessa in 1994. Texas is a death penalty state.

Little, 78, has provided investigators details on a “multitude” of murders he may have committed from 1970 to 2005 in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois, Ohio, California, Indiana, Arizona, New Mexico, and South Carolina, according to the Wise County Sheriff’s Office. Little is currently incarcerated at the office’s jail. (not Michigan!)

One prosecutor says victims’ families may finally get some justice.

“I always feel like justice can be delayed but it doesn’t necessarily mean it can be denied,” Bobby Bland, Ector County District Attorney, said. “And in this case, there are people all over this country that haven’t had answers, haven’t had justice, but now they will. So even though it was delayed, it will not be denied.”

If convicted in all cases, the 78-year-old would be one of the most prolific serial killers in US history.

Little has a court appearance on Nov. 26. Read More

CAROL DARONCH ESCAPES TED BUNDY 11-8-1974

November 8, 1974, Salt Lake City, Utah, resident Carol DaRonch narrowly escapes being abducted by serial killer Ted Bundy. DaRonch had been shopping at a mall when a man claiming to be a police detective told her that there was an attempted theft of her car and she needed to file a police report.

Despite her misgivings, DaRonch accompanied the man to his Volkswagen and got into the car. Once inside, he placed a handcuff on her and attempted to hit her with a crowbar, but DaRonch fought back and jumped out of the car to safety.

DaRonch’s attempted abduction was of special interest to the Utah authorities at the time, who were trying to figure out what had happened to several young women who disappeared earlier in the fall of 1974.

After DaRonch escaped, Bundy quickly found another victim and continued his Utah killing spree until his arrest (in his VW, with handcuffs at the ready) in August 1975.

DaRonch picked him out of a lineup, and her testimony helped convict him for aggravated kidnapping, which kept Bundy in jail while police in multiple states worked on building murder cases against him.

On December 30, 1977, Bundy lost a lot of weight and shimmed through a ceiling vent to escape from jail. A few months later, he was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List, and on February 15, 1978, he was finally captured. He eventually confessed to the murders of 28 women and was executed by electric chair in Florida on January 24, 1989.

NY TIMES STORY ON DNA SOLVING COLD CASES LINKS TO RETRO KIMMER!

Roy Charles Waller, right, has not yet entered a plea. He became a suspect in 10 rapes after investigators located a close relative in the GEDmatch database. CreditRenee C. Byer/The Sacramento Bee, via Associated Press

How an Unlikely Family History Website Transformed Cold Case Investigations

By Heather Murphy
Oct. 15, 2018

LAKE WORTH, FLA. — On Halloween night in 1996, a man in a skeleton mask knocked on the door of a house in Martinez, Calif., handcuffed the woman who greeted him and raped her. Two weeks later, he called the dental office where she worked. Investigators tried to track him down through phone records but got nowhere. They obtained traces of his semen, but there was no match for his DNA in any criminal database.

Last month — two decades after the crime — the Sacramento district attorney’s office tried something new to finally crack the case of this serial rapist, who had attacked at least 10 women in their homes. Investigators converted the assailant’s DNA to the kind of profile that family history websites such as 23andMe are built on, and uploaded it to GEDmatch.com, a free site open to all and beloved by genealogical researchers seeking to find biological relatives or to construct elaborate family trees.

Within five minutes of reviewing the results, the investigators had located a close relative among the million or so profiles in the database. Within two hours, they had a suspect, who was soon arrested: Roy Charles Waller, a safety specialist at the University of California, Berkeley.

The arrest marked the 15th time that GEDmatch had provided essential clues leading to a suspect in a murder or sexual assault case, starting with the arrest in April of Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer, for the rapes and murders committed across California in the 1970s and 1980s by the notorious Golden State Killer. READ FULL STORY HERE

My section:

one woman’s request to make sure that her profile would be easy for criminal investigators to find. She suspected that her father, who had been in and out of mental institutions after killing her grandfather, had taken other lives.

NEW HISTORY CHANNEL SERIES! THE HUNT FOR THE ZODIAC KILLER

The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer Limited Series Premiered last night at 10/9c. You can see it on the History Channel online or On Demand.

Throughout the early 1960s and 1970s, the Zodiac Killer, one of history’s most famous unidentified serial murderers, terrorized America in a spree of heinous attacks, sending taunting letters and codes filled with bizarre and ancient symbols.

THE ZODIAC KILLER TIMELINE

This code has baffled some of the greatest minds in cryptology for over 50 years. HISTORY’s new nonfiction limited series, "The Hunt For The Zodiac Killer" opens up a new investigation into the mystery of this twisted serial assassin.

There are tons of people over the years who think they know who the Zodiac might have been. A lot of those stories are compelling...but still not enough proof.

DARK ANGEL PREMIERES ON PBS MASTERPIECE THIS SUNDAY!

Joanne is best known as our favorite the kind lady's maid on Downton Abbey. she takes on a much darker role this time out.

Dark Angel stars Joanne Froggatt as an infamous Victorian serial killer Sunday, 5/21 at 9pm

Dark Angel is a British two-part television drama miniseries. It is based on the adaptation of the book Mary Ann Cotton: Britain's First Female Serial Killer by David Wilson. The series premieres  on May 21, 2017 in the US and stars Joanne Froggatt as protagonist Mary Ann Cotton.

Cotton is widely regarded as Britain's first female serial killer, who was found guilty of murder in March 1873 for the murder of three of her husbands, allegedly in order to collect on their insurance policies.

The series also stars Alun Armstrong as Mary Ann's father, George Stott, and Jonas Armstrong as her main love interests, Joe Natrass. Penny Layden, Laura Morgan, Sam Hoare and Emma Fielding also took starring roles in the two-part drama.

Joanne Froggatt, who stole the hearts of millions of viewers as Anna on Downton Abbey, stars in a totally different role in this spine-tingling drama — the notorious Victorian poisoner Mary Ann Cotton, Britain’s first female serial killer. #DarkAngelPBS

EXCITING NEW BOOK TRILOGY ABOUT TED BUNDY BY KEVIN M SULLIVAN

True Crime fans everywhere are in for some serious reading!  I was scrolling through Facebook the other night and saw an ad for THE BUNDY SECRETS by Kevin M.Sullivan. Haven't read anything new about Ted in a very long time. Found the publisher online and emailed them that I wanted to review TBS. Then I found out that Kevin had 2 previous books about Ted as well!

Kevin was seriously into researching Ted's life and crimes.  I wanted to interview him to learn more about what motivates this author.  I get "into" topics and ideas and can become somewhat obsessive. Ask my friends and readers!

Kevin called me and we talked for hours! We have so much in common. He is from the South, I spent a lot of time working down there. He is well versed in the Vietnam War and my Dad was killed in action over there in 1971. And of course we talked about Ted and Michigan Coed Killer John Norman Collins. Fascinating phone call. My friend said Kevin and I each had pieces of the other one's puzzle! How true! Kevin is brilliant and very dedicated to his art.. By all means True Crime fans buy these books! I have the book icons and Kindle/ebook links below!

Author Kevin M. Sullivan

A writer of history and true crime, Kevin M. Sullivan is the author of twelve books, a former investigative journalist for both print and online media, and is a recognized authority on serial sex killer, Ted Bundy. Indeed, his "break out" book, The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History, published by McFarland in 2009, was the catalyst that brought him much attention in the true crime world, leading to appearances on numerous radio programs and contacts from documentarians both here in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Portions of his biography of Ted Bundy also appear in the college textbook, Abnormal Psychology: Clinical Perspectives on Psychological Disorders, published by McGraw-Hill in November 2012.

His second work on the killer, The Trail of Ted Bundy: Digging Up the Untold Stories, contains a lot of new and previously unpublished information about Ted Bundy and this most infamous case, as well as new interviews from those who knew Bundy and called him a friend.

And now, with the publication of The Bundy Secrets: Hidden Files of America's Worst Serial Killer, readers will get a rarely-seen look at the actual case files, many in their entirety.

Revealing, raw, and unedited, they allow you to peer into the world of the investigators as they hunted a diabolical killer of women and young girls. With the publication of this latest work , Sullivan's trilogy of the life and murders of Ted Bundy is now complete.

THE BUNDY MURDERS: A Comprehensive History

Theodore Bundy was one of the more infamous, and flamboyant, American serial killers on record, and his story is a complex mix of psychopathology, criminal investigation, and the U.S. legal system. This in-depth examination of Bundy's life and his killing spree that totaled dozens of victims is drawn from legal transcripts, correspondence and interviews with detectives and prosecutors. Using these sources, new information on several murders is unveiled. The biography follows Bundy from his broken family background to his execution in the electric chair.

The Trail of Ted Bundy: Digging Up The Untold Stories EBOOK

The Trail of Ted Bundy: Digging Up the Untold Stories, is a journey back in time, to a world when Ted Bundy was killing young women and girls in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. It’s told by those who knew him, and you’ll hear their revealing stories; many of them coming to light for the first time. The friends of the victims are here as well, and they share their insights about the victims, as well as their own personal loss, and some of what they reveal in this book was originally withheld from the investigators during those years, such was their commitment to their deceased friends.

THE BUNDY SECRETS: Hidden Files On America's Worst Serial Killer  EBOOK

Raw, unedited, and revealing – the actual case files of the Ted Bundy murders-presented for the first time in book-form, with commentary and never-before-published testimonies from those who knew the killer, were stalked by him, or were friends of his victims…

LAPD DETECTIVE IS CERTAIN HIS FATHER KILLED BLACK DAHLIA AND MORE

"The Black Dahlia" was a nickname given to Elizabeth Short, an American woman who was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder.

Elizabeth Short was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 29, 1924. Twenty-two years later, Short, an aspiring actress, was brutally murdered in Los Angeles, California, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. Her body was found on January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot near Leimert Park. The Black Dahlia's killer was never found, making her murder one of the oldest cold case files in L.A. to date, as well as the city's most famous.

By the mid-1940s, Elizabeth Short was living in Los Angeles, California, working as a waitress to support herself while dreaming of catching her big break into Hollywood's acting scene. Her chance at stardom, however, would never come. In January 1947, a horrific tragedy occurred: At the age of 22, Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. DOCUMENTARY ON 48 HRS HERE

Her body was found, nude and posed, by a local female resident on January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot near Leimert Park, on the 3800 block of L.A.'s South Norton Avenue. "It was pretty gruesome," Brian Carr, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who has long worked on the Dahlia case, later said. "I just can't imagine someone doing that to another human being." In addition to dissecting and mutilating her body, Short's killer had drained her corpse of blood and scrubbed it clean.

Skipped town: LA surgeon Dr George Hodel reportedly skipped town before he could be arrested in connection with the murder of Elizabeth Smart

Son of George Hodel, Steve Hodel a retired LAPD police detective suspects he's getting closer to solving a series of 1940s Hollywood murders, including that of the Black Dahlia — and the man he suspects to be the killer is his own father. Steve Hodel first began to suspect George Hodel while going through his belongings after his death at age 91 in 1999. That's when he says he found two photos resembling Elizabeth Short, who became known as the Black Dahlia—and DA records confirm Hodel was indeed under suspicion in the 1947 case. READ MORE HERE