Laci Denise Peterson was an American woman murdered by her husband, Scott Lee Peterson, while eight months pregnant with their first child. She disappeared in 2002, from the couple's home in Modesto, California, after which Scott reported her missing. The next year, her remains and those of her unborn son, whom the couple had planned to name Conner, were discovered on the shores of San Francisco Bay; subsequently, Scott was arrested and charged with two counts of murder. In 2004, Scott was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Laci and the second-degree murder of Conner.
Andrea Pia Yates is an American woman from Houston, Texas, who confessed to drowning her five children in their bathtub on June 20, 2001. The case of Yates—who had exhibited severe postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia leading up to the murders—placed the M'Naghten rules, along with the irresistible impulse test for sanity, under close public scrutiny in the United States.
Ervil Morrell LeBaron was the leader of a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist group who ordered the killings of many of his opponents, both within his own sect and in rival polygamous groups, using the religious doctrine of blood atonement to justify the murders. He was sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating the murder of an opponent, and died there in 1981.
Dick DeGuerin is an American criminal defense attorney based in Houston, most notable for defending Tom DeLay, Allen Stanford, David Koresh and Robert Durst. In 1994, DeGuerin was named Outstanding Criminal Defense Lawyer of the Year by the State Bar of Texas Criminal Justice Section.
Murder is an offence under the common law legal system of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to unlawfully cause either death or serious injury. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker, chapter 14 states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.
Kathryn Casey is an American writer of mystery novels and non-fiction books. She is best known for writing She Wanted It All, which recounts the case of Celeste Beard, who married an Austin multimillionaire only to convince her lesbian lover, Tracey Tarlton, to kill him.
Krystian Bala is a Polish murderer, self-published writer, and photographer.
David Lynn Harris was an American orthodontist who owned a chain of offices along with his wife, Clara Suarez Harris. The chain was particularly successful, and the couple was able to afford an upscale home and lifestyle in Friendswood, Texas. On July 24, 2002, Clara Harris confronted her husband in a hotel parking lot over an extramarital affair, then struck and ran over him with her Mercedes-Benz sedan, killing him in an act of mariticide. She was convicted of sudden passion and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Fetal abduction refers to the rare crime of child abduction by kidnapping of an at term pregnant woman and extraction of her fetus through a crude cesarean section. Dr. Michael H. Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato have alternatively referred to this crime as "fetus-snatching" or "fetus abduction." Homicide expert Vernon J. Geberth has used the term "fetal kidnapping." In the small number of reported cases, a few pregnant victims and about half of their fetuses survived the assault and non-medically performed cesarean.
The Sarah Armstrong Mystery series is a fictional series created by true crime author-turned-novelist Kathryn Casey, first published by St. Martin's Minotaur in 2008. Booklist magazine named the first novel, Singularity, one of the top ten Best Crime Novel Debuts of 2009.
Susan Lucille Wright is an American convicted murderer from Houston, Texas, who made headlines in 2003 for stabbing her husband, Jeff Wright, 193 times in an act of mariticide and then burying his body in their backyard. She was convicted of murder in 2004, and was given a 20-year sentence at the Crain Unit in Gatesville, Texas. She was denied parole on June 12, 2014, and July 24, 2017. She was granted parole in July 2020 and released from prison on December 30, 2020.
Deadly Little Secrets: The Minister, His Mistress, and a Heartless Texas Murder is a 2012 true crime book written by the non-fiction author and novelist Kathryn Casey and released by HarperCollins about the 2006 murder by Baptist minister Matt Baker of his 31-year-old wife, Kari Baker, and the staging of her death as a suicide.
In 2013, two prosecutors and a prosecutor's wife were murdered in Kaufman County, Texas. The case gained national attention in the United States due to speculation that the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang was responsible, but this was later found to be untrue. Eric Lyle Williams, a former lawyer and justice of the peace whose theft case was prosecuted by two of the victims, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death for two of the murders. He was also charged with the murder of prosecutor Mark Hasse, but a decision was made not to prosecute him as he had already received a death sentence for the other murders. His wife, Kimberly Irene "Kim" Williams, was tried separately, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Practice to Deceive is a 2013 true crime nonfiction book by the American author Ann Rule that details the murder of Russel Douglas, found shot between the eyes in his car on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, Washington, the day after Christmas 2003. The book was released in October 2013 by Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books imprint.
Suzanne Margaret "Sue" Basso was an American woman who was one of six co-defendants convicted in the August 1998 torture and murder of 59 year-old Louis "Buddy" Musso, a mentally disabled man who was killed for his life insurance money. She was sentenced to death in October 1999. Basso was executed by lethal injection on February 5, 2014. Prior to her execution, Basso had been held at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas, where all of the state's female death row inmates are incarcerated. At the time of the crime, Basso lived in Jacinto City, Texas, a Houston suburb.
On August 20, 2016, a mass killing occurred in Citronelle, Alabama, resulting in the deaths of five people, including a woman who was five months pregnant. They were killed in the early morning in a private residence in a rural area west of the city. It was owned by a brother of Laneta Lester, who had sought refuge there. She and her brother's infant were abducted and taken to Leakesville, Mississippi, by her estranged boyfriend, Derrick Dearman. He released her that day. Lester returned with the infant to Citronelle. She notified police of the killings. Investigators described this mass killing as the worst in Mobile County's history. The house burned down a couple of weeks after the crime.
John Wesley Raley III is an American attorney based in the state of Texas. He is best known for his work in the legal defense of Michael Morton and Hannah Overton.
Ali Mahmood Awad Irsan is a Jordanian-American convicted murderer held on Texas death row. He was sentenced for the murders of Iranian-American activist Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a friend of one of his daughters; and his son-in-law, Coty Beavers, in Greater Houston.
In Plain Sight: The Kaufman County Prosecutor Murders is a true crime account by American journalist and author Kathryn Casey of the 2013 murders of two prosecutors and a wife by a disgruntled justice of the peace. William Morrow released the book in March 2018.
William Lewis Reece is an American serial killer, rapist and kidnapper. In 2015, he was linked via DNA to the 1997 cold case murder of a woman in Oklahoma, for which he was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death. Not long after, he confessed to three murders associated with the Texas Killing Fields, for which he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022.
