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True crime is a nonfiction literary, podcast, and film genre in which the author examines a crime and details the actions of people associated with and affected by criminal events. It is a cultural phenomenon that can refer to the promotion of sensationalized and emotionally charged content around the subject of violent crime, for the general public.
Angel Maturino Reséndiz, also known as The Railroad Killer, was a Mexican serial killer suspected in as many as 23 murders across the United States and Mexico during the 1990s. Some also involved sexual assault. He had become known as "The Railroad Killer", as most of his crimes were committed near railroads, where he had jumped off the trains which he was using to travel around the country.
The Boston Strangler is the name given to the murderer of 13 women in Greater Boston during the early 1960s. The crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo based on his confession, on details revealed in court during a separate case, and DNA evidence linking him to the final victim.
Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, was an American woman found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 1947. Her case became highly publicized owing to the gruesome nature of the crime, which included the mutilation of her corpse, which was bisected at the waist.
Henry Lee Lucas, also known as The Confession Killer, was an American convicted murderer. Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. He rose to infamy as a claimed serial killer while incarcerated for these crimes when he falsely confessed to approximately six hundred other murders to Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and the murders officially attributed to Lucas. Lucas was convicted of murdering eleven people and condemned to death for a single case with a then-unidentified victim, later identified as Debra Jackson.
Paul John Knowles, also known as The Casanova Killer, was an American serial killer tied to the deaths of 18 people in 1974, though he claimed to have murdered at least 35.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a 1986 American independent psychological horror crime film directed and co-written by John McNaughton about the random crime spree of a serial killer who seemingly operates with impunity. It stars Michael Rooker in his debut as the nomadic killer Henry, Tom Towles as Otis, a prison buddy with whom Henry is living, and Tracy Arnold as Becky, Otis's sister. The characters of Henry and Otis are loosely based on convicted real life serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.
Ottis Elwood Toole was an American serial killer who was convicted of six counts of murder. Like his companion Henry Lee Lucas, Toole made confessions which resulted in murder convictions, and which he later recanted. The discrediting of the case against Lucas for crimes for which Toole had offered corroborating statements created doubts as to whether either was a genuine serial killer or, as Hugh Aynesworth suggested, both were merely compliant interviewees whom police used to clear unsolved murders from the books.
James Blackburn Adams was an American attorney, politician, and two-time associate director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Linda Fairstein is an American author, attorney, and former New York City prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children. She was the head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1976 until 2002.
Alafair S. Burke is an American crime novelist, professor of law, and legal commentator. She is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty crime novels, including The Ex, The Wife, and The Better Sister, and two series—one featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, and the other, Portland, Oregon, prosecutor Samantha Kincaid. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Phillip R. Ryan is a former Texas Ranger and the three-term Sheriff of Wise County, Texas. He entered law enforcement in 1966 at age 21, initially serving as a police officer in Pasadena in Harris County, Texas. He later joined the Texas Department of Public Safety as a highway patrolman assigned to Houston and Cleveland, Texas. In 1976, he was promoted to highway patrol sergeant, which took him to Humble, Texas. He applied for and was accepted to service in the Texas Ranger Division and served as a Ranger in Decatur, which also covered Jack, Montague, and Clay counties.
The Keepers is a seven-episode American documentary web series that explores the unsolved murder of nun Catherine Cesnik in 1969. Cesnik taught English and drama at Baltimore's all-girls Archbishop Keough High School, and her former students believe that there was a cover-up by authorities after she suspected that a priest at the high school, A. Joseph Maskell, was guilty of sexually abusing students. The series was directed by Ryan White and released on Netflix in 2017.
Debra Louise Jackson, informally known as "Orange Socks" when unidentified, was an American murder victim who went unidentified for nearly 40 years before being identified through a DNA match with her surviving sister in 2019. Her murder is believed to have taken place on October 30 or 31, 1979 in Georgetown, Texas. Her body was found naked except for the pair of orange socks from which the nickname was derived. She had been strangled and was believed to have died only hours before the discovery.
Vic Feazell is an American lawyer, who was a District Attorney in Waco, McLennan County from 1983 until his resignation in 1988. During his time in office he was involved in the investigation and prosecution of the 1982 Lake Waco murders and also several crimes to which Henry Lee Lucas had been linked. Feazell currently resides in Waco, Texas, and is an attorney with his own firm. He is known for his commercials sporting the "Drive Laid Back" slogan.
The Texas Killing Fields is a title used to roughly denote the area surrounding the Interstate Highway 45 corridor southeast of Houston, where since the early 1970s, more than 30 bodies have been found, and specifically to a 25-acre patch of land in League City, Texas where four women were found between 1983 and 1991. The bodies along the corridor were mainly of girls or young women. Furthermore, many additional young girls have disappeared from this area who are still missing. Most of the victims were aged between 12 and 25 years. Some shared similar physical features, such as similar hairstyles.
Mindhunter is an American psychological crime thriller television series created by Joe Penhall, based on the 1995 true-crime book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker. The series debuted in 2017 and ran for two seasons. Executive producers included Penhall, Charlize Theron, and David Fincher, the latter of whom served as the series' most frequent director and de facto showrunner, overseeing many of the scriptwriting and production processes. The series stars Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, and Anna Torv, and follows the founding of the Behavioral Science Unit in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the late 1970s and the beginning of criminal profiling.
Samuel Little was an American serial killer who confessed to murdering 93 people, nearly all women, between 1970 and 2005. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) has confirmed Little's involvement in at least 60 of the 93 confessed murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in United States history.
In the early hours of August 13, 2018, in Frederick, Colorado, American oil field operator Christopher Lee Watts murdered his pregnant wife Shanann (34) by strangulation, and their two children Bella (4) and Celeste (3) by smothering them. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave near an oil-storage facility, and dumped his children's bodies into crude oil tanks. Watts initially maintained his innocence in his family’s disappearance, but was arrested on August 15, after confessing in an interview with detectives to murdering Shanann. He later admitted to murdering his children.
James Holland is a retired Texas Ranger who is credited with eliciting 93 confessions from serial killer Samuel Little. The Los Angeles Times profiled Holland in 2019, calling him a "serial killer whisperer". Ranger Holland was also profiled on 60 Minutes in the 2019 episode "The Ranger and the Serial Killer".
References
- 1 2 "Stream It Or Skip It: 'The Confession Killer' On Netflix, A Docuseries About Henry Lee Lucas' False Murder Confessions". Decider. 6 December 2019. Retrieved 2020-05-10.
- ↑ "The Confession Killer could well be Netflix's smartest crime saga yet". The Guardian. 10 December 2019. Retrieved 2020-05-10.
