 | |
| Author | Cathy Scott |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | True crime, Reference |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |
Publication date | August 2009 |
| Publication place | United States, United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 336 pp |
| ISBN | 978-1858283852 |
The Rough Guide to True Crime is a non-fiction paperback reference guide to national and international true crime cases by the American crime writer Cathy Scott. It was released in the UK and US in August 2009 by Penguin Books through its Rough Guides imprint.
The Rough Guide to True Crime is a compendium of diverse cases, including historic crimes, with sections broken down by the type of offenses and by who committed them. It is illustrated with black-and-white photos. Forensic expert Dr Louis B. Schlesinger contributes psychological profiles of a wide range of perpetrators, including serial killers, murderers, hit men and burglars. [1] Among the book's more notorious cases are those of the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, the mob hitman Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski, John Wayne Glover ("The Granny Killer") and the British "Doctor of Death", Harold Shipman.
The book's section about the mob enforcer Herbert Blitzstein was selected for inclusion in the July 2012 retrospective of crime writing, Masters of True Crime: Chilling Stories of Murder and the Macabre . [2]
Appearing on BlogTalkRadio's True Murder show, the author described cases from the 19th century covered in her book as episodes from "a different time in America, where people like Billy the Kid could walk in and just rob a bank" and get away with it. While "there was nothing glamorous about what they did," Scott said, "they are a part of lore." [3]
The book was featured at BookExpo America 2009's trade fair in DK Publishing's booth in New York City. [4]
In a review, True Crime Book Reviews wrote, "From the Moors murders and Harold Shipman, to the murder of 2pac, this guide illuminates the psychology in play behind the most intriguing crimes in history, from the absurd to the appalling. The Rough Guide to True Crime explores the best of the haunting genre of True Crime." [5]
A serial killer is a person who murders three or more people, with the killings taking place over a significant period of time in separate events. Their psychological gratification is the motivation for the killings, and many serial murders involve sexual contact with the victims at different points during the murder process. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill-seeking, financial gain, and attention seeking, and killings may be executed as such. The victims tend to have things in common, such as demographic profile, appearance, gender, or race. As a group, serial killers suffer from a variety of personality disorders. Most are often not adjudicated as insane under the law. Although a serial killer is a distinct classification that differs from that of a mass murderer, spree killer, or contract killer, there are overlaps between them.
Harold Frederick Shipman, known to acquaintances as Fred Shipman, was an English doctor in general practice and serial killer. He is considered to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history, with an estimated 284 victims over a period of roughly 30 years. On 31 January 2000, Shipman was convicted of murdering fifteen patients under his care. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order. On 13 January 2004, one day before his 58th birthday, Shipman hanged himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
Harold Schechter is an American true crime writer who specializes in serial killers. He is a Professor Emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism for forty-two years. Schechter's essays have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He is the editor of the Library of America volume, True Crime: An American Anthology. His newest book, published in September 2023, is Murderabilia: A History of Crime in 100 Objects.
Rick Geary is an American cartoonist and illustrator. He is known for works such as A Treasury of Victorian Murder and graphic novel biographies of Leon Trotsky and J. Edgar Hoover.
Susan Jane Berman was an American journalist and author. The daughter of mobster David Berman, she wrote about her late-in-life realization of her father's role in organized crime.
Gwendolyn Gail Graham and Catherine May Wood are American serial killers convicted of killing five elderly women in Walker, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids, in 1987. They committed their crimes in the Alpine Manor nursing home, where they both worked as nurse's aides.
Cathleen Scott is a Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestselling American true crime author and investigative journalist who penned the biographies and true crime books The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls, both bestsellers in the United States and United Kingdom, and was the first to report Shakur's death. She grew up in La Mesa, California, and later moved to Mission Beach, California, where she was a single parent to a son, Raymond Somers Jr. Her hip-hop books are based on the drive-by shootings that killed the rappers six months apart in the midst of what has been called the West Coast-East Coast war. Each book is dedicated to the rappers' mothers.
Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein was an American mobster who was a loanshark, bookmaker, racketeer and lieutenant to Tony "The Ant" Spilotro and the Chicago Outfit in Las Vegas, Nevada.
An angel of mercy or angel of death is a type of criminal offender who is usually employed as a medical practitioner or a caregiver and intentionally harms or kills people under their care. The angel of mercy is often in a position of power and may decide the victim would be better off if they no longer suffered from whatever severe illness is plaguing them. This person then uses their knowledge to kill the victim. In some cases, as time goes on, this behavior escalates to encompass the healthy and the easily treated.
Lee Mellor is an Anglo-Canadian author, scholar, criminologist and songwriter.
Stewart Wilken, known as the Boetie Boer, is a convicted serial killer from South Africa, who was active in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth.
Pat Brown is an American writer, criminal profiler and commentator.
The Murder of Biggie Smalls is a non-fiction true crime book by author and journalist Cathy Scott. Published in October 2000 by St. Martin's Press, it covers the March 9, 1997 murder of the Notorious B.I.G. in a drive-by shooting. A second updated edition of the book was released in September 2021.
Jillian Lauren is an American writer, performer, adoption advocate, and former call girl for Jefri Bolkiah, Prince of Brunei; about whom she wrote her first memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem.
The Millionaire's Wife: The True Story of a Real Estate Tycoon, his Beautiful Young Mistress, and a Marriage that Ended in Murder, by the author and journalist Cathy Scott, is a true crime account of the 1990 contract murder of George Kogan on an Upper East Side Manhattan street in broad daylight. The book was published for mass-market release by St. Martin's Press True Crime Library in March 2012.
Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death of Susan Berman is a nonfiction book by author and journalist Cathy Scott about the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. Murder of a Mafia Daughter was first released in hardcover in 2002 by Barricade Books. A 2nd edition in trade-size paperback was released in June 2015 following the March 2015 arrest of suspect Robert Durst in Berman's murder. After the trial and conviction of the Durst for Berman's murder, and then Durst's death, a 20th Anniversary updated edition of the book was released.
True Crime Zine was an online magazine that reviews and critiques true-crime and fact-based books. It was also an online crime news aggregator. It was active between 2009 and 2013.
Born to Kill? is a British true crime television series, made by Twofour Productions. Each episode is an in-depth look at the childhood, and formative years of serial killers in an attempt to find out whether the individuals were born killers, or created by the environments they found themselves in.
The Crime Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) is a non-fiction volume co-authored by American crime writers Cathy Scott, Shanna Hogan, Rebecca Morris, Canadian author and historian Lee Mellor, and United Kingdom author Michael Kerrigan, with a foreword for the U.S. edition by Scott and the U.K. edition by crime-fiction author Peter James. It was released by DK Books under its Big Ideas Learning imprint in May 2017.
The Pembrokeshire Murders is a Welsh three-part television drama miniseries based on the Pembrokeshire murders by Welsh serial killer John Cooper. In 2006, newly promoted Detective Superintendent Steve Wilkins decided to reopen two unsolved 1980s murder cases linked with a string of burglaries. New advances in technology for forensic DNA analysis, witness reports and artists impressions of the suspect led to Dyfed-Powys Police reviewing a 1989 episode of Bullseye, which led to the serial killer finally being caught. It premiered on ITV on 11 January 2021.