True Crime Library Magazines Online

READ THESE STORIES IN OUR LATEST ISSUES
Massacre In The Street Harry Roberts was not a man to mess with. As his record indicated, he showed no mercy to anyone who got in his way. “You are a brutal, vicious thug,” a judge told him in 1959. An elderly man had died a year and three days after being coshed by Roberts and an accomplice during a burglary. But a murder charge couldn’t then be sustained if the victim survived for more than a year and a day, so Roberts escaped the death penalty by two days. “You came very near to the rope this time,” the judge told him. “It is to be hoped you do not appear before us again.” That hope was to be spectacularly disappointed. Read our report on the senseless shooting of three plainclothes policemen which caused a national uproar in 1966 – in True Crime June more »	Drama In The Death House The amount of electricity applied to the condemned man in the chair would illuminate 800 house-lights. A third of this was dissipated in the brain, where the temperature approached the boiling point of water. The prisoner undergoing electrocution in Sing Sing’s chair was given two shocks of 2,000 volts, followed by a shock of 500 volts sustained for 57 seconds. Electrocution then concluded with another shock of 2,000 volts before the current was switched off. The voltage was lowered after the initial shocks to avoid burning the body and at the same time to hold paralysis of the heart, respiratory organs and brain at a standstill for the rest of the execution. The whole operation took two minutes and at Sing Sing Prison they were proposing the use the chair to execute seven condemned men in one day…You can read the full case in Master Detective June more »
Waxey Gordon – Profile Of A Gangster It was called “the Noble Experiment.” Now we remember it as America’s Prohibition. It’s long dead. And so are the speakeasies, the poison booze, the hip flasks, and the murderous characters with the “rods” and Tommy-guns – the feudal princes of an underworld empire of crime who reigned with seeming immunity from the law. They are dead, but not forgotten, for they made the Roaring Twenties the chilling, blood-curdling, violence-ridden years they were. Al Capone, Lepke Buchalter, Dutch Schultz, “Legs” Diamond, Frankie Yale, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, Owney Madden and Waxey Gordon. And of all those names, few, if any, could surpass Waxey Gordon, labelled for posterity by his own kind as “the smartest guy in the racket,” and now a character in the hit television series Boardwalk Empire. If Waxey Gordon ever made an honest living, no one noticed it. He started out on the wrong side of the law and stayed there for the rest of his life. There has never been a complete account of the origin and development of Waxey Gordon, and there isn’t likely to be, for he was so murderously methodical that he never left anyone around to contribute to his unauthorised biography. But there are many signposts to indicate that Gordon, while not so well-known, was actually as important, as wealthy and as powerful as any of his dreaded criminal contemporaries…Read all about Waxey in True Detective June more »	A Short, Miserable Life And A Violent, Tragic Death Poor Zahra Baker – in the 10 short, brutal years that made up her life, she developed bone cancer, lost a leg, was given away by her mother, went totally deaf. And then, on October 9th, 2010, her stepmother, Elisa Baker went to the local police in Hickory, North Carolina, and reported her stepdaughter missing. Calm and detached, she told Police Lieutenant Bobby Grace: “Zahra has been kidnapped. They have left a ransom note asking for $1 million attached to my car.” What really happened between September 24th and October 9th that year? Elisa Baker wasn’t saying. Somehow – exactly how will never be known – she killed the little girl and then dismembered her, cutting off her head, her limbs, even her hands. Zahra’s bedroom must have been covered in blood, but not content with wiping it up she went out and bought black paint for the floor and pink paint for the walls, and proceeded to re-paint the bedroom. Then she threw away the body parts like so much trash, in the knowledge that wild animals would eat them, and dumped the paintbrushes on a bonfire. Why? What could have been the reason for her cold-blooded torture- murder of a little crippled girl who adored her? Read about the murder that the judge who presided at Elisa's trial said “turns my stomach like no other” in Murder Most Foul 84… more »
LATEST ISSUES – AVAILABLE NOW
Master Detective June 2012 In UK shops May 17th, 2012	True Crime June 2012 True Detective June 2012 Murder Most Foul 84

True Crime Library for the best online crime information and resources. Buy non-fiction true crime magazines – we have a wide variety of publications to choose from