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True Crime Case Histories - Volume 28: 12 Disturbing Stories of Murder and Mayhem
12 Disturbing True Crime Stories of Murder and Mayhem
Volume 28 of the True Crime Case Histories Series
The most dangerous thing in these pages isn't a killer. It's a convincing answer.
A father who spent twenty-three years telling the Los Angeles Police Department exactly who had murdered his daughter, and was ignored because the department had already decided. A mother who buried four infant children and then served twenty years in prison for killing them, until someone finally read the genetic code they had been carrying all along. A woman hunted for four years by a stalker that a task force, a hidden camera, and a university expert couldn't find.
The twelve cases in this volume span six decades and four continents, and each of them turns on the same uncomfortable how long was the wrong story allowed to stand, and what did it cost the people standing underneath it?
A sampling of the stories
One of Their Own – A newlywed nurse was beaten, bitten, and shot three times in her own living room, and detectives wrote it off as a burglary gone wrong. Her father named the killer in the first week. It took twenty-three years for anyone to listen.
The Poet – For four years a Wichita secretary was terrorized by a man who sent rhyming, misspelled threats, abducted her, and stabbed her three times outside a shopping mall. A city already hunting BTK spent $370,000 and investigated more than three hundred people, and every expert it consulted was pointing in exactly the wrong direction.
Her Father's Daughter – Four babies died in ten years in the same New South Wales family. Their mother served twenty years for killing them. Then ninety scientists, among them Nobel laureates, signed a petition asking the state to let her go.
Amerithrax – One week after 9/11, letters packed with anthrax spores went into a single mailbox on a Princeton street corner, and five people died. The FBI publicly ruined one innocent man before it settled on a second, a vaccine scientist who swallowed a bottle of painkillers before anyone could put the question to him in court.
It Couldn't Be Helped – A Michigan mother and her six children were found in the family home, each body covered with a blanket, each with an apology note in the same handwriting on a torn scrap of paper towel. The state hospital had formally discharged the man who wrote them that summer.
Plus several more disturbing cases.
These aren't stories ripped from headlines you've already read. They're deep dives into cases reconstructed from court records, police reports, forensic findings, appellate opinions, and witness testimony. Where the record is contested, I've said so plainly rather than picked the tidier version. No sensationalism, no padding—just meticulously researched truth about what it costs when the people whose job is to be certain turn out to be wrong.
Readers love the True Crime Case Histories
"I stay up way too late every time I pick up one of these books. Jason Neal has a gift for making you feel like you're right there with the investigators."
"The research alone sets this series apart. These aren't recycled headlines—they're cases I'd never heard of, told with real depth."
"I've read every volume in this series. The writing keeps getting sharper and the cases keep getting more disturbing. Can't stop now."
"What gets me is how normal these people seemed. Jason Neal captures that better than anyone else writing true crime today."
"Finished this in two sittings. The pacing is perfect. Every chapter pulls you deeper before you realize how much time has passed."
"I recommended this to my true crime book club and now everyone is working through the whole series. Genuinely hard to put down."
For readers of Ann Rule, Jack Olsen, and other classic true crime authors.
Volume 28 of the True Crime Case Histories Series
The most dangerous thing in these pages isn't a killer. It's a convincing answer.
A father who spent twenty-three years telling the Los Angeles Police Department exactly who had murdered his daughter, and was ignored because the department had already decided. A mother who buried four infant children and then served twenty years in prison for killing them, until someone finally read the genetic code they had been carrying all along. A woman hunted for four years by a stalker that a task force, a hidden camera, and a university expert couldn't find.
The twelve cases in this volume span six decades and four continents, and each of them turns on the same uncomfortable how long was the wrong story allowed to stand, and what did it cost the people standing underneath it?
A sampling of the stories
One of Their Own – A newlywed nurse was beaten, bitten, and shot three times in her own living room, and detectives wrote it off as a burglary gone wrong. Her father named the killer in the first week. It took twenty-three years for anyone to listen.
The Poet – For four years a Wichita secretary was terrorized by a man who sent rhyming, misspelled threats, abducted her, and stabbed her three times outside a shopping mall. A city already hunting BTK spent $370,000 and investigated more than three hundred people, and every expert it consulted was pointing in exactly the wrong direction.
Her Father's Daughter – Four babies died in ten years in the same New South Wales family. Their mother served twenty years for killing them. Then ninety scientists, among them Nobel laureates, signed a petition asking the state to let her go.
Amerithrax – One week after 9/11, letters packed with anthrax spores went into a single mailbox on a Princeton street corner, and five people died. The FBI publicly ruined one innocent man before it settled on a second, a vaccine scientist who swallowed a bottle of painkillers before anyone could put the question to him in court.
It Couldn't Be Helped – A Michigan mother and her six children were found in the family home, each body covered with a blanket, each with an apology note in the same handwriting on a torn scrap of paper towel. The state hospital had formally discharged the man who wrote them that summer.
Plus several more disturbing cases.
These aren't stories ripped from headlines you've already read. They're deep dives into cases reconstructed from court records, police reports, forensic findings, appellate opinions, and witness testimony. Where the record is contested, I've said so plainly rather than picked the tidier version. No sensationalism, no padding—just meticulously researched truth about what it costs when the people whose job is to be certain turn out to be wrong.
Readers love the True Crime Case Histories
"I stay up way too late every time I pick up one of these books. Jason Neal has a gift for making you feel like you're right there with the investigators."
"The research alone sets this series apart. These aren't recycled headlines—they're cases I'd never heard of, told with real depth."
"I've read every volume in this series. The writing keeps getting sharper and the cases keep getting more disturbing. Can't stop now."
"What gets me is how normal these people seemed. Jason Neal captures that better than anyone else writing true crime today."
"Finished this in two sittings. The pacing is perfect. Every chapter pulls you deeper before you realize how much time has passed."
"I recommended this to my true crime book club and now everyone is working through the whole series. Genuinely hard to put down."
For readers of Ann Rule, Jack Olsen, and other classic true crime authors.
180 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 1, 2026
About the author
Jason Neal
188 books164 followersFor news and special offers, join Jason's mailing list at:
http://jasonneal.com
or
http://jasonnealbooks.com
Jason Neal is a Best-Selling American True Crime Author living in Hawaii with his wife, who is also an author writing Women's Fiction as G.T. London. Jason started his writing career in 1989 as a music industry publisher and wrote his first true crime collection in 2019.
As a boy growing up in the 80s just south of Seattle, Jason became fascinated with true crime stories after hearing the news of the Green River Killer so close to his home. Over the coming years, he would read everything he could get his hands on about true crime and serial killers.
As he approached 50, Jason began to assemble stories of the crimes that have fascinated him most throughout his life. He’s especially fascinated by cases solved by sheer luck, amazing police work, and groundbreaking technology like early DNA cases and, more recently, reverse genealogy.
http://jasonneal.com
or
http://jasonnealbooks.com
Jason Neal is a Best-Selling American True Crime Author living in Hawaii with his wife, who is also an author writing Women's Fiction as G.T. London. Jason started his writing career in 1989 as a music industry publisher and wrote his first true crime collection in 2019.
As a boy growing up in the 80s just south of Seattle, Jason became fascinated with true crime stories after hearing the news of the Green River Killer so close to his home. Over the coming years, he would read everything he could get his hands on about true crime and serial killers.
As he approached 50, Jason began to assemble stories of the crimes that have fascinated him most throughout his life. He’s especially fascinated by cases solved by sheer luck, amazing police work, and groundbreaking technology like early DNA cases and, more recently, reverse genealogy.
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October 16, 2026
Another well-written book by Jason Neal. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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