Los Angeles has no shortage of notorious crimes, nor of great writers. When true accounts of the former are penned by the latter, the results are some fascinating reads. In any good true crime book, the place where deadly deeds occur is not merely a background for the action but rather a vibrant...
The bestselling true crime author discusses the disturbing crimes of .22 Caliber Killer Joseph Christopher. Catherine Pelonero is no stranger to true crime. In addition to writing the New York Times bestseller, Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and its Private Consequences, she has...
He didn’t immediately realize that he was bleeding. Several moments passed from when the man struck 25-year-old John Adams in the chest until Adams fell to the ground. His attacker, a white man wearing wire-rimmed glasses, hopped on a 2 train. It was almost noon on Monday, Dec. 22, at the IRT...
In the 1980s, a white serial killer terrorized New York, targeting black men MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1980 The gunshots were so loud, one of the witnesses said later, and so fast, the four cracking pops coming rapidly one after the other, it sounded as if someone were setting off firecrackers on her...
He heard orders to kill, and, as a soldier, he always followed orders. During a late-1980 killing rampage from one end of New York State to the other, he killed at least 10 black and Hispanic males, and wounded four others. The attacks started and ended in Western New York, creating a climate of...
“This is where I’m going to drown you and you’ll never see your mother or father again.” It’s been 55 years and Richard Edgington can still recall the words his kidnapper said once she had him in an isolated area near the railroad tracks. She was a stranger, a woman he later described “as old as...
Establishing a rapport with a serial killer is not for the faint of heart. It was far and away the most daunting hurdle for me in researching my book, Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and its Private Consequences. The killer in question, Winston Moseley, who died in prison on...
“Would anybody remember or care about Kitty Genovese if she had been black?” That’s the very good question her just-deceased murderer, Winston Moseley, posed to me more than once in the scores of letters he wrote me. I first wrote to Moseley in 2009, care of Clinton Correctional Facility in...