"Mountain murders brings to the public fifteen legendary Colorado murders, dating from 1909 to the early 1980s."--Page 4 of cover.

In The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado, noted death penalty scholar Michael Radelet chronicles the details of each capital punishment trial and execution that has taken place in Colorado since 1859. The book describes the debates and struggles that Coloradans have had over the use of the death penalty, placing the cases of the 103 men whose sentences were carried out and 100 more who were never executed into the context of a gradual worldwide trend away from this form of punishment. For more than 150 years, Coloradans have been deeply divided about the death penalty, with regular questions about whether it should be expanded, restricted, or eliminated. It has twice been abolished, but both times state lawmakers reinstated the contentious punitive measure. Prison administrators have contributed to this debate, with some refusing to participate in executions and some lending their voices to abolition efforts. Colorado has also had a rich history of experimenting with execution methods, first hanging prisoners in public and then, starting in 1890, using the "twitch-up gallows" for four decades. In 1933, Colorado began using a gas chamber and eventually moved to lethal injection in the 1990s. Based on meticulous archival research in official state archives, library records, and multimedia sources, The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado, will inform the conversation on both sides of the issue anywhere the future of the death penalty is under debate.

Beautiful and well-educated in business, Olivia remembers that her late grandmother always emphasized that money was the key to independence. At a fundraising event for a pet charity, she meets and eventually marries wealthy Ronald Ridgeway, heir to the Ridgeway Foundation. When her husband asks for help with the foundation’s accounting, Olivia sees her chance over several years to take and secrete several million dollars in a private bank account. Not wishing to take the chance that her theft eventually may be discovered, she leaves on a shopping trip and disappears. Brought in to find Olivia is Boston Detective Randall Hunter who follows her trail of to many cities across the U.S.

Having left Boston and Chicago with millions of stolen dollars from former husbands, Ridgeway and Simpson, the beautiful and elusive woman is now living in Kansas under the name Janet Johansen. There, she meets and marries widower billionaire, Allen Randolphe, who resides in Kansas City, Missouri with his daughter, Margaret. For Janet, life is beautiful until at a Randolphe business event, Chicago guest Rusty Aldred tells Margaret that he knew her stepmother under another name and that a private detective is trying to locate that woman. When Margaret mentions Aldred's comments to her stepmother, Janet has to make a decision: assume that Margaret doesn't believe Aldred and that the detective will never find her . . . or run!

In the a late October night, two shots ring out when a man answers his door, and the shooter quickly drives away. Colorado Springs detectives, Randall Hunter and James Douglass, assume it's a one-time incident until there is another similar murder . . . and then another. Without any leads to the perpetrator, named'the "front-door killer" by the detectives, all they can do is sit and wait for the next victim. SCALES of JUSTICE is the fourteenth book co-authored by Sandra Wells and Betty Alt. Wells has a Ph.D. from Colorado State University in Fort Collins while Alt has an M.A. from Northeast Missouri State University. Both authors have taught at the university level and now enjoy the "fascinating hobby" of writing books.

AMERICA’S MOST COLD-BLOODED! In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the hugely acclaimed author of The Serial Killer Files and The Whole Death Catalog gives them their dark due in this absolutely riveting true-crime treasury. Among America’s most cold-blooded you’ll meet • Robert Irwin, “The Mad Sculptor”: He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved—but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead. • Peter Robinson, “The Tell-Tale Heart Killer”: It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim, but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan. • Anton Probst, “The Monster in the Shape of a Man”: The ax-murdering immigrant’s systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later. • Edward H. Ruloff, “The Man of Two Lives”: A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality, and his oversized brain gave new meaning to “mastermind.” Spurred by profit, passion, paranoia, or perverse pleasure, these killers—the Witch of Staten Island, the Smutty Nose Butcher, the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell, and many others—span three centuries and a host of harrowing murder methods. Dramatized in the pages of penny dreadfuls, sensationalized in tabloid headlines, and immortalized in “murder ballads” and classic fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and Theodore Dreiser, the demonic denizens of Psycho USA may be long gone to the gallows—but this insidiously irresistible slice of gothic Americana will ensure that they’ll no longer be forgotten.

In the town of Paramont, over a two-year period in the late 1940s, several women have been murdered. For some reason all of the bodies have been placed in or near water -- a river or lake. Detectives Amos Taylor and Richard Samms spend months attempting to track down the elusive killer identified merely as young, “good-looking” and driving a light-colored sedan.