In Rise of the Black Serial Killers: Documenting a Startling Trend, Justin Cottrell expels the myth that serial killers in America are predominately white. On the contrary after sifting through a myriad of newspaper records and books, he's compiled a list of murderers that is equal too or greater than the number of white serial killers from 1860 to present. Few if any have ever heard any of their names or stories, until now. Based on his findings white serial killers have been underrepresented throughout American history when compared to the percentage of the population they represent by a factor of 1.79 on average. On the other hand, black serial killers have been overrepresented 2.68 to 7 times their portion of the population, with a 150 year average of 4.18. Another startling trend he uncovered is black serial killers have never represented less than 26.83% of the number of serial killers in a given decade, despite their overall percentage of the population never exceeding 13.1%. This trend has steadily increased to the point that in our current decade they represent 88.24% of the number of serial killers apprehended since 2010, yet only account for 12.6% of the populace. Aside from trends, this book offers reasons most people assume black serial killers don't exist-from the media prohibition on the subject, to general misunderstandings. Coupled with this is a look into the various factors that breed serial killers, with a look into why black serial killers are on the rise, while white serial killers are on the decline. To prove his research is valid, a full list of every black serial killer is provided, along with a brief description of their crimes. In addition to this the biographies of 35 of these killers are given, with detailed information about their crimes.

Fans of Mindhunter and true crime podcasts will devour these chilling stories of serial killers from the American "Golden Age" (1950-2000). With books like Serial Killers, Female Serial Killers and Sons of Cain, Peter Vronsky has established himself as the foremost expert on the history of serial killers. In this first definitive history of the "Golden Age" of American serial murder, when the number and body count of serial killers exploded, Vronsky tells the stories of the most unusual and prominent serial killings from the 1950s to the early twenty-first century. From Ted Bundy to the Golden State Killer, our fascination with these classic serial killers seems to grow by the day. American Serial Killers gives true crime junkies what they crave, with both perennial favorites (Ed Kemper, Jeffrey Dahmer) and lesser-known cases (Melvin Rees, Harvey Glatman).

Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet’s largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them—the highway killer. He went by many names: the “Hitcher,” the “Freeway Killer,” the “Killer on the Road,” the “I-5 Strangler,” and the “Beltway Sniper.” Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation’s murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Killer on the Road tells the entwined stories of America’s highways and its highway killers. There’s the hot-rodding juvenile delinquent who led the National Guard on a multistate manhunt; the wannabe highway patrolman who murdered hitchhiking coeds; the record promoter who preyed on “ghetto kids” in a city reshaped by freeways; the nondescript married man who stalked the interstates seeking women with car trouble; and the trucker who delivered death with his cargo. Thudding away behind these grisly crime sprees is the story of the interstates—how they were sold, how they were built, how they reshaped the nation, and how we came to equate them with violence. Through the stories of highway killers, we see how the “killer on the road,” like the train robber, the gangster, and the mobster, entered the cast of American outlaws, and how the freeway—conceived as a road to utopia—came to be feared as a highway to hell.

“One of the best true crime books of all time.” —Time As seen on Investigation Discovery’s The Grim Sleeper: Mind of a Monster The inside story of one of the notorious and elusive serial killer who stalked the vulnerable, the young, and the ignored in 1980s Los Angeles—and then returned decades later to kill again The Grim Sleeper was one of the most brutal serial killers in California history, preying on the women of South Central for decades. No one knows this story better than Christine Pelisek, the reporter who followed it for more than ten years. Based on extensive interviews, reportage, and information never released to the public, The Grim Sleeper captures the long, bumpy road to justice in one of the most startling true crime stories of our generation from his violent first crime while serving in the US Army to his inevitable death in prison.

AS FAR AS FITTING THE STEREOTYPES bestowed to infamous chain-link murderers that exist outside African American culture, there was a time when black serial killers were recognized, to some extent, implausible by purported experts who probably cared not to explore the primary nature of the slayers transgressions. Nevertheless, the obscured story of handyman Morris Solomon Jr. has to be one of the most interesting tales untold as it is one of the most horrific yarns in the annals of American crime. The handymans misdeeds, when briefly brought to the publics attention, virtually reminded society that killers continuously come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. Solomon was convicted of killing six young women, ages 16 to 29, in the Sacramento, California, neighborhood of Oak Park between 1986 and 1987. The handymans grisly method of murder left detectives and medical examiners mystified. The identification process of his victims remains was distinctly a laborious assignment, too. The victims drug addicts, prostitutes, and devout mothers were stuffed in closets, hidden under debris, and arguably, one court judge strongly considers, buried alive. In retrospect, the handyman was first accused of murder in the mid-1970s; and authorities suspect him to be linked to four more homicides in Sacramento. Solomon once declared as a Mentally Disordered Sex Offender is now on death row in Northern Californias San Quentin State Prison awaiting execution. The unassuming handymans 18-year reign of terror includes a record of sexual assaults, attempted kidnappings, and separate despicable sex acts performed strictly for humiliation. In The Homicidal Handyman of Oak Park: Morris Solomon Jr., author and journalist Tony Ray Harvey recounts the black serial killers dysfunctional upbringing, atrocious crimes, and hardly noticeable court trial. Harveys book also provides explicit crime scene photos, the history of the death penalty system in the state of California, the city of Sacramentos drug culture in the mid-1980s, and exclusive prison interviews of the mild-mannered handyman.

In this classic study, Elliott Leyton challenges the conventional idea of serial murderers as deranged madmen. He explores the twisted – but comprehensible – motives of a half-dozen notorious killers: Edmund Emil Kemper, Theodore Robert Bundy, Albert DeSalvo (“The Boston Strangler”), David Richard Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”), Mark James Robert Essex, and Charles Starkweather. In the process of describing their crimes Leyton exposes the cold rationality that underlies their apparent pointlessness. The result is startling: a revelatory text on a deeply troubling topic.

"I was a greedy, ravenous individual, determined to rise from the bottom to the top . . . It wasn't me!"--Jack Unterweger's final words to his jury Serial killers rarely travel internationally. So in the early 1990s, when detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department began to find bodies of women strangled with their own bras, it didn't occur to them at first to make a connection with the bodies being uncovered in the woods outside of Vienna, Austria. The LAPD waited for the killer to strike again. Meanwhile, in Austria, the police followed what few clues they had. The case intrigued many reporters, but few as keenly as Jack Unterweger, a local celebrity. He cut a striking figure, this little man in expensive white suits. His expertise on Vienna's criminal underworld was hard-earned. He had been sentenced to life in jail as a young man. But while incarcerated, he began to write—and his work earned him the glowing attention of the literary elite. The intelligentsia lobbied for his release and by 1990, Jack was free again. He continued writing, nurturing his career as a journalist. But though he now traveled in the highest circles, he had a secret life. He was killing again, and in the greatest of ironies, reporting on the very crimes he had committed. With unprecedented access to Jack's diaries and letters, John Leake peels back the layers of deception to reveal the life and crimes of Jack Unterweger, and in unnerving detail, exposes the thrilling twists—both in the United States and Europe—that led to Jack's capture and Austria's "trial of the century."