Winner of the Edgar Award: The gripping account of a gruesome mass murder in gritty 1980s New York and the relentless hunt for a coldblooded killer. On a warm spring evening in 1982, thirty-seven-year-old accountant Margaret Barbera left work in New York City and walked to the West Side parking lot where she kept her BMW. Finding the lock on the driver’s side door jammed, she went to the passenger’s side and inserted her key. A man leaned through the open window of a van parked in the next spot, pressed a silenced pistol to the back of Margaret’s head, and fired. She was dead before she hit the pavement. It was a professional hit, meticulously planned—but the killer didn’t expect three employees of the nearby CBS television studios to stumble onto the scene of the crime. “You didn’t see nothin’, did you?” he demanded, before shooting the first eyewitness in the head. After chasing down and executing the other two men, the murderer sped out of the parking lot with Margaret’s lifeless body in the back of his van. Thirty minutes later, the first detectives arrived on the scene. Veterans of Midtown North, a sprawling precinct stretching from the exclusive shops of Fifth Avenue to the flophouses of Hell’s Kitchen, they thought they’d seen it all. But a bloodbath in the heart of Manhattan was a shocking new level of depravity, and the investigation would unfold under intense media coverage. Setting out on the trail of an assassin, the NYPD uncovered one of the most diabolical criminal conspiracies in the city’s history. Richard Hammer’s blow-by-blow account of “the CBS Murders” is a thrilling tale of greed, violence, and betrayal, and a fascinating portrait of how a big-city police department solved the toughest of cases.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The police precinct of Midtown North is a microcosm of the public picture of New York. It stretches from the Hudson River piers and the decrepit West Side Highway east to the soaring towers and exclusive shops that line Fifth Avenue. #2 There is a barely concealed stench of desperation and fear beneath the wealth, glitter, and success of New York City. For some, their fears drive them away from the quiet hopelessness to desperate acts. #3 The argument about who should lead the investigation into the murders was desultory and academic. It was Stanley Shapiro’s turn, as he had not had a murder in six weeks. #4 Donald Nash was a burly, bullet-headed man in his late 40s with a drooping, blind right eye. He had been hired to drive a van into the parking lot of the S. S. Rotterdam, where he would wait for two hours before driving away.

Provides an account of the murder investigation that led to the discovery of a multimillion-dollar swindle that rocked New York's diamond district

President Walter Coopersmith selects Richard Thatcher, a professional, as his Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In private, Coopersmith confides his dissatisfaction with Director James Stearne and his plan to replace him with Thatcher. This puts Thatcher in a very uncomfortable position. At Thatcher's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Thatcher loses his temper and clashes with Senator Judy Gonzales. By nightfall, Gonzales is dead, the first victim of a serial killer. The President ignores the media's sensational linkage of Thatcher's committee appearance and Gonzales' murder and pushes Thatcher's confirmation through the Senate. Before the Bureau's investigators can identify the murderer, he strikes again, killing Senator Rashid Jones, one of Gonzales' closest collaborators in her futile campaign to force campaign finance reform on the Congress. Thatcher, chafing under the bureaucratic strictures that require him to delegate responsibility for the expanding investigation, arranges to have Barbara Collins, a long time friend and colleague, to be assigned to the case. Collins' assignment provides members of the Club, a loose clique of senior Bureau officers who resent Thatcher's elevation to command, the opportunity to challenge him. Barbara Collins and lead investigator Orson Dodrill concentrate their investigation on Gonzales's office. The Governor of California selects Gonzales' chief administrative assistant, Charles Stevens, to serve out Gonzales' term. Barbara identifies Stevens as the man with a motive, the one who benefited most from Gonzales' demise. Stevens frustrates the Bureau investigators, but not for long; he soon falls as the killer's third victim. The remaining member of the Gonzales triad, Senator Rae Campbell-Holden who shares the campaign reform issue, turns to the media. Fearing for her own safety, attributing nefarious political motives to the opposition, she demands that the Washington establishment identify the killer of her friends before he decimates the entire United States Senate. Thatcher, inhibited by the restraints of his lofty position and encumbered by the burden of managing a large bureaucracy, frets. Director Stearne, strangely aloof from the sensational investigation, embarks on a lengthy overseas trip. As acting Director, Thatcher decides to delegate his administrative chores to the Club, reviews the reports of his investigators, then sets out on his own doing what he does best: he mounts his own vest pocket investigation. Thatcher decides that the killer is someone closely engaged in Senate business, but not a staffer or senator. With the President's help-the President is, after all, the nation's foremost politician-Thatcher concentrates on the special interests, the lobbying corps that besieges the politicians with their money and favors. Again, the killer strikes. This time the victim is a young staffer in Gonzales' office. Despite the killer's best efforts to deny the investigators evidence, the clues accumulate. The killer, learning as he goes, indulges his strange sense of humor. At each crime scene, he leaves behind an odd message. Tiring of reacting to the killer, Thatcher decides to go proactive. He deliberately provokes the killer, using a venue provided by Thatcher's girl friend, Mavis Davis, a network White House correspondent. Using information provided by Thatcher, Barbara Collins and the Bureau's investigative team narrow the list of suspects. Finally, a black entry to the killer's home provides circumstantial evidence, a few strands of fabric that match those found at each murder scene. Lacking sufficient legal evidence to arrest the suspect, Thatcher takes a chance. The case culminates in a showdown at the apartment of Senator Ca

Discover the shocking #1 New York Times bestseller: the true story of a young NFL player's first-degree murder conviction and untimely death -- and his journey from the Patriots to prison. Aaron Hernandez was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later reached the Super Bowl. His every move as a tight end with the New England Patriots played out the headlines, yet he led a secret life -- one that ended in a maximum-security prison. What drove him to go so wrong, so fast? Between the summers of 2012 and 2013, not long after Hernandez made his first Pro Bowl, he was linked to a series of violent incidents culminating in the death of Odin Lloyd, a semi-pro football player who dated the sister of Hernandez's fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins. All-American Murder is the first book to investigate Aaron Hernandez's first-degree murder conviction and the mystery of his own shocking and untimely death.

A seminal work and examination of the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit by a convicted murder againt the journalist who wrote a book about his crime, Malcolm delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung. Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case -- the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial -- Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative -- and always on the edge of the reader's consciousness -- is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.

Donna Marie Gentile was an informant for the San Diego Police Dept. Larry Avrech, who was a young officer at the time, stumbled across Donna and the information about her 'sugar daddy' within the department. Recognizing the telltale signs of possible corruption, he befriended the prostitute to dig deeper. It would turn out to be the biggest mistake of his career. Eight months later, Avrech was terminated. His police brothers had chosen to believe a prostitute over a trusted officer "because it fit the specific needs of the department at that particular time". His integrity cost everything dear to him-his career, his home, and later his children. After his termination, the vindictive department continued to threaten him; doing everything they could to preserve their coverup and destroy Larry. Only six weeks after Donna testified against Avrech, her lifeless nude body turned up making Larry an instant murder suspect. In a twist of fate, Avrech got a call from a high-ranking Deputy District Attorney who said he could prove Larry was set up. But the question remained, "Who Killed Donna Marie Gentile?" Larry would work tirelessly for the next seven years to uncover a serial murder and eventually reveal the details in this comprehensive book about what happened behind the sensational headlines.