Sr Helen Prejean has accompanied five men to execution since she began her work in 1982. She believes the last two, Dobie Williams in Louisiana and Joseph O'Dell in Virginia, were innocent, but their juries were blocked from seeing all the evidence and their defence teams were incompetent. 'The readers of this book will be the first "jury" with access to all the evidence the trail juries never saw', she says. The Death of Innocents shows how race, prosecutorial ambition, poverty and publicity determine who dies and who lives. Prejean raises profound constitutional questions about the legality of the death penalty.

Unraveling a twenty-five-year tale of multiple murder and medical deception, The Death of Innocents is a work of first-rate journalism told with the compelling narrative drive of a mystery novel. More than just a true-crime story, it is the stunning expose of spurious science that sent medical researchers in the wrong direction--and nearly allowed a murderer to go unpunished. On July 28, 1971, a two-and-a-half-month-old baby named Noah Hoyt died in his trailer home in a rural hamlet of upstate New York. He was the fifth child of Waneta and Tim Hoyt to die suddenly in the space of seven years. People certainly talked, but Waneta spoke vaguely of "crib death," and over time the talk faded. Nearly two decades later a district attorney in Syracuse, New York, was alerted to a landmark paper in the literature on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome--SIDS--that had been published in a prestigious medical journal back in 1972. Written by a prominent researcher at a Syracuse medical center, the article described a family in which five children had died suddenly without explanation. The D.A. was convinced that something about this account was very wrong. An intensive quest by a team of investigators came to a climax in the spring of 1995, in a dramatic multiple-murder trial that made headlines nationwide. But this book is not only a vivid account of infanticide revealed; it is also a riveting medical detective story. That journal article had legitimized the deaths of the last two babies by theorizing a cause for the mystery of SIDS, suggesting it could be predicted and prevented, and fostering the presumption that SIDS runs in families. More than two decades of multimillion-dollar studies have failed to confirm any of these widely accepted premises. How all this happened--could have happened--is a compelling story of high-stakes medical research in action. And the enigma of familial SIDS has given rise to a special and terrible irony. There is today a maxim in forensic pathology: One unexplained infant death in a family is SIDS. Two is very suspicious. Three is homicide.

Recounts the events surrounding the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, and the trials of the three teens who were convicted of the crime.

International and New York Times bestseller Deborah Crombie returns with her beloved Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James in a compelling new crime novel as they race to solve the shocking murder of a young woman before panic spreads across London. Junior doctor Sasha Johnson hurries through a rainy November evening crowd in London's historic Russell Square. Out of the darkness, a stranger brushes roughly past her. A moment later, Sasha stumbles, then collapses. Nearby, Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his sergeant, Doug Cullen, are called to the scene, and quickly discover that she's been stabbed. Kincaid immediately calls in his wife, D.I. Gemma James, who has currently assigned to a special task force investigating knife crimes which are on the rise. Along with her partner, Detective Sergeant Melody Talbot, Gemma joins in the investigation. But Sasha Johnson doesn’t fit the usual profile of their typical knife-crime victim. Sasha is single, successful, career-driven, and has no history of abusive relationships or any gang links. Sasha did have secrets, though, and some of them lead the detectives uncomfortably close to home. Even as the team unravels the Sasha's tangled connections, another, related murder intensifies the hunt and the consequences. Kincaid, Gemma, and their colleagues find that even their closest friendships may be at risk if they are to find the killer stalking the dark streets of Bloomsbury.

The full story of the 1991 Austin Yogurt Shop Massacre is revealed in this chilling chronicle by the Los Angeles Times bestselling true crime author. On a December night in Austin, Texas, teenagers Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas closed up the yogurt store where they worked. The girls were joined by Jennifer's younger sister, Sarah, and her friend Amy Ayers. Less than an hour later, all four girls were dead—apparently the victims of a tragic fire. But then it was discovered that the girls had been bound and gagged, sexually assaulted, and shot execution-style. With no physical evidence or eyewitnesses, Austin police faced one of their toughest cases ever. Nearly eight years passed before four young men were charged with the crime, and authorities learned how a planned robbery exploded into a drug-fueled spree of brutality. But the road to justice was packed with shocking twists . . . Includes sixteen pages of haunting photos.

February 18, 2007: the remains of a child are discovered in a Rubbermaid tub inside a rental storage unit in Tucson, Arizona. Thus begins the child abuse/murder investigation that resulted in new legislation governing Child Protective Services. This is not a dramatic retelling of events, but the day-by-day facts as reported by the lead detective on the case. While certainly of interest to anyone who feels strongly about protecting our children, Investigating the Death of Innocents will also appeal to anyone interested in seeing exactly how a police investigation is carried out, and how it proceeds from the first phone call through to the trial and sentencing of the criminals. This is a story that will break your heart, but also leave you respecting the police investigators and prosecuting attorneys whose dedication and hard work brought this case to a successful conclusion.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas hunts for the killer of a seemingly ordinary history teacher—and uncovers some extraordinary surprises—in this thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling In Death series. Eve Dallas doesn’t like to see innocent people murdered. And the death of history teacher Craig Foster is clearly a murder case. The lunch that his wife lovingly packed was tainted with deadly ricin. And Mr. Foster’s colleagues, shocked as they may be, have some shocking secrets of their own. It’s Eve’s job to get a feel for all the potential suspects—and find out why someone would have done this to a man who seemed so inoffensive, so pleasant...so innocent. Someone Eve could easily picture dead is an old flame of her billionaire husband Roarke, who has turned up in New York and manipulated herself back into his life. Consumed by her jealousy—and Roarke’s indifference to it—Eve finds it hard to focus on the Foster case. But when another man turns up dead, she’ll have to keep in mind that both innocence and guilt can be facades...