Murder mystery written by a Catholic priest in the 1950's. finally back in print!

Murder in the Church is a true, gripping nine-day-long event where parental, marital and personal life mistakes come together to create tragic consequences, after which God gloriously redeems. This book includes twelve profound life-lessons that will challenge and change you.

In this unique and compelling true-crime story, journalist and author David Yonke presents and analyzes the only case in U.S. history in which a Roman Catholic priest was arrested for the murder of a nun. Father Gerald Robinson of Toledo, whom friends and associates described as a timid and mild-mannered man, was arrested by cold-case detectives in April, 2004, and charged in the brutal slaying of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl 24 years earlier. The 71-year-old nun had been choked to the edge of death, covered with an altar cloth, and stabbed 31 times in the face, neck and chest. Her body was found in the sacristy of a Catholic hospital, her habit pulled up to her chest and her undergarments around her ankles. It was Holy Saturday morning, 1980, the day before Easter and the day before the victim’s 72nd birthday. Cold-case investigators said the first nine stab wounds, made over the nun’s heart, were in the shape of an upside down cross, one of many signs that Sister Margaret Ann was the victim of a ritual killing. "Sin, Shame & Secrets" unveils how cold-case investigators decided to reopen the case in 2003 after a Toledo nun testified that Father Robinson abused her in satanic rituals when she was a child. The nun's testimony before the Toledo Catholic Diocese's Review Board also alleged that a number of children had been killed by the cult. A lengthy police investigation followed, resulting in Robinson's arrest at age 66 on April 23, 2004. After a three-week trial, covered gavel-to-gavel by Court TV (now truTV), the priest was convicted of murder on May 11, 2006 and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. * * * Yonke, the award-winning former Religion Editor and reporter at The Toledo Blade, reviewed hundreds of police files, interviewed dozens of principles, and covered every minute of the trial to give readers a thorough and examined look at events as they unfolded, as well as providing background information for the story and the people involved. * * * In Robinson’s legal appeals, the killer priest claimed that his trial attorneys failed to examine the possibility that another hospital chaplain — one with a drinking problem, a bad temper, and a knife collection — may have been the real murderer. Robinson also alleged that Coral Eugene Watts, a confessed serial killer who strangled and stabbed up to 80 women, was living an hour north of Toledo in 1980 and may have been the perpetrator. The story has been covered by news media around the world and featured on many nationally broadcast television programs. Although Robinson's appeals were denied by the Ohio Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, public debate and controversy continue to swirl in this timeless and shocking case. * * * Nancy Grace, talk show host former prosecutor: "Carefully detailing her murder, Yonke describes not only the search for a killer, but the struggle for all of us including both the Toledo police and the Catholic Church, to accept that evil exists everywhere around us, even within the house of God." Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Sallah called it "a murder case for the ages," adding that "Yonke deftly shows how an American Catholic diocese kept one of its own from being charged for more than a quarter century." Father Thomas Doyle, JCD, CADC, commented: "This is not just another murder mystery. It is a true story that enrages, mystifies and terrifies any reader with even a modicum of moral awareness." Barbara Blaine, founder of SNAP, said: "Through painstaking research and gripping narrative, David Yonke presents and analyzes a stunning case of physical, emotional, and sexual pain and the political corruption that kept a horrific crime unsolved for years." Pulitzer Prize-winner Mitch Weiss called it "an explosive piece of investigative journalism."

After joining the police force of her small Irish village, a local woman must investigate the murder of a stranger in this cozy mystery novel. After solving two murders in the County Cork village of Kilbane, Siobhán O’Sullivan has accepted her calling and decided to join the Garda Síochána. The O’Sullivan clan couldn’t be prouder, but there’s no time to celebrate as she’s already on another case, summoned by the local priest who just found a dead man in the St. Mary’s graveyard—aboveground. He’s a stranger, but the priest has heard talk of an American tourist in town, searching for his Irish ancestor. As Siobhán begins to dig for a motive among the gnarled roots of the victim’s family tree, she will need to stay two steps ahead of the killer or end up with more than one foot in the grave. “Captivating . . . Fans of mysteries with an Irish flavor will look forward to Siobhán and Macdara’s further adventures.”—Publishers Weekly

The tragic death of 13-year-old Danny Croteau in 1972 faded from headlines and memories for 20 years until the Boston abuse scandal--a string of assaults within the Catholic Church--exploded in the early 2000s. Despite numerous indications--including 40 claims of sexual misconduct with minors--pointing to him as Croteau's killer, the Reverend Richard R. Lavigne remains "innocent." Drawing on more than 10,000 pages of police and court records and interviews with Danny's friends and family, fellow abuse victims, and church officials, the author uncovers the truth--church complicity in a cover up and the masking of priests' involvement in a ring of abusive clergy--behind Croteau's death and those who had a hand in it.

T. S. Eliot's most famous drama, a retelling of the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury Murder in the Cathedral, written for the Canterbury Festival in 1935, was one of T. S. Eliot’s first dramatic achievements, and it remains one of the great plays of the century. It takes as its subject matter the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, depicting the events that led to his assassination, in his own cathedral church, by the knights of Henry II in 1170. Like Greek drama, the play’s theme and form are rooted in religion, ritual purgation and renewal, and it was this return to the earliest sources of drama that brought poetry triumphantly back to the English stage at the time. "The theatre is enriched by this poetic play of grave beauty and momentous decision." —The New York Times