crime book

 Chapter 5:   The Abduction and Murder of Annie Le America’s Ivy League colleges are known for their strict academic requirements and as factories that produce world leaders in the fields of business, science, and politics. The campuses of Ivy League universities are full of history as the halls are named for famous Americans and their architecture is often centuries old. Truly, Ivy League schools are in a world of their own. The residential neighborhoods that have grown up around the nation’s Ivy League schools are usually pretty safe. For instance, Dartmouth is located in the bucolic setting of New Hampshire and Harvard and Princeton are located in low crime suburbs of major cities. Columbia is located in Manhattan, but since the 1990s the crime rate has been very low in that city. Yale University is a different story. Yale University, like its Ivy League brothers, is an incredibly fine academic institution that has graduated a number of brilliant minds from around the world...

  Chapter 4: The Brighton Trunk Murders The “Queen of Watering Places” The city of Bri ghton, United Kingdom, often known colloquially as “Brighton Beach”, has been one of the prime destinations for the British for over 200 years. Brighton boasts of some of the nicest beaches in Britain, relatively warmer temperatures compared to the rest of the country, and a plethora of bars, nightclubs and concert venues. Because of these things, Brighton has earned the nickname the “Queen of Watering Places.” Besides being a top vacation destination, Brighton has also been known as a safe, peaceful city. Outside of a spate of counter-culture youth violence during the 1960s and ‘70s—which was made known to the world through the rock band The Who’s 1973 album Quadrophenia and a 1979 film of the same name, as well as the popular Stray Cat’s song “Rumble in Brighton”—and the Irish Republican Army bombing of a hotel in 1984, crime in Brighton has been historically low. Therefore, Brighton’s idyllic ...

 Chapter 3: The Liquid Matthew Case   Some of you reading this may have been to a dinner party theater production, which have become popular over the last several years. If you have not been to one of these productions, the concept is interesting: as the diners enjoy a meal, a play takes place that usually involves some type of murder mystery. The audience/diners are often encouraged to get involved by offering their clues and/or theories concerning the crime. In the end, the caper is solved, the cast takes a bow, and everyone goes home full and satisfied with an interesting night out. Several of you have also probably taken part in a scavenger hunt at some point in your lives. Some of the most elaborate scavenger hunts take place over several miles of territory and sometimes, like dinner party theater, involve a fictional crime that has  taken place. In order to solve the fictional crime you have to locate a clue, which then leads you to the next clue in another part of ...

Chapter 2: The Disappearances of the Palmer Brothers It seems that in the world today one is never far from another person. In the decades just before World War II, the most industrialized nations witnessed a rapid migration of their populations from rural to urban and suburban areas. Because of that trend, most of us have to travel a distance to truly get away from the noise of civilization. Even denizens of rural areas are usually not very far from their closest neighbors and only a short drive to the nearest town or city. In areas that are more remote, such as the American west, freeways, trains, and airplanes connect formerly isolated areas to the rest of the world. The American state of Alaska may be an exception to this rule. Alaska, the United States’ forty-ninth state, is aptly named the “Last Frontier” because of its vast expanses of territory that has rarely, if ever, been walked on by human feet. The size of Alaska is immense; it is comprised of 663,268 square miles of land,...

 Chapter 1: A Killer Coincidence? The Mary Morris Murders  In the 1984 science fiction classic The Terminator, a murderous cyborg from the future played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, hunted women in Los Angeles named Sarah Connor in order to stop a woman with that same name from giving birth to a man who would kill the cyborg’s masters in the future. The plot was totally outlandish and not meant to portray or emulate any real event or situation, but a pair of murders in Houston, Texas in 2000 shocked area residents and to sci-fi fans it appeared to be a case of reality imitating art. In the span of less than one week, two women both named Mary Morris were murdered in eerily similar ways in Houston. Once the local media made the connections between the two women’s names, then other connections were quickly made: the two women looked alike, the manner of their murders was similar, and their bodies were discovered in similar locations. With that many similarities most people were con...