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To all appearances, Dennis Rader was a model citizen in the small town of Park City, Kansas, where he had lived with his family almost his entire life. He was a town compliance officer, a former Boy Scout leader, the president of his church congregation, and a seemingly ordinary father and husband. But Rader's average life belied the existence of his dark, sadistic other self: he was the BTK serial killer. The self-named BTK (for Bind, Torture, Kill) had terrorized Wichita for thirty-one years, not only with his brutal, sexually motivated crimes, but also through his taunting, elusive communications with the media and law enforcement. In 1974, BTK committed his first murders -- torturing and strangling four members of the Otero family -- and wrote the police an audacious letter declaring his responsibility for the Oteros' deaths and labeling himself, for the first time, BTK. Thus he established a pattern -- stalking and killing a series of ten victims, then bragging and claiming ownership of his crimes -- that ended in 1991 but left law enforcement confounded and the public with deeply troubling memories. Until, that is, he resurfaced in 2004 with another string of letters that would finally lead to his arrest. Drawing from extensive interviews with Rader's pastor, congregation, detectives, and psychologists who worked the case, and from his unnervingly de-tailed thirty-two-hour confession, bestselling author Stephen Singular delves into the disturbing life and crimes of BTK to explore fully -- for the first time -- the most dangerous and complex serial killer of our generation and the man who embodied, at once, astonishing extremes of normality and abnormality. In Unholy Messenger, Singular recounts the year prior to Rader's arrest, in which the BTK killer reemerged, and the aftermath. Woven throughout are the details of his crimes, elaborate schemes, and bids for public attention, and the wrenching impact his deception had on his family, church, and heartland community. The result is a chilling story of a man considered a "spiritual leader" by his pastor and congregation, who turned out to be the devil next door. More than just true crime, Unholy Messenger is a powerful, thoroughly engrossing examination of the intersection between good and evil, and of the psychology and spirituality of a killer in whom faith and bloodshed converged.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#1 New Release in Forensic Psychology — Serial Killer? Your Neighbor, Friend, Even Your Spouse?Serial killers: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer are often the first names that spring to mind. Many people assume serial killers are primarily an American phenomenon that came about in the latter part of the twentieth century. But such assumptions are far from the truth. Serial killers have been around for a very long time and can be found in every corner of the globe—and they’re not just limited to the male gender either. Some of these predators have been caught and brought to justice whereas others have never been found, let alone identified. Serial killers can be anywhere. And scarier still, they can be anyone.Edited by acclaimed author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto, The Best New True Crime Stories: Serial Killersreveals all-new accounts of true crime serial killers from the contemporary to the historic. The international list of contributors includes award-winning crime writers, true-crime podcasters, journalists, and experts in the dark crimes field such as Martin Edwards, Lee Mellor, Danuta Kot, Craig Pittman, Richard O Jones, Marcie Rendon, Mike Browne, and Vicki Hendricks.If you are a fan of true crime books such as I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Mindhunter, The Devil in the White City, or Peter Vronsky’s Sons of Cain; you will want to read Mitzi Szereto’s The Best New True Crime Stories: Serial Killers. This book will leave you wondering if it’s ever really possible to know who’s behind the mask you’re allowed to see.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Feazell announced his candidacy for District Attorney of McLennan County in Waco, Texas in 1982. He would go on to win the election against the incumbent district attorney and became one of the youngest to hold the position in McLennan County. During his first term as District Attorney, Feazell tried the 1982 Lake Waco Triple Murders. In 1984, a jury found David Wayne Spence guilty of the murders and sentenced him to the death penalty. A chronicle of the Lake Waco Murders can be found in the Edgar Award-winning book Careless Whispers by Carlton Stowers.Feazell notes on his website that he is "now a vocal advocate against the death penalty."In 1984, after Henry Lee Lucas claimed to have killed over 300 people across the country, the Texas Rangers announced numerous murders to have been solved. Three of these announced murders were in McLennan County. This prompted Feazell to begin investigating the claims. This resulted in the Lucas Report. The report suggested that Lucas could not have committed some of the murders to which he had confessed. A decision afterwards resulted in Feazell's arrest.There were nineteen agents in town for Feazell’s arrest and the search of his office and home.Feazell's arrest came seven weeks before election day. Voters in McLennan County re-elected Feazell for another term. During the criminal investigation leading up to Feazell’s indictment, a reporter from Dallas television station WFAA-TV named Charles Duncan ran an eleven-part series about Feazell, which later led to a libel judgement in favor of Feazell worth $58 million.This series was the only evidence shown to the federal grand jury that indicted Feazell.Feazell was found not guilty of all charges on June 29, 1987. Feazell then returned to work as District Attorney of McLennan County. On September 13, 1988, Feazell sent out a press release stating he would be resigning as District Attorney.Feazell then began representing Lucas in all of the still-pending murder cases he had confessed to around the country. Feazell spent much of the 1990s representing Lucas to ensure he was not convicted based on any more false confessions. The work done by Feazell and others cast enough doubt on the validity of the Lucas confession to the Orange Socks murder case that in 1998 then-Governor George W. Bush commuted Lucas’s death penalty to life imprisonment.In 1991, represented by former U.S. Attorney Gary Richardson, Feazell was awarded a $58 million judgment for libel charges against WFAA-TV, at the time the largest libel judgment in U.S. history. As a result, he was cited in the 1993 edition of Guinness World Records for largest defamation lawsuit in history.In the 21st century, Feazell formed his own law office, The Law Offices of Vic Feazell with offices presently in Austin and Waco, Texas. The offices work primarily with personal injury cases and occasionally criminal cases.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Conspiracy theories are a part of the human condition. Everyone believes at least one, but given the number of conspiracy theories, it is more likely that everyone believes a few. Some people have a worldview defined by them. Conspiracy theories are just another reminder that people disagree about many things, including truth. These disagreements have always existed and always will. We have to live with conspiracy theories and with the people who believe them. The only way to do this is have compassion and tolerance for others, and to hold our own beliefs to high standards. This book introduces students to the research into conspiracy theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing so, it addresses the psychological, sociological, and political sources of conspiracy theorizingUscinski rigorously analyzes the most current arguments and evidence while providing numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the current debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In May 2001 Bonny Lee Bakley was shot to death in a car parked on a dark Hollywood side street. Eleven months later Robert Blake—her husband, the father of her child, and the star of the classic film In Cold Blood and the popular 1970s TV detective series Baretta—was arrested for murder, conspiracy, and solicitation. Did Blake kill his wife? Did he hire someone to do the job for him? Award-winning journalist Dennis McDougal and entertainment-media expert Mary Murphy recount a real-life crime story more shocking and bizarre than any movie, chronicling the parallel worlds of Blake and Bakley, from their troubled youths to their sham of a marriage. By the late 1990s Blake was coasting on his past success. Bakley was a con artist who concocted online sex scams and victimized unsuspecting men, netting big money and dangerous enemies. In true noir style, McDougal and Murphy lay bare the stories of two violent people whose lives collided in a tragic tangle of abuse, betrayal, and love gone horribly wrong. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Drawing on the voices of atomic bomb survivors and the new science of forensic archaeology, Charles Pellegrino describes the events and the aftermath of two days in August when nuclear devices, detonated over Japan, changed life on Earth forever.To Hell and Back offers readers a stunning, “you are there” time capsule, wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino’s scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written.At the narrative’s core are eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the atomic explosions firsthand—the Japanese civilians on the ground. As the first city targeted, Hiroshima is the focus of most histories. Pellegrino gives equal weight to the bombing of Nagasaki, symbolized by the thirty people who are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasaki—where they arrived just in time to survive the second bomb. One of them, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, is the only person who experienced the full effects of both cataclysms within Ground Zero. The second time, the blast effects were diverted around the stairwell behind which Yamaguchi’s office conference was convened—placing him and few others in a shock cocoon that offered protection while the entire building disappeared around them.Pellegrino weaves spellbinding stories together within an illustrated narrative that challenges the “official report,” showing exactly what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and why.Also available from compatible vendors is an enhanced e-book version containing never-before-seen video clips of the survivors, their descendants, and the cities as they are today. Filmed by the author during his research in Japan, these 18 videos are placed throughout the text, taking readers beyond the page and offering an eye-opening and personal way to understand how the effects of the atomic bombs are still felt 70 years after detonation.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a young man, Jack Goldsmith revered his stepfather, longtime Jimmy Hoffa associate Chuckie O’Brien. But as he grew older and pursued a career in law and government, he came to doubt and distance himself from the man long suspected by the FBI of perpetrating Hoffa’s disappearance on behalf of the mob. It was only years later, when Goldsmith was serving as assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration and questioning its misuse of surveillance and other powers, that he began to reconsider his stepfather, and to understand Hoffa’s true legacy.In Hoffa’s Shadow tells the moving story of how Goldsmith reunited with the stepfather he’d disowned and then set out to unravel one of the twentieth century’s most persistent mysteries and Chuckie’s role in it. Along the way, Goldsmith explores Hoffa’s rise and fall and why the golden age of blue-collar America came to an end, while also casting new light on the century-old surveillance state, the architects of Hoffa’s disappearance, and the heartrending complexities of love and loyalty.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He was the billionaire financier and close confidant of presidents, prime ministers, movie stars and British royalty, the mysterious self-made man who rose from blue-collar Brooklyn to the heights of luxury. But while he was flying around the world on his private jet and hosting lavish parties at his private island in the Caribbean, he also was secretly masterminding an international child sex ring—one that may have involved the richest and most influential men in the world.The conspiracy of corruption was an open secret for decades. And then this summer, it all came crashing down. After his arrest on sex trafficking charges in July, it seemed Epstein’s darkest secrets would finally see the light. But hopes for true justice were shattered on August 10 this year, when he was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. The verdict: suicide. The timing: convenient, to say the least.   Now, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales delivers bombshell new revelations, uncovers how the man President Trump once described as a “terrific guy” abused hundreds of underage girls at his mansions in Palm Beach and Manhattan… all while entertaining the world’s most powerful men—including President Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Donald Trump himself.How much did they know about his perversions? And did they take part?How might they have helped him to continue his abuse, and to escape justice for it?What responsibility might they have for his sudden, shocking death?And is there a shocking spy and blackmail story at the heart of the scandal?The answers to these questions and more will be explored in Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales with groundbreaking new reporting, never-before-seen court files, and interviews with new witnesses and confidants. Combining the very best investigative reporting from investigative journalists Dylan Howard, Melissa Cronin and James Robertson—who have been covering the case for close to a decade—will send shockwaves through the highest levels of the establishment.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Teri Jendusa never dreamed she would marry a violent, malignant narcissist like David Larsen. But she did. Why? Simple. Larsen cleverly concealed his true nature until the marriage vows were final. David, an eventual church council president and model citizen, rapidly began to morph into a monster and sociopath, telling Teri on their wedding day, “Now, I own you.”Beaten and Left For Dead is a book about extreme marital violence, dominant control and psychological torment through the mind of the out-of-control David Larsen. It's also about survival, faith and a mother’s will to live for her children’s sake...as she faces death, face to face.This is an ideal book for women’s studies and book clubs as it looks inside a large women’s shelter, giving the reader a glimpse of a support network. The author also interviews a counselor who works with violent men with surprising results.Teri Jendusa-Nicolai continues to crusade for women’s issues to this day and currently works with a Wisconsin commission on domestic violence.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jesus might love you, but does his cult following? John Verner, a trained preacher and former church leader, thoroughly accuses evangelical leaders in the United States of committing cult-like crimes. In this personal, yet insightful, commentary, Verner demonstrates his quirky writing style in a deeply critical manner. Things like prayer, sermons, persecution, hell, apologetics, and other behaviors, are flipped on their head, in an attempt to show how church leaders are exploiting such things for their own power. You'll want to evaluate you own allegiances, no matter your faith, after reading.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.