21 Chilling True Crime Book Excerpts That Will Haunt You for Days

Nine years after her sister’s unidentified body was discovered burned on the side of the I-80 in Sacramento, Terry Knorr came forward and detailed the shocking abuse and death of her sisters … carried out by their mother, Theresa Knorr.

Hope Masters and her fiancé Bill were on vacation in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains when they met G. Daniel Walker, who proceeded to kill Bill and hold Hope captive—sexually assaulting her over the span of a weekend. But the most unfathomable part? She began to fall in love with her captor.

In the 1960s, the Ypsilanti Ripper began terrorizing the college town of Ypsilanti (pronounced Ip-sih-lan-tee), Michigan—torturing and killing women. But the killer’s identity was most shocking of all: An all-American college student at Eastern Michigan University—where many of his victims were also students.

In 1973, Carl Isaacs, his half brother Wayne Coleman, and George Dungee escaped from prison and were joined by Carl’s 15-year-old brother, Billy Isaacs. They stumbled upon the mobile home of Jerry and Mary Alday, where they proceeded to kill the couple and multiple family members that came by.

William Douglas was a brilliant professor at Tufts University. But when he murdered his call-girl mistress in a homicidal rage, he needed to come up with a plan about what to do with the body–and fast.