Broomstick Murderer

Kenneth Allen McDuff, also known as the "Broomstick Killer" because of the way he murdered one of his first victims: 16-year-old Edna Louise Sullivan who he killed in August 1966 along with her boyfriend and his cousin. After being sentenced to death, the United States Supreme Court, in 1972, determined that the death penalty was unconstitutional and, as a result, McDuff's death sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was eventually paroled and killed at least five more women before being rearrested, tried, and given the death penalty again...twice. McDuff was executed on 17 November 1998 and has the distinction of providing the impetus for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-the third largest system in the United States-to overhaul its entire system, particularly the parole eligibility and revocation processes. In total, McDuff is suspected of 14 murders and has the distinction of being the only person in United States history to be sentenced to death for murder, paroled, and then sentenced to death for two additional murders committed after he was released.

Publisher Fact Sheet A chilling account of a serial killer whose cruel & tortuous murders while on parole from the Broomstick Murders changed the third largest criminal justice system in the United States.

The first volume featuring the most infamous killers throughout history—from Afghanistan’s Abdullah Shah to Kazakh cannibal Nikolai Dzhumagaliev. The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers is the most comprehensive set of its kind in the history of true crime publishing. Written and compiled by Susan Hall, the four-volume set has more than 1600 entries of male and female serial killers from around the world. Defined by the FBI as a person who murders three or more people over a period of time with a hiatus of weeks or months between murders, serial killers have walked among us from the dawn of time as these books will demonstrate. While the entries to these volumes will continue to grow—the FBI estimates that there are at least fifty serial killers operating in the United States at any given time—The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers is as complete as possible through the end of 2017. The set begins with Volume One, Letters A–D. The entries include Ted Bundy, the Candyman Dean Corll, Angel of Death killer Donald Harvey, the ABC Killer, and the Bodies in the Barrels Murders. You will find these killers and approximately five-hundred others in this first book in the series of The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.

Examines the life of serial killer Kenneth McDuff.

The latest installment in the Confidential series, Texas Confidential pokes at the seamy underbelly of the Lone Star State, where folks do everything -- including sex, scandal, murder, and mayhem -- in a big way. Author Michael J. Varhola rounds up more than 40 Texas tales -- from the rogues who defended the Alamo to the rogues who brought down Enron. Along the way, readers learn the sordid details of sex -- from Miss Hattie's Bordello in West Texas (now a museum!) to "Charlie Wilson's Whore" scandal -- from corrupt governors "Ma" and "Pa" Ferguson to corrupt politicians Lyndon Johnson and Tom DeLay; murder -- from Bonnie and Clyde to the Kennedy Assassination to the over-zealous cheerleader mom; and mayhem -- from the crash of a UFO in 1897 in the little town of Aurora to Nazi war criminals hiding in El Paso (while working for the local government). Packed with pictures and loaded with sidebars, Texas Confidential is informative, irreverent, and enormously entertaining.

Fans of Mindhunter and true crime podcasts will devour these chilling stories of serial killers from the American "Golden Age" (1950-2000). With books like Serial Killers, Female Serial Killers and Sons of Cain, Peter Vronsky has established himself as the foremost expert on the history of serial killers. In this first definitive history of the "Golden Age" of American serial murder, when the number and body count of serial killers exploded, Vronsky tells the stories of the most unusual and prominent serial killings from the 1950s to the early twenty-first century. From Ted Bundy to the Golden State Killer, our fascination with these classic serial killers seems to grow by the day. American Serial Killers gives true crime junkies what they crave, with both perennial favorites (Ed Kemper, Jeffrey Dahmer) and lesser-known cases (Melvin Rees, Harvey Glatman).

Provides statements and quotes from a number of convicted serial killers in an effort to understand the homicidal mind.

On a cold, windy December night in 1926, hell was unleashed on a tenant farm near Farwell, the last Texas town before the New Mexico border. Prone to the bottle and fits of rage, the burly man with the smiling blue eyes was in no mood to quarrel with his third wife over his bootleg whisky and sexual abuse of his stepdaughter. He went from room to room in the house, killing his wife and each child with primitive cutting tools and his bare hands. By the time he concluded his bloody work, he had taken the lives of nine family members ranging in age from 2 to 41, committing what one local reporter called “the blackest crime” in the history of the West Texas Panhandle. Husband, father, uncle, embezzler, serial mass murderer, philanderer, child molester, convict, and military deserter, George Jefferson Hassell was many things to many people, most of them bad. His pattern of familicide crime had begun in 1917, when he slaughtered his common-law wife and her three kids in Whittier, California. Later, in Texas, he married his brother’s wife and became stepfather to her eight children. Using Hassell’s confessions and his many interviews with reporters as well as the trial transcripts and reminiscences of those who crossed paths with him in Texas, Oklahoma, and California, Mitchel P. Roth presents the first comprehensive account of the life and crimes of one of the least known multiple murderers in Texas, let alone American, history. Roth situates Hassell’s saga within the 1920s Texas criminal justice system, including the death penalty, which Hassell ultimately received from Old Sparky, the electric chair at Huntsville.

“A true-crime page-turner.... Lowry exhausts every possible scenario behind the shocking, unsolved quadruple murder ... and offers a theory on what really happened.” —New York Post "Gripping, moving, and as good as any depiction of a murder case since In Cold Blood.... Brilliant." —Ann Patchett, award-winning, bestselling author The facts are brutally straightforward. On December 6, 1991, the naked, bound-and-gagged, burned bodies of four girls—each one shot in the head—were found in a frozen yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. Grief, shock, and horror overtook the city. But after eight years of misdirected investigations, only two suspects (teenagers at the time of the crime) were tried; their convictions were later overturned and detectives are still working on what is now a very cold case. The story has grown to include DNA technology, coerced false confessions, and other developments in crime and punishment. But this story belongs to the scores of people involved, and from them Beverly Lowry has fashioned a riveting saga that reads like a novel, heart-stopping and thoroughly engrossing.

As you will discover by reading this book, the term "stranger danger" is not only misleading to children, it actually does more harm than good. By the constant reminder that a child encounters by media, adults and television programs about never talking to strangers, children are often left confused and powerless of how to deal with the many strangers they come across on a day to day bases. Secondly, this book aims to teach children to become aware of their instincts (feelings of uneasiness, suspicion or otherwise their apprehension) when it is appropriate and important to do so and when it comes to people and situations they encounter as they go about their lives. Not just people of whom they do not know (strangers), but also of people of whom they may already know. Finally, this book is in two parts: The first part are the three short stories of Polly, a fictional character, that describes in detail certain dilemmas she encounters when she becomes lost, first at a grocery store, next at the fair and then in the third story, the close encounter she experiences of nearly being abducted by a stranger. The stories go into detail about the positive aspects that Polly took each time to protect herself in each case scenario. The encounters are based on a realistic chain of circumstances. The second part of this book is aimed towards parents to look at self-protection strategies suggested by some of the world's most prestigious experts on the subject of child safety and the criminal mind.