True Crime Reading List

When I hit a fiction slump I turn to true crime to unblock my reading brain. There’s been a lot of that over the past few months so I thought I’d share my recent reading list.

• 

• 

Murder on Easey Street by Helen Thomas

Melbourne’s most notorious cold case

In 1977 two young women sharing a home in a suburb of Melbourne were brutally killed while the baby of one of the women was sleeping in his room. The author was a junior reporter at the time and was involved in covering the case, and has gone back to look at the evidence again. There are lots of contradictions, neighbours whom the police didn’t ever interview, and so many questions. Was it a random attack? If not, which of the women was the target, or was it both of them? Why was the killer never caught? Particularly interesting in looking at how the Australian police tended to operate at the time.

Dark Side of the Mind by Kerry Daynes

Kerry is a forensic psychologist, trying to understand why people convicted of crimes behave the way they do. She appears on TV in the Uk fairly often in true crime documentaries and has real insight into the cases she discusses. The book is partly an explanation of the purpose of forensic psychology and how the work is carried out, but more importantly, it’s a memoir of what it’s like to be a woman working in this field.

Memorable quotes:

Paul was in the approximately 10 per cent of all victims who are men killed by the women in their life. Just 1 per cent of victims are women killed by other women. Research also tells us over and over that when men kill their female partners or ex-partners, it usually follows months or years of them abusing her. On the other hand, when women kill their husbands or exes, it’s usually after months or years of having been abused by the man they have killed.

UK criminologists estimate that a maximum of four serial killers are operating in this country at any given time (which is fairly good news or utterly terrifying, depending on your point of view).

Misogyny – an ingrained prejudice against and contempt for women and girls – is one of the few human conditions that hasn’t yet been declared a mental illness. Probably because, if it were, it would be a pandemic.

• 

• 

The Forest City Killer by Vanessa Brown

50 years ago a serial killer was active in London, Ontario, abducting, raping and murdering young women and boys. Focussing on the unsolved case of a young woman called Jackie English, the author considers who may have committed those crimes. Was it one person? And if so, could he still be alive and capable of being identified through familial DNA similar to the Golden State Killer?

Hell in the Heartland by Jax Miller

At the end of 1999 in rural Oklahoma, two girls, Ashley & Lauria, were having a sleepover. By the next morning, Ashley’s parents had been murdered, their trailer home on fire and the girls were missing. What was behind all of this? Ashley’s brother had been shot by police and there was bad blood between the Sherriff’s office and the family as a result. There were strong rumours of police corruption. There was significant drug use in the area, particularly crystal meth, which through up some potential suspects. The case went cold until 2018 when some arrests were made. Jax Miller has written a powerful book in which her experiences investigating this crime are just as important as the crime itself.