Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods

Powerful celebrity marries two women, tires of them and has them killed: intrigue and passion and death filled the daily lives of the British royal family.

Quite by accident, federal agents learned of his terabytes of electronic files was Pellicano's work as Hollywood's wiretapper to the stars, illegally intercepted telephone conversations of the rich and famous. Some of these wiretaps were ordered by powerful attorneys and executives seeking an unfair advantage in legal disputes. Some of the intercepted conversations concerned personal matters, like divorce and child custody disputes. Much of it was business as usual, Hollywood-style. All of it was obtained illegally.

Stalker targets popular British television personality Jill Dando for death.

The star of Hogan's Heroes and subject of the new movie Auto Focus was a sex addict and a blabbermouth about his myriad of sexual conquests. His murder remains mysterious.

A deathbed confession and suspicious circumstances suggest that the death of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones might have been a murder.

Juanita Slusher, a runaway teen from Edna, Texas earned herself the title of America's first porn princess, but that was just the beginning of a life lived on the front pages.

She had a long, profitable career as a marquee stripper. She canoodled with the rich and famous, including infamous mobster Mickey Cohen. A marijuana arrest made her a touchstone figure in the "Reefer Madness" of the 1950s. As a confidante of Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, she was interrogated by authorities about the assassination of President Kennedy.

The success of a star parent may play some role in how his or her children turn out, but probably the most important factor is the care and nurturing the children receive from their parents as they grow. An unbalanced or eccentric star likely breeds unbalanced and eccentric children. One of the most capricious stars ever is Marlon Brando, and few families have experienced more pain and suffering than Brando's. Suicide, homicide, addiction and violence have all touched the Brandos, and the actor himself took some of the blame for how his children turned out.

Christian Brando, one of Brando's ten children, was born shortly before his parents divorced, and grew up shunting back and forth between his two parents, whose relationship was openly hostile and bilaterally abusive. Christian struggled with alcohol and drugs and had a nasty temper when under the influence.

Christian was often expected to be the parent for some of Brando's other children and he developed a special relationship with his half-sister Cheyenne, who was intelligent and beautiful. But no amount of Hollywood power or wealth could protect Cheyenne from her family history of alcoholism and mental illness. She became even more dependent on drugs after a serious automobile accident scarred her face and ended a promising modeling career.

She became pregnant by her longtime boyfriend, Dag Drollet, the son of a prominent Tahitian family. Drollet stood by her during her fights with depression, schizophrenia and chemical abuse, but eventually he separated from her. Angry with the man who dared break up with her, Cheyenne weaved a tale of domestic assault and mental cruelty and brother Christian believed her.

In the next bizarre turn of events, Christian fatally shoots Dag and provides Marlon Brando with a very big problem and an opportunity to try to save his children from themselves.

Was this very famous playwright murdered because he was a spy, didn't pay his bar bill, or because he called Jesus and his disciples a group of promiscuous homosexuals? Dr. Russell Aiuto presents the evidence.

Claudine Longet, the pretty French songbird, and handsome, virile ski star Spider Sabich were a beautiful couple. That is, until he was at hot end of a smoking gun and she was at the other. During the funeral, she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and now and then her shoulders convulsed.

On one hand, she had a right to be there. No one doubted that Spider had once been in love with Longet. On the other hand, she was utterly out of place. She was, after all, the woman who killed him.

She said it was an accident. His friends and family were not so sure.

A search for the truth would play out over the ensuing year. Before the last breathless gossip was whispered and the final expose written, the Sabich-Longet affair would develop into one of the decade's most riveting celebrity spectacles.

Claus von Bulow: Danish gentleman is convicted of trying to murder his beautiful heiress wife with an insulin injection. Sunny's children and maid firmly believed that he turned her into a living vegetable to get access to her money so he could carry on with his mistress.

But enter Alan Dershowitz, legendary appeals attorney, who in von Bulow's second trial reveals Sunny as "a self-destructive, deeply depressed, and addictive woman who experimented with drugs not prescribed for her, and who continued to engage in life-threatening behavior after experiencing life-threatening emergencies and after being warned by doctors to desist."

Rap artist "C-Murder" is convicted of the 2002 murder of an underage fan in a fight at the Platinum Club. In 2006, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturns his conviction and life sentence, but he may stand trial again. Still under house arrest, his retrial date postponed indefinitely, Miller's still has plans to release a new CD and a book.

Hard-charging ambitious Ruthann Aron loses her moral compass when she looks for a contract killer to rid herself of people who get in the way of achieving her objectives.

From a modest start as a waitress in her father's diner, Ruthann rises to power and wealth in Montgomery County, Maryland, an important suburb of Washington, D.C. But the power goes to her head and she starts making business decisions that land her in court. Her ambition seems to know no bounds when she takes aim at unseating entrenched politicians with dubious campaign tactics. Finally, she embraces contract killing as a way to get what she wants.

Carl Switzer, the star of the Our Gang comedy series, was killed by a friend. Was it murder or justifiable homicide?

Talented and educated Debbie rekindled her on-again-off-again relationship with Vegas dancer Jason 'Blu' Griffiths. Though there were warning signs, nobody guessed at the violence that lurked just below the surface.

Celebrity naturalists & author of Gorillas in the Mist is horribly murdered by a machete. A new politically prominent suspect named Mr. Z. is uncovered.

Master of the horror story, father of the detective whodunnit and famous American poet died suddenly. Everyone assumed that he drank himself to death, but the facts of the case point to murder.

Beloved comedian is charged with the rape and murder of the beautiful, but promiscuous, actress Virginia Rappe. It takes three different trials to sort out what really happened at the wild party at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel.

The Murder-suicide of Jasmine Fiore and Ryan Jenkins.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland tours "America's Most Haunted" — scenes where ghosts of past crimes still roam the earth.

Spirits of the murdered and the murderers are often trapped in the circumstances of their death or of the crime they committed. Originally published as a sequel to the very popular first Halloween special called Haunted Crime Scenes, our second special tour has just been updated with the story of a famous serial killer's ghost which is haunting another killer.

At 27 she was the talk of Hollywood. Some of LA's most beautiful women worked for her high-end prostitution service, specifically catering to the elite. One of the city's most prosperous madams, netting millions in just a couple years, suddenly found her business was under threat.

Now the intrepid Heidi has revealed plans for a stud farm, a brothel with 20 $250/hour male prostitutes that cater to women.

Disappearance and probable murder of Brach Candy heiress is solved after long investigation. New theories presented.

The logo for Death Row Records is a blindfolded black man strapped into an electric chair at the moment of execution. Death Row is the label that made rappers such as Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre, and Tupac Shakur famous, and its logo is emblematic of the violent posturing adopted by many gangsta rap artistsnot just Death Row artistsin their quest to sell their music.

A rapper's public face is frequently a gangbanger's scar face, whether he has a genuine gang affiliation or not. But as rap's popularity grew in the 1990s, the violent posturing turned real. Tales of beatings and public humiliations surfaced. Rappers slandered one another with increasing viciousness and frequency. An East Coast-West Coast feud developed, pitting Death Row Records, which is based in southern California, against New York's Bad Boy Entertainment. The feud eventually escalated from a battle of words to a bloody war. Its two most prominent casualties were the rival rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

Who killed Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G and were they really the intended victims? Get the scoop on the suspects, motive and theories.

Initially actor George Reeves' fatal gunshot wound was ruled a suicide. His very popular Superman series had been cancelled and he was naturally despondent, but forensic evidence suggests that it wasn't a suicide at all, but a very clever murder.

After causing a DUI collision that killed a young man, wealthy polo club owner John Goodman learns that you can't always buy your way out of trouble.

Career criminal writes best seller after Norman Mailer discovers his literary genius, but his good fortune is short-lived.

The twisted tale of how a group of middle-class friends in Southern California fell under the spell of a charismatic and disturbed leader with the improbable name of a wild west outlaw. The young men's actions would lead to the murder of a child, Nick Markowitz, leave a community reeling from grief and shock, and spawn a four-year international manhunt.

Waist-up, Holmes wasn't much to look at. He was a 6'1" beanpole, but he had 12 ½ inches of hidden charm that was as thick around as a man's wrist the kind of dimensions that women fantasize about, but few enjoy.

To understand how the blue film actor wound up at the center of the "Wonderland Murders," a quadruple murder investigation, you must first trace Holmes' meteoric rise to stardom, and his equally impressive fall from it.

It was a half-baked, amateur plot that, incredibly enough, succeeded. It was only when one of the accomplices couldn't hold his tongue that the gig was up.

1978 assassination attempt on Hustler magazine publisher leaves him in chronic excruciating pain, but does not dampen his enthusiasm for outrageous court fights in the name of defending the First Amendment.

Did this film legend die of an accidental overdose of sedatives? Did she commit suicide? Or did she become such a liability to her lovers John and Robert Kennedy that she had to be murdered?

Sometime after 10 p.m. on August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe slipped into a coma caused by an overdose of sleeping pills. She would never regain consciousness. Shortly after she was discovered, a bizarre set of activities took place in her Brentwood home. Some items were allegedly removed, including a diary and an incriminating note which could have far-reaching implications, if discovered.

Exactly how and when Marilyn Monroe died sparked a debate that would last more than 40 years and generate many theories, including that of murder. Some of these theories even implicated John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert in the mysterious death. While suicide is the official cause of death and probably the most widely believed, too many forensic facts are at odds with it. Although she experienced mood swings from time to time, she was in good spirits at the time of her death, planning to remarry Joe DiMaggio and making plans for future events and movies.

Two wealthy men born of privilege cook up a swashbuckling scheme to take over an oil-rich African country.

Marketed as Motown's lover man, he beat the women he loved. He sang soulful romance, yet forced his wives into degrading sex. All this ended, after he attacked his father who then shot and killed him.

Michael Alig mixed sex, designer drugs and the new sound of House music into the heady cocktail of the Club Kids scene of 1990s Manhattan. But when the party became Alig's entire life, it went fatally out of bounds.

Wealthy young man entered American lore, joining a pantheon of missing persons that includes Ambrose Bierce, Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa and D.B. Cooper. As with each of the other lost luminaries, various theories about his fate have been floated over the years.

Did he simply drown, as his family concluded? Or did he decide to go native and lose himself in the jungles of New Guinea? Was he a meal for a shark or a crocodile? Or, in the most sensational speculative twist, was he a pale human trophy for New Guinean headhunters?

Wealthy and well-loved couple murdered on their yacht at sea. The case goes cold, but ultimately police close in on a former child actor as the mastermind of this brutal double murder.

Was he poisoned or did he die of stomach cancer? The controversy lives on. Dr. Russell Aiuto looks at the evidence and who may have been the murderer.

Movie by Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone pits him in court against best selling novelist John Grisham when two drug-addicted young adults are inspired by the movie to go on a killing spree that leaves a man dead and a mother permanently disabled.

This may be considered the crime of the last century. t became the most publicized case in US history. It cost over $20 million to fight and defend, ran up 50,000 pages of trial transcript and called 150 witnesses.

No movie or television courtroom drama would have dared to unfold the way this one did, and it was not without coincidence that it evolved in Los Angeles, so often referred to by cynics as "La La Land." The rest of the country became obsessed with the empty, celebrity-dominated West Los Angeles backdrop to the crime.

To many, particularly in minority communities, the trial of Orenthal James Simpson became not so much a determination of his guilt or innocence of murder in the first degree, beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether or not a black man could find justice in a legal system designed by and largely administered by whites. To others, many of whom were white, the key question was whether a mostly minority jury would convict a black celebrity regardless of the weight of evidence against him.

More than 10 years after the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, the former football star continues to stir controversy. Analysis of the murder and road rage trials, and forensics.

Popular film and Broadway actor was having an affair with Dorothy Mackaye, an extremely successful actress. Everything changed when her husband, performer Ray Raymond, turned up dead.

Paul Kelly was merely a dear friend, the new widow insisted, despite the fact they had spent nights together at his Hollywood Hills home and exchanged gushing love letters.

"Well, you see," Mackaye explained to a highly skeptical American public, "Hollywood is different. We accept violations of convention because it is all right for us--that is, professional people are less conventional, more sophisticated." She described her relationship with Kelly as "clean, beautiful and platonic."

Eccentric music genius is charged with the murder of Lana Clarkson, a fading movie actress. The trial revolves around whether Spector, in one of his alcohol-fueled rages, put a loaded gun in Lana's mouth and pulled the trigger or whether she was despondent and desperate enough to have committed suicide.

America's most beloved celebs struggle with prescription drugs... many lose the battle.

The amazing true story of the man who was the prototype of Ian Fleming's James Bond character.

The full story behind the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley and the trial of her celebrity husband

Rich and powerful, eccentric and very arrogant, he shoplifted a chicken sandwich and was apprehended for the mutilation murder of an old man. This millionaire cross-dressing killer may have murdered his best friend and others as well.

Hard-working actor, singer and director is murdered just as he stages his comeback.

Brilliant and highly successful popular singer has a fatal flaw, his wandering eye. His love for the ladies was his downfall and the cause of his death.

Nephew and biographer Erik Greene says family is concerned about the way Sam Cooke has been portrayed which is contrary to what they knew about their famous relative.

Sid Vicious, born John Simon Richie, joined London's Sex Pistols band in 1977 and was still in his teens when they became one of the top bands in Britain. Ironically they were making money hand over fist as the icons of rebellion, the heart and soul of a generation alienated from rampant capitalism

The femme fatale was Nancy Spungen, very troubled young woman from a well-off Philadelphia family, who was determined to bed this young Sex Pistols celebrity, and bed him she did with a vengeance. Nobody could stand her as friends watched Sid become dominated by her. Ultimately he'd go cuckoo when he wasn't' with her.

Finally, their lives became classic co-dependencies: heroin and each other, until one morning she was found stabbed to death and he was charged with her murder.

Immensely successful self-made Sir Harry Oakes is murdered and suspicion reaches to Nassau's wealthiest socialites, including the Duke of Windsor.

Wildly successful country music band leader shocks Hollywood with brutal murder of his wife.

It could have been a scene from "The Sopranos" except it was real. Two members of the Mafia and an associate had met to discuss the shakedown of a Hollywood movie star. The actor was Steven Seagal, a martial artist who specialized in playing tough-guy heroes on the big screen.

It wasn't Seagal's first meeting with these men. In December 2000, the same group had showed up in Toronto on the set of Seagal's film, Exit Wounds. This time they brought along 350-pound Richard "the Lump" Bondi, an enforcer for the family, hoping to get their point across to the actor. Seagal had severed his relationship with Jules Nasso, having decided to stop making violent action films on the advice of his spiritual guru. But Ciccone and company weren't interested in Seagal's spiritual awakening. Nasso had already lined up four action-adventure projects for himGenghis Khan, Blood on the Moon, Smash and Grab, and Prince of Central Parkall of them in the slam-bang style that had made Seagal famous. The Gambino family wanted him to keep making action films, and they also wanted him to pay them $150,000 for each of his futures projects.

Her rise from an abused child to the reigning princess of porn was cut short by a crackdown on child porn stars. Undaunted, she re-engineered herself into a successful TV & movie star.

An overview of the Murray trial, from opening statements to verdict.

The surprising death of a legendary racehorse worth tens of millions of dollars at a celebrated horse farm in debt more than a hundred million raises the question: Who killed Alydar?

Her short life as a professional mistress was one of luxury paid by wealthy, Reagan confident, Alfred Bloomingdale. The department store heir and credit card magnate paid her handsomely for years to engage in all manner of kinky S&M sexcapades with groups of prostitutes. After Bloomingdale's death, things went downhill, culminating in her brutal bludgeoning death a year later.

More than fifteen years after Washington, D.C., police ruled the shooting death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster a suicide, conspiracy theories and controversies continue to swirl about the case.

William Desmond Taylor

One of Hollywood's most successful directors is murdered. Before police arrive, a studio exec goes through his house searching for evidence of scandal, may have planted monogrammed underwear with a famous actress's initials. What is the studio trying to hide? Who of the many suspects had a motive for murder? The detailed story. But some experts discount the rumors that swirled around the popular director and the cast of characters. Another view of the case focuses on confirmed facts.

Kennedy cousin's continuous problems with women -- the whole story.

Twentieth Century newspaper baron had a large party on his 280-foot yacht. Thomas Ince, a talented director and producer whose star was fading, was invited to discuss a merger with Hearst interests. Also invited was Hearst's mistress, the young actress, Marion Davies, and her rumored paramour, Charlie Chaplin. Ince was carried off the boat and died two days later. Rumors abounded that Hearst had shot him, mistaking him for Charlie Chaplin, who was carrying on with Marion Davies and other very young women.

Ann Woodward blasted her wealthy banker husband with both barrels of a shotgun while he walked naked through his mansion. The killing, dubbed the "shooting of the century" by Life Magazine was a tragedy that extracted payment from the family long after the official investigation ended.

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