The murder casebook: Classic accounts of famous modern crimes - Edited by Colin Wilson

In The Murder Casebook, true crime historian Colin Wilson has collected first-hand accounts of the greatest cases of the modern era.

In the last century, the face of the criminal changed forever. From being the hit-and-miss affair of earlier years, crime detection was shaping itself into the sophisticated science it is today. By the 1930s, gangsters, profiteers, and lunatics were all falling into the hands of the police. A world of simple answers seemed to be possible. It was in the 1940s that we lost our innocence — for it was then that the age of the sex crime truly began.

The cases in this gripping collection include:

• Winnie Ruth Judd, caught trying to smuggle a dismembered corpse in her luggage
• Donald Fearn, who stalked and killed a young nurse because "I always wanted to torture a girl."
• Georges Sarret, the original Acid Bath killer
• Howard Unruh, first of the "crazy gunmen", who murdered twelve people inside of twelve minutes
• William Heirens, who scrawled on his victim’s wall, "For heaven’s sake, catch me before I kill more – I cannot control myself."