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Book 'Em: The Road Out of Hell

( )
NEW YORK (CBS) As a child of thirteen, Sanford Clark was sent from his home in Canada to live with his uncle, Gordon Stewart Northcott, on a chicken ranch in Wineville, California. It was there that Sanford discovered that his uncle was evil and a rapist and murderer.

Written by acclaimed crime writer Anthony Flacco, with Jerry Clark, Sanford Clark's son, providing a primary resource, The Road Out of Hell reveals the untold story of the Wineville murders that are featured in the Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie film, Changeling.

During the two years that Sanford was held captive at the murder ranch in the late 1920's, he endured psychological and sexual torture and terrible beatings. Kept in a battered and dazed condition, Sanford was forced to participate in the murders of three young boys and to dispose of the other victims' bodies according to Northcott's instructions.

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Book 'Em: It Happens Every Day

(CBS/Prometheus Books)
NEW YORK (CBS) According to crime statistics from the Department of Justice, 67 percent of sexual assault victims in 2008 were juveniles and an astonishing 93 percent of these victims knew their attackers. When Robin Sax worked as a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County specializing in sex crimes against children, she personally reviewed at least five new cases every day.

What really happens when law enforcement decides to prosecute a child sexual assault case? In this frank and informative book, It Happens Every Day: Inside the World of a Sex Crimes D.A., Sax shows readers how the criminal justice system works in terms you rarely hear about on the news. She assesses what's right and what needs to be changed.

Dividing the work into two parts, she begins with "Behind the One-Way Mirror," which deals with the investigation of child sexual assault.

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Book 'Em: Mommy's Little Girl -- Casey Anthony and her Daughter Caylee's Tragic Fate

(CBS/St. Martins True Crime )
NEW YORK (CBS) In the summer of 2008, two-year-old Caylee Anthony was reported missing. Five months later, her body was found near the family home in Orlando, Florida. In MOMMY'S LITTLE GIRL: Casey Anthony and her Daughter Caylee's Tragic Fate, Diane Fanning goes behind the headlines to provide a heartbreaking account of a case that shocked the nation.

It's an account based on thousands of pages of police transcripts and reports, and other official documents, as well as taped interviews and on-site research.

When news broke of Caylee Anthony's disappearance, there was a huge outpouring of sympathy. The search made front-page headlines. But there was one huge question mark hanging over the case: the toddler's mother.

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Book 'Em: Shattered Silence

(CBS/Cedar Fort, Inc.)
NEW YORK (CBS) When Melissa Moore's father took her for extended summer vacations throughout Oregon and Washington in the early 90s, he shared with her grisly details of what he called 'perfect' murders. She had no way of knowing the shocking truth: that these were not fictional stories from his detective novels and magazines, but were, in fact, actual slayings, perpetrated by the hands of her own father.

Melissa's father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, is known to have committed eight murders. When others were given 'credit' for one of those killings, he got agitated and started writing letters to police and media with clues that only the killer could know. With each new victim, he'd send out another anonymous letter, signed with a smiley face. It earned him an unsettling sobriquet: the "Happy Face Serial Killer."

Jesperson continued his killing spree until March 1995, when he was incarcerated for the murder of his girlfriend, Julie Winningham.

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Book 'Em: The Snakehead

(CBS/Doubleday )
NEW YORK (CBS) Patrick Radden Keefe's THE SNAKEHEAD: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream, is a true crime thriller about the rise and fall of an unlikely international crime boss, steeped in the American immigrant saga.

When the Golden Venture ran aground off a New York City beach in 1993 transporting 300 near-starving illegal immigrants, federal officials and the NYPD realized they had a huge criminal operation to unravel. Little did they know it would all lead back to an unassuming middle-aged grandmother known as Sister Ping, running an underground smuggling empire out of her hole-in-the-wall Chinatown noodle shop.

She built a complex -- and often vicious -- global conglomerate, relying heavily on familial ties, and employing one of Chinatown's most violent gangs to protect her power and profits, which grew to $40 million. Sister Ping's ingenuity and drive were awe-inspiring not only to the Chinatown community -- where she was revered as a homegrown Don Corleone -- but also to the law enforcement officials who could never quite catch her.

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Book 'Em: Held Hostage

(Penguin/CBS)
NEW YORK (CBS) HELD HOSTAGE: The True Story of a Mother and Daughter's Kidnapping by Michelle Renee with Andrea Cagan is the first-person account of a mother's daring bank heist to save her daughter from a deadly fate.

In November 2000, Michelle Renee, an Assistant Vice President at Bank of America, was home playing video games with her seven-year-old daughter, Breea, when three masked gunmen broke into her southern California hilltop house. Tormented by their captors, duct taped and wrapped with explosives, they were threatened with murder if Michelle didn't empty the vault of the bank she managed.

After an intense 14 hours held hostage, Michelle executed the robbery of her own bank. But this was just the beginning of her nightmare. Michelle's involvement was called into question as the hunt ensued to capture the gunmen. On top of the post-event trauma, Michelle even became a suspect.

In this riveting personal account, Michelle tells the story behind her and Breea's harrowing ordeal, the inside details of the bank heist, the threat of death forcing her to confront a turbulent past, and the dramatic trial of the gunmen, in which defense attorneys presented a sensational version of events that stunned everyone. HELD HOSTAGE challenges familiar notions of what is right, what is true, what is ethical, and what it takes to survive.




Interview with Michelle Renee by Barry Leibowitz, Senior Writer at 48 Hours | Mystery

What has been the most difficult challenge to overcome since the crime?

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Aide to Danielle Steel Stole Half Million From Millionaire Novelist

(AP Photo )
Author Danielle Steel on July 17, 2008.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) The queen of drama novels now has a bit of it in her own life.

A former aide to Danielle Steel is facing time in federal prison after admitting she stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the romance novelist.

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Randy Quaid Mug Shot: Happy as Clam After Arrest

(Presidio County Sheriff Dept.)
Mug Shot: Eve and Randy Quaid

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) The mug shots of actor Randy Quaid and his wife Eve have been released by the Presidio County Sheriff's Department in Texas, and it looks like the couple had an excellent time on their "free" vacation.

The couple was in custody on Thursday after a warrant was issued for their arrest for skipping out on a $10,000 hotel bill in California. The felony warrant from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department is for burglary, defrauding an innkeeper and conspiracy.

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Book 'Em: Seven Days of Rage - The Deadly Crime Spree of the Craigslist Killer

(CBS/Pocket)
NEW YORK (CBS) When Manhattan model and masseuse Julissa Brisman agreed to meet a client at the Boston Marriott Copley Place Hotel, she thought it would be a routine day on her road to recovering from an alcohol addiction. Instead, she was discovered lying face down in a pool of blood on a hallway carpet, her head battered, a bullet through her heart.

Compressed into one week—and now packed into the new book SEVEN DAYS OF RAGE: THE DEADLY CRIME SPREE OF THE CRAIGSLIST KILLER—the story just kept unfolding: three vulnerable women, each cornered in a hotel room, one of them murdered when she resisted.

The images of the suspect are jarring: an all-American handsome young man who could be the guy next door, clean-cut and casually dressed. Police detectives matched his gun and fingerprints to the crimes, and following a trail of digital bread crumbs, they arrested twenty-three-year-old Philip Markoff-- a brilliant, well-regarded medical student at Boston University, engaged to be married on the beach at sunset to a beautiful and trusting fianc?e.

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New Book Says Alleged Craigslist Killer Had Bondage and S&M Fantasies

(CBS)
Photo: Philip Markoff.

NEW YORK (CBS) Who is accused Craigslist killer Phillip Markoff, what are his sexual desires and how did police use Internet technology to track him down? Those are the questions a new book written by two crime reporters hopes to answer.

The intimate details Paul Larosa, a veteran producer for CBS News' 48 Hours Mystery and Maria Cramer, a Boston Globe reporter, have dug up in "Seven Days of Rage," tantalize.

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