Montana Murders: Notorious and Vanished

Montana Murders: Notorious and Vanished
Author: Brian D'Ambrosio
Publisher: Riverbend
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-04-02
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9781606391433

This book examines 25 chilling cases of vanishings and murders from the 1970s to present day.

The Royal Wulff Murders

The Royal Wulff Murders
Author: Keith McCafferty
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2012-02-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101560347

The first novel in the clever and fast-paced Sean Stranahan Mystery Series. When a fishing guide reels in the body of a young man on the Madison, the Holy Grail of Montana trout rivers, Sheriff Martha Ettinger suspects foul play. It's not just the stick jammed into the man's eye that draws her attention; it's the Royal Wulff trout fly stuck in his bloated lower lip. Following her instincts, Ettinger soon finds herself crossing paths with Montana newcomer Sean Stranahan. Fly fisher, painter, and has-been private detective, Stranahan left a failed marriage and lackluster career to drive to Montana, where he lives in an art studio decorated with fly-tying feathers and mouse droppings. With more luck catching fish than clients, Stranahan is completely captivated when Southern siren Velvet Lafayette walks into his life, intent on hiring his services to find her missing brother. The clues lead Stranahan and Ettinger back to Montana's Big Business: fly fishing. Where there's money, there's bound to be crime.

To Kill and Kill Again

To Kill and Kill Again
Author: John Coston
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1504041291

The twelve-year rampage of “Missoula Mauler” Wayne Nance—and the shocking end to his murder spree To his neighbors, Wayne Nance, a furniture mover from Missoula, Montana, appeared to be an affable, considerate, and trustworthy guy. No one knew that Nance was the “Missoula Mauler,” a psychopath responsible for a series of sadistic sex slayings that rocked the idyllic town between 1974 and 1986. Nance’s only requirement for murder was accessibility—a preacher’s wife, a teenage runaway, a female acquaintance, a married couple. Putting on a friendly façade, he could easily gain his victims’ trust. Then, one September night, thirty-year-old Nance pushed his luck, preying on a couple who lived to tell the tale. A true story with an incredible twist, written by former Wall Street Journal editor John Coston and complete with photos, To Kill and Kill Again reveals the disturbing compulsions of a charming serial killer who fooled everyone he knew, stumped the authorities, terrified a community, and nearly got away with it.

Montana Murders

Montana Murders
Author: Brian D'Ambrosio
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2023-08-03
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1606391348

Award-winning Montana author Brian D'Ambrosio examines the most notorious murders in the state's history. Some are historical accounts from Montana's early Wild West history, but most are contemporary cases that shocked communities, investigators, and families. Many remain bafflingly unsolved. Some cases have been featured in national media, such as the famous and inexplicable murders of the parents of television's Patrick Duffy (Dallas) and the serial murders by the hermitic Unabomber. But D'Ambrosio also unearths gruesome, little known cold cases that haunt surviving families and friends to this day. Drawing on official investigative reports and numerous personal interviews with law enforcement officials, witnesses, and survivors, D'Ambrosio describes each murder like a good detective story. Readers will find riveting details about the murderers, their motives and methods, and their unfortunate victims. Includes 20 black and white photos.

The Gray Ghost Murders

The Gray Ghost Murders
Author: Keith McCafferty
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2013-02-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 110160607X

Montana’s favorite fly fisherman detective is back on the case in the second installment of the Sean Stranahan Mystery Series When the graves of two men are discovered on Sphinx Mountain, Sheriff Martha Ettinger suspects murder. But with the only evidence a hole in a skull that might or might not have been caused by a bullet, she once more finds herself turning to private investigator Sean Stranahan for help. Stranahan already has a case, having been hired by a group of eccentric fly fishermen called The Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club to find a valuable fly that they suspect has been stolen. Could the disappearance of a vintage Gray Ghost from a riverside cabin in the Madison Valley be connected to the gray ghosts who haunt Sphinx Mountain? Stranahan will cross paths, and arms, with some of the most powerful people in the valley to find out, in a novel that is sure to capture new fans for one of the mystery genre’s rising stars.

A Nearly Normal Family

A Nearly Normal Family
Author: M. T. Edvardsson
Publisher: Celadon Books
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250204429

Now a Netflix Limited Series "...A compulsively readable tour de force." —The Wall Street Journal New York Times Book Review recommends M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family and lauds it as a “page-turner” that forces the reader to confront “the compromises we make with ourselves to be the people we believe our beloveds expect.” (NYTimes Book Review Summer Reading Issue) M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family is a gripping legal thriller that forces the reader to consider: How far would you go to protect the ones you love? In this twisted narrative of love and murder, a horrific crime makes a seemingly normal family question everything they thought they knew about their life—and one another. Eighteen-year-old Stella Sandell stands accused of the brutal murder of a man almost fifteen years her senior. She is an ordinary teenager from an upstanding local family. What reason could she have to know a shady businessman, let alone to kill him? Stella’s father, a pastor, and mother, a criminal defense attorney, find their moral compasses tested as they defend their daughter, while struggling to understand why she is a suspect. Told in an unusual three-part structure, A Nearly Normal Family asks the questions: How well do you know your own children? How far would you go to protect them?

Murder Gone Cold

Murder Gone Cold
Author: B.J. Daniels
Publisher: Harlequin
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2022-03-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0369709675

Could his unsolved murder case reveal all of her family’s past secrets? When James Colt decides to solve his late father’s final murder case, he has no idea of the danger he’s unleashing. And Lorelei Wilkins can’t believe that her high school crush is implicating her stepmother! Now James and Lorelei are embroiled in unraveling a cover-up involving some of Lonesome, Montana’s finest citizens…including a killer determined to keep the truth hidden. From Harlequin Intrigue: Seek thrills. Solve crimes. Justice served. Discover more action-packed stories in the Colt Brothers Investigation series. All books are stand-alone with uplifting endings but were published in the following order: Book 1: Murder Gone Cold Book 2: Sticking To Her Guns

ShadowMan

ShadowMan
Author: Ron Franscell
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2022-03-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0593199278

"Mindhunter crossed with American Gothic. This chilling story has the ghostly unease of a nightmare."—Michael Cannell, author of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling The pulse-pounding account of the first time in history that the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit created a psychological profile to catch a serial killer On June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana campground where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of their tent and snatched her from under their noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished into thin air, plucked by a shadow. The largest manhunt in Montana’s history ensued, led by the FBI. As days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months, Special Agent Pete Dunbar attended a workshop at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virgina, led by two agents who had hatched a radical new idea: What if criminals left a psychological trail that would lead us to them? Patrick Mullany, a trained psychologist, and Howard Teten, a veteran criminologist, had created the Behavioral Science Unit to explore this new "voodoo" they called “criminal profiling.” At Dunbar’s request, Mullany and Teten built the FBI’s first profile of an unknown subject: the UnSub who had snatched Susie Jaeger and, a few months later, a nineteen-year-old waitress. When a suspect was finally arrested, the profile fit him to a T...