Showing results by narrator "Nick Landrum" in True Crime

Charles Manson was an unlikely messiah. Freshly paroled, he stumbled into San Francisco in 1967 just as thousands of impressionable young people were streaming into town for the Summer of Love. Posing as a musician-cum-guru-cum-Christ-figure, Manson built a commune cult of hippies, consisting mainly of troubled young women. But what made this group set out on the four-week killing spree that claimed seven lives? Former journalism professor David J. Krajicek seeks to discover just that.

A hired killer on his final job, a burned out detective whose wife is dying slowly, a young boy abandoned by his parents and living alone by his wits. The detective is looking for the killer, Christian, though he doesn't know that. And the boy, Jimmie, is having the killer's dreams. While they never meet, they are inextricably linked; as their stories unfold, all find the solace of community.

Can you predict killing sprees? What do mass killers have in common? Why do so many of them write manifestos online, and what do these tell us? These are some of the questions David J. Krajicek seeks to answer about mass killings, a topic that is becoming increasingly urgent and desperate. In recent decades, mass shootings worldwide have increased in their savagery and frequency.