True Crime Quotes

Sometimes women's attraction to true crime is dismissed as trashy and voyeuristic (because women are vapid!). Sometimes it is unquestioningly celebrated as feminist (because if women like something, then it must be feminist!). And some argue that women read about serial killers to avoid becoming victims. This is the most flattering theory - and also, it seemed to me, the most incomplete. By presuming that women's dark thoughts were merely pragmatic, those thoughts are drained of their menace. True crime wasn't something we women at CrimeCon were consuming begrudgingly, for our own good. We found pleasure in these bleak accounts of kidnappings and assaults and torture chambers, and you could tell by how often we fell back on the language of appetite, of bingeing, of obsession. A different, more alarming hypothesis was the one I tended to prefer: perhaps we liked creepy stories because something creepy was in us. ~ Rachel Monroe

I don't care if I'm the one who captures him. I just want bracelets on his wrists and a cell door slamming behind him. ~ Michelle McNamara

I believe that all sex offenders, and especially those with multiple allegations against them, should be made known to the locality where they live. ~ Stephen Richards

The Solent was one the worse stretches of sea in England; the current and tides were atrocious, but it was summer and this time the currents and tides were predictable. However, I did not know this; I picked a spot that I could see from the phone, where I would swim from. ~ Stephen Richards

I used self-injury as a coping mechanism to help me overcome the emotional stress that I was incapable of dealing with in any other way. Self-injury was a means of escape, a way to relieve the numbness, and an expression of the pain within me. Something that the police wouldn't care about. ~ Stephen Richards

One day soon, you'll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley, in Aloha, Oregon.

The doorbell rings.

No side gates are left open. You're long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell.

This is how it ends for you.

"You'll be silent forever, and I'll be gone in the dark," you threatened a victim once.

Open the door. Show us your face.

Walk into the light. ~ Michelle McNamara

All what stuck in my mind was what the judge had said, and that was during the assault there must have been some passive co-operation on my part. Added to the fact that the Wests had only been fined £25 each for each of the charges against them, a total of £100 was all that I was worth. ~ Stephen Richards

As dawn saw the lights of the mainland go out, I swam harder, pulling out all the stops in my swimming repertoire, even using my head to push the water aside. My tired muscles screamed at me to stop, but I took no notice and there, a few hundred yards away was what I could see was the shoreline, my pace doubled. ~ Stephen Richards

Here was the heart of dread. It was not fearsome. It was fetid, noxious, hopeless. A deep and exhausting misery, a crevasse so bottomless that, in the blackness, all one could make out were the contours of despair. ~ Laura Tillman

The basic human craving is for meaning. ~ Colin Argyle Thomson

Within just about every serial predator, there are two warring elements: A feeling of grandiosity, specialness, and entitlement, together with deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness and a sense that they have not gotten the breaks in life that they should ~ John E. Douglas

In the mind of the public, she seemed endowed with an almost supernatural power to commit heinous acts, no matter the time or place. ~ Alexis Coe

They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense ~ Truman Capote

Every obsession needs a room of its own. ~ Michelle McNamara

The police were actually adding to my pain and
suffering by pursuing me. If it had been Huntley doing that to me and I had the proof, I would have said, 'Hey, Mr Policeman, Huntley is giving me trouble here,' and then they might have sent him a letter, at the very least. ~ Stephen Richards

Time since my escape ticked by and the voices came to me. God Almighty and the Devil coaxed me onwards and stated that the edge of the forest was close at hand. The voices told me that they would search for me by air and put screws on the points and docks where there was access to the mainland. The voices also told me that the three prisons on the island would go on lock down until I was caught or wasn't. ~ Stephen Richards

When you make a Bargain with a devil you better follow through. ~ Gloria Gravitt Moulder

When Barlinnie's Prison doctor, Dr Danson, came to see Dingus, he turned in disgust at the state Dingus was left to lie in. Doctor Danson refused to treat him as he knew Dingus's injuries were life threatening, he told the top warden that Dingus would need to be rushed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary for emergency surgery. The screws in the seg block refused to listen to the doctor, they pushed and manhandled their own doctor out of Dingus's cell and threatened him with a severe beating if he made anything public about Dingus's injuries. ~ Stephen Richards

That high pitch scream emitted by Rose made me wince! Her ear bursting howls would stun me into silence as much as it silenced the eldest child in their home, eight-year-old Anna-Marie. ~ Stephen Richards

I know a lot of people were praying for us to find the arsenic. ~ Jeannie Walker

Before Mags became a household name across Scotland, it was during the mid Nineties when she became an avid anti-paedophile campaigner against paedophiles on the Raploch Estate, attracting media attention, even appearing on Robert Kilroy-Silk's morning TV show. At the height of her anti-paedophilic crusade, she led a howling mob of protesters to a hostel near her home where a known paedophile was staying. ~ Stephen Richards

If Mistery, Crime, Horror, True Crime, SuperNature, Fiction, Non-FIcition and many other categoris if they didn't exist, and people didn't find a way to relax. Nobody will be never on the way to reach the place where almost a lot of are now, people don't want normal life they want to view the life through a killer. ~ Deyth Banger

For some strange reason, I could feel my torso being pulled forwards and downwards. Not only did I have to swim in a forward direction, but I had to finish off my stroke by pushing downwards, a stroke that I Christened the Moyle Stroke. My arms felt so heavy and tired, my shoulders were on fire and my mind was gone. What was pulling me down, was it the Devil? My lower back screamed out in pain, my legs were dying and my strict swimming style had come down to me clawing at the water like drowning spider. ~ Stephen Richards

Colonialism's true crime was to turn the great Asiatic peoples into the outskirts of the West. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

Adrian (not sure if real Christian name?) was a PTI in Perth Prison before he came to work in the special units with us. Adrian was a gentleman, but he was also a very, very hard man that didn't take any shit. He is now working up in Inverness Prison, but I can tell you, this man can go for fun. I have witnessed him in action, I have been about all the diggers in Scotland ten times over and I would put this man up there with the best of them for a roll about with the prisoner. ~ Stephen Richards

In terms of going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction - in which I'll include memoir, biography, and true crime - is that one relieves the other. ~ Kathryn Harrison

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become. ~ Dan Chaon

Although my swimming stroke became powerful, I wrestled with the waves and I considered that if I were on the same path of the ferry then I'd be sucked under by the boat and be drowned. The sea was insistent in the direction I swam, washed onwards and there was not a sight or sound of any boats or shipping. ~ Stephen Richards

I could feel my legs folding and unfolding like powerful scissors, pushing against the very power that was trying to hold me back. I had to maintain control of myself, not allow the sea to intimidate me. If this was a binding exercise then the sea and I would be firm friends, but I couldn't allow it to be my equal. I screamed out aloud, 'I will not be beaten, you bastard!' Then I wondered how many people this sea had claimed as its own, how many were recovered dead and how many survived the hidden brutality? ~ Stephen Richards

It wasn't just Adnan being indicted at this grand jury proceeding, it wasn't just him being prosecuted. His faith, his ethnicity, his community--they were all on trial. ~ Rabia Chaudry

The rush I got from crime was better than that of glue, drink or hash. I loved playing cat and mouse with the local coppers. He Who Dares Wins, the SAS motto, was very applicable to my life then. ~ Stephen Richards

I am both nowhere and everywhere. You may not think you have something in common with your neighbor, but you do: me. I'm the barely spotted presence, the dark-haired, blond-haired, stocky, slight, seen from the back, glimpsed in half-light thread that will continue to connect you even as you fail to look out for each other. ~ Michelle McNamara

I could see the reflection of the moon on the water's surface, tantalisingly teasing me forward, that was my target ... swimming towards the moon and freedom. I could smell the brine and sense the power of the mass I was in, it engulfed me, yet I was one with it. ~ Stephen Richards

After running from pursuers a good part of my life, I was used to hiding in the shadows. But now, I was trying to save myself from the ultimate bully, my murderous father. ~ David Crow

'Fargo' becomes a metaphor for a type of true crime case where truth is stranger than fiction. So, there's no reason that there isn't another 10-hour true crime story that could be told in this region. ~ Noah Hawley

I had forgotten the fact that I had been raped, something no one would understand, how could anyone forget something as traumatic as being raped? ~ Stephen Richards

I'm a true-crime addict. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but I can't stop. ~ Gillian Flynn

I ended that letter, 'There is nothing in this life that is a complete tragedy - nothing - try to remember that.' Looking back, I wonder at my naiveté. Some things in life ARE complete tragedies. Ted Bundy's story may well be one of them. ~ Ann Rule

The sheriff peered over his eyeglasses and said, Your son is a suspect in the murder. ~ Jeannie Walker

When backed into a corner, a victim has two options: he can lie down and die, or, he can fight regardless of the odds. ~ Marc Schiller

Although I was in the cold water and my teeth were chattering, I could feel perspiration running down my forehead as visions of failure swan around in my head. Although I was not the first, I felt that I was the first and would celebrate when I'd accomplished my goal. My focus was on reaching the other side of the Solent. ~ Stephen Richards

Tell them I was arrested for carrying concealed ideas! ~ "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn

I keep telling the screws over and over again, 'If you treat a young boy in prison like a dog, keep him in a cell that is like a cage and constantly beat him and bully him, that boy is going to grow up hating yous and the system.' The only thing on his mind will be revenge, maybe it is not revenge on the screws that so frequently bullied and tortured him, but in the boy's eyes he is getting revenge on the uniform, as it all means the same thing in the boy's or man's eyes. ~ Stephen Richards

An unhappy woman with access to weed killer had to be watched carefully. ~ James Ruddick

I miss my dog," he wrote to Maria. "I don't really miss my mother." Dogs offer unconditional and nonjudgmental love. Mothers don't always. ~ John E. Douglas

The sea was washing me crosswise and the speed of my strokes pushed me forward, but at a slower pace than the sideways wash. The float that I had tied around my chest was more of a hindrance as it was caught in the tide and floated sideways on the current, it should have been strung out behind me as I swam onwards. This extra effort was making huge demands on my oxygen requirement, I breathed harder and had to avoid intakes of seawater. ~ Stephen Richards

I had not learned anything about Huntley that would
have alerted me to what he was. I had no reason, as an 11-year-old girl, to be wary of him. No one said, 'This guy likes to have sex with young girls. ~ Stephen Richards

There's good money in true crime, I'm told, and plenty of it lying around, but it's a devil of an art form. ~ Poe Ballantine

I did not recognise the man at the door and, in split-second time, I pointed the barrel of the fearsome looking weapon to the downstairs living room window, blew that out and then levelled it at the bedroom window above, and blew that out. The owner of the property literally shit his pants and slammed the door. ~ Stephen Richards

Once you'd been with Freddie, you wouldn't go anywhere else.' (How true this was to prove.) This incessant bragging by Fred West was at best, annoying and at worst, sickening. According to him, he was God's gift to women. ~ Stephen Richards

Once the screws left, most of the six or seven boys who had been overpowered by the SAS were not in any fit state to move, never mind talk. In May 1988 Malkie and Sammo and one other boy, whose name escapes me right now, got a total of twenty-seven years between them for mobbing and rioting and assault. ~ Stephen Richards

With forbidden, seething Havana waiting to open up nearby, South Beach is a riot of loose luxe and easy sleazy, where dancing the night away amid hundreds of tanned, undulating bodies is a standard prelude to hot, anonymous sex. ~ Maureen Orth

As a child, I was attractive to paedophiles. I suppose being indecently assaulted when I was 13 years old should have warned me that there were some weird and dangerous men out there, but I had got over that episode in my life. ~ Stephen Richards

The unknown is scary. It's unknown for a reason. That's why normal people don't go there. ~ Geoff Green

I opened my coat and flashed the gun to Brew, all I had to do was point it and pull the trigger and that would be the end of one of my enemies. I'd probably have to shoot the second as he ran way from me totting the gun. ~ Stephen Richards

I've now come to realize that getting excited about a suspect is a lot like that first surge of stupid love in a relationship, in which, despite vague alarm bells, you plow forward convinced that he is the One. ~ Michelle McNamara

I always thought of myself as being the unluckiest girl I knew. I was, I believed, a 'jinx' and I was 'jinxed', or so I thought! ~ Stephen Richards

A forensic match between the cases didn't exist but a feeling did, a sense that a single mind was at work, someone who didn't leave many clues or talk or show his face, someone who strolled undetected in the middle-class swarm, an ordinary man with a resting-pulse derangement. ~ Michelle McNamara

I read a lot of true-crime books, but sometimes they can put you in a bad mood. ~ Steve Schirripa

We like stories that are false and seem true (realist novels), that are true and seem false (true crime), that are false and seem false (dragons and superheroes), or that are true and seem true, but it's harder to agree on what that is. ~ Sarah Manguso

I loved the True Crime Story "Fighting the Devil" by Jeannie Walker. It is such an interesting book. ~ Jeannie Walker

As anyone who regularly reads newspapers or true-crime books knows, a significant percentage of violent crime, from kidnappings to shooting sprees, is the result of the frustrated sexual impulses and desires of males. By socializing guys like Sasha, Mystery and I were making the world a safer place. ~ Neil Strauss

Shocking, sad, revealing, and deeply researched, this true account of the life and crimes of serial killer Aileen Wuornos will fascinate true-crime fans. ~ John E. Douglas

I'm certainly very influenced by what you would call 'contemporary headline horror,' stuff that is true crime or for one reason or another catches our attention in the media, those strange cases that we end up obsessing about. I'm always influenced by weird anecdotes and news. ~ Dan Chaon

Are you still with this man?
On no, She sniffed. I realized pretty quickly I couldn't marry a man without a bookshelf.
No bookshelf?
In his house. Not even a little one in his loo for the Reader's Digest.
Many people in this country don't read books.
He didn't have one book. Not even a true crime. Or a Jeffrey Archer. I mean, what does that tell you about someone's character? ~ Jojo Moyes

The riot screws didn't give a monkey's about the state he was in, no sir. They dragged him by his hair in to the first cell that was opened, where he was stripped and beaten. ~ Stephen Richards

Another crucial problem was errors made by the
Cambridgeshire Police in their use of their 'check
system', which allowed Huntley to get a job at Soham
Village College. ~ Stephen Richards

Oh, Jeannie, I am so glad you woke me. I was having the worst nightmare. I felt like I was suffocating. I dreamed the Devil was trying to choke me to death. ~ Jeannie Walker

I need to see his face.
He loses his power when we know his face. ~ Michelle McNamara

I felt it burn all the way down my throat and into my stomach. I felt like I was dying. ~ Jeannie Walker

Men cheat because it's in their genetic code. A woman does it because she doesn't have enough
dignity; in addition to handing over her body, she always ends up handing over a bit of her heart. A
true crime. A theft. It's worse than robbing a bank, because if one day she is discovered (and she
always is), she will cause irreparable damage to her family.
For men it is just a "stupid mistake." For women, it feels like a spiritual crime against all those
who surround her with affection and support her as a mother and wife. ~ Paulo Coelho

If Alice had a post-engagement policy, it was to pass. ~ Alexis Coe

Sometimes a choppy wave would swamp me, and after I rose gasping I would vomit the foul-tasting water, wiping the sea from my eyes and nostrils. Then I regained my posture to do battle, again with the Solent. ~ Stephen Richards

Truth is always wilder than fiction. Hold on to your hats and enjoy this page turning
look inside the world of sports betting from a good girl gone bad for love.
Laura Atchison, Author of What Would A Wise Woman Do? ~ Laura Atchison

When her breast grew, Teena hated how they hurt. When someone stared at her chest, it would make her feel sick. She liked her body before puberty and despised it when it started to develop. She wasn't feminine she wasn't graceful and she didn't want to be [page 47] ~ Aphrodite Jones

The fight for free space-for wilderness and for public space-must be accompanied by a fight for free time to spend wandering in that space. Otherwise the individual imagination will be bulldozed over for the chain-store outlets of consumer appetite, true-crime titillations, and celebrity crises. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Yet he was still out there blending in, a man whose ordinariness was his mask. ~ Michelle McNamara

I had chosen a blind spot at the end of the plumbers' shop to make my escape bid. Under my overalls I wore extra jeans, vest, t-shirt and I had a donkey jacket on that I intended to throw over the razor wire. Hopefully the extra clothes would stop the razor wire from cutting me. ~ Stephen Richards

As I write these recollections of women who survived, I hope my readers are taking careful note of why they did.
They screamed.
They fought.
They slammed doors in a stranger's face.
They ran.
They doubted glib stories.
They spotted flaws in those stories.
They were lucky enough to have someone step up and protect them. ~ Ann Rule

I studied a truckload of true crime, praying for illumination, but most true crime relies on luridness and voyeurism for effect. ~ Poe Ballantine

As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. ~ Vincent Bugliosi

Straightaway, they started chatting and telling me their names: Fred and Rose West. I was surprised that they were married, I wouldn't have fancied someone like him, and she was pretty. I felt she could have done a lot better for herself, but they seemed happy and he was quite charming, in a roguish kind of way. ~ Stephen Richards

there's a part in the essay that kind of does this academic "Let's unpack the idea of Lynchian and what Lynchian means is something about the unbelievably grotesque existing in a kind of union with the unbelievably banal," and then it gives a series of scenarios about what -- what is and what isn't Lynchian. Jeffrey Dahmer was borderline Lynchian...what was Lynchian was having the actual food products next to the disembodied bits of the corpse. I guess the big one is, you know, a regular domestic murder is not Lynchian. But if the man -- if the police come to the scene and see the man standing over the body and the woman -- let's see, the woman's '50s bouffant is undisturbed and the man and the cops have this conversation about the fact that the man killed the woman because she persistently refused to buy, say, for instance, Jif peanut butter rather than Skippy, and how very, very important that is, and if the cops found themselves somehow agreeing that there were major differences between the brands and that a wife who didn't recognize those differences was deficient in her wifely duties, that would be Lynchian -- this weird confluence of very dark, surreal, violent stuff and absolute, almost Norman Rockwell, banal, American stuff, which is terrain he's been working for quite a while -- I mean, at least since -- at least since "Blue Velvet. ~ David Foster Wallace

I think by not letting young people be fully informed, how can they have energy and passion and the right picture of the world? I think that's the true crime. ~ Ai Weiwei

He was a shadow man, fighting to survive in a world that was never made for him. ~ Ann Rule

The riot screws did not stop there, they dragged him down the corridor where ten other nameless screws repeatedly coshed him over the head and face and body. Dingus by now was totally out cold, he had received the equivalent injuries of someone who was involved in a car crash. ~ Stephen Richards

Why did that one friend scoot her chair away from me when I told her I "empathized but didn't sympathize" with every woman in this book?

I don't think our obsession stems from the fact that we are all secretly violent, using the serial killer to enact our darkest fantasies. I think it comes from our enduring love of stories. ~ Tori Telfer

Shower while there were two dead bodies in the bathtub, and he was sane. He drilled holes in the heads of living people to make them his unresisting companions, and he was sane. He ate a bicep which he fried in a skillet, tenderised and sprinkled with sauce, and he was sane. For hours he lay with corpses, hugging them, cherishing them, and he was sane. He kept eleven assorted heads and skulls, and two complete skeletons, for eventual use in a home-made temple, and he was sane. ~ Brian Masters

If your instincts are telling you that something just isn't right listen to it. The life you might be saving may be your own. ~ Crystal Clary

We need democracy and meritocracy, not mockracy and hypocrisy. ~ TheKeyAuthor

My focus is on understanding why people commit violent and predatory acts, not to help them become better, more law-abiding citizens, but to aid in catching them, prosecuting them, and putting them away ~ John E. Douglas

I knew I hadn't been the most innocent of victims, but I didn't deserve this. DC Smith stood and grinned at me as he thanked me and left the room, leaving me to cry and to ponder on his not very adept handling of the situation. ~ Stephen Richards

LAURA ATCHISON, Author of "What Would A Wise Woman Do?", on DANGEROUS ODDS by Marisa Lankester:
"Truth is always wilder than fiction.
Hold on to your hats and enjoy this page turning look inside the world of sports betting from a good girl gone bad for love. ~ Laura Atchison

I was having a field day down the Westend; my deep pockets were jingling and full of money nearly every day of the week. My brother's bird, Irene, wanted a fur coat, so I got her one by throwing a brick through the shop window and grabbing the coat off the shop dummy. Once I got to the bed-sit, I put the jacket on and waltzed in to the flat looking like Liberace, the two of them burst out laughing. Irene was like a tramp eating chips.
'Let's try it on, Jimmy, please?'
As she swooned around like Joan Collins with the fur coat on, she had the air of a council estate beauty queen about her. ~ Stephen Richards

In January 1995 three prisoners, two category 'A' prisoners and a lifer escaped from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. After four days of freedom they were recaptured. My length of freedom far surpassed theirs. ~ Stephen Richards

You gotta help me get out of here! They're trying to kill me. I'm gonna die. I've got $35,000 missing. Those two women took it. They're trying to kill me. You gotta help me. Cut me loose! Cut me loose! ~ Jeannie Walker

You know, in a society where children just about have to seek parental permission to sit on Santa's knee, the word 'paedophile' should send more shivers up your spine than the word 'druggie'. ~ Stephen Richards

I pitched the idea to FX that there's this larger 'Fargo' universe where there's true crime in the upper Midwest, and I can tell stories from any era of that. Maybe they connect to the first season or the movie, or maybe they don't. It's just a style of storytelling. We're under the auspices of being a true story that isn't true. ~ Noah Hawley

Sometimes I wonder if that was the true crime of the twencen world. Not destroying the environment or overpopulating the planet or anything else like that. But they forgot that every day they lived was filled with magic and with little miracles, and they needed to be punished for what they chose not to know. ~ Seanan McGuire

There is no getting away from the fact, he is one of only a few screws in the system who are the real McCoy. Anyone reading this book who has spent time in Scottish prisons will no doubt agree, this chimp is up for it just as much as the prisoners. I personally would love to see more screws like him, as he doesn't bother with all this shitty report piss. If you want to fight him, he comes into your cell, one-on-one, man-to-man. ~ Stephen Richards