True Crime Quotes

“Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.”
― Thomas M. Cirignano, The Constant Outsider: Memoirs of a South Boston Mechanic

“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, I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

“Violence was a slippery slope, lubricated by a lot of blood, if history had any lessons to teach.”
― John Rachel, Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun

“The spring breeze felt like the warm breath of a child on Kumiko’s face. It played delicately with her hair like tiny fingers, and made the trees whisper a breathless song.”
― John Rachel, Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun

“Even adults who were stiffened by the starch of their miserable lives, for whom breaking the stony discipline of austere and judgmental intolerance was usually off the table, melted in the magical luminescence and energetic charm of the pre-pubescent Ruka.”
― John Rachel, Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun

“Hungry stomachs growl the same tune.”
― John Rachel, Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun

“The optimism was like the sun after a long spell of clouds and rain, a euphoric rush which produced both envy and awe in anyone who had become jaded, resigned, who had given up on their dreams.”
― John Rachel, Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun

“It was the fundamental bifurcation of the masses of human meat into two starkly opposite classes: the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots had barely anything. The haves had it all. The haves had everything except concern and compassion for the have-nots, who they regarded as little more than cockroaches.”
― John Rachel, Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun

“Unless today is well lived, tomorrow is not important.”
― Alan Sakowitz, Miles Away... Worlds Apart

“He loses his power when we know his face.”
― Michelle McNamara, I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

“They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense”
― Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

“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, The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer

“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, Fighting the Devil: A True Story of Consuming Passion, Deadly Poison, and Murder

“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

“You gotta help me get out of here! Cut me loose! Cut me loose!
Well, Jerry, I gotta go to work, but I'll come back this afternoon and if you're not better, then we'll see about ... I'll see what I can do.
It'll be too late, Gamble. I'll be dead by then. Cut me loose! You gotta help me. You just gotta help me!”
― Jeannie Walker, Fighting the Devil: A True Story of Consuming Passion, Deadly Poison, and Murder

“If I wasn't sure before, I'm sure now that she poisoned him to death. I'm also fairly sure she had help killing him, and by God, I'm going to prove it, if it's the last thing I ever do.”
― Jeannie Walker, Fighting the Devil: A True Story of Consuming Passion, Deadly Poison, and Murder

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

“You can lie through your teeth, but your teeth don't lie”
― Charles Bosworth Jr

“Thank God! Those prayers were answered!”
― Jeannie Walker

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

“You should fight like hell if you get attacked on the street, or in your home. The old thinking was, especially with women, submit, give in, maybe the guy will give you a
break and not kill you. Now, maybe you will get raped, but
least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you didn't
just lie down and take it. You don't know how many home-invasion scenes we walk in on where the people are sitting there all tied up and all dead. There'll be four, five people, a family, mayb...more "You should fight like hell if you get attacked on the street, or in your home. The old thinking was, especially with women, submit, give in, maybe the guy will give you a
break and not kill you. Now, maybe you will get raped, but
least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you didn't
just lie down and take it. You don't know how many home-invasion scenes we walk in on where the people are sitting there all tied up and all dead. There'll be four, five people, a family, maybe some guests: enough to put up a fight. And you know they let themselves get tied up. You just know the guys said, 'We just want to tie you up. We won't hurt you.' You'd think the people would realize — why do they want to tie us up if they don't want to hurt us? But they bought it. It always gives us a little chuckle.”
― Connie Fletcher, What Cops Know: Today's Police Tell the Inside Story of Their Work on America's Streets

“Had a big trial. It was like an Errol Flynn movie.”
― Jeannie Walker, Fighting the Devil: A True Story of Consuming Passion, Deadly Poison, and Murder

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

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

“Tell them I was arrested for carrying concealed ideas!”
― "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, Deadly Valentines: The Story of Capone's Henchman "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn and Louise Rolfe, His Blonde Alibi

“If there is one case that will be forever etched into the annals of true crime history, it is the case of Ted Bundy. There have been many cases before him and since, but none showed us the horrors of what a smiling face, an intelligent mind, and the depravity of a soul could do within our society. The case of Ted Bundy would have far reaching implications for our law enforcement, investigations, and psychology. We would finally get a real look inside the mind of a killer. Sadly, it would only be the beginning.”
― Jeffrey Ignatowski

“Unlike other killers that we have described, Dahmer was not trying to hide his crimes in any conventional sense. He did not try to find random victims, he did not attempt to clean up the crime scene, and he did not try to hide the bodies.”
― Jeffrey Ignatowski

“The fantasy that Rader was constantly building within himself, was of complete control over these women. Everything that he did would feed his desire to have that control. The danger of stalking them and knowing their every move would be fuel for the event to come.”
― Jeffrey Ignatowski

“How could an organization so tightly controlled by the very politicians responsible for the nation's rampant corruption be expected to solve the crisis? Were politicians not the root cause of all the unsolved cases in the country? Could the hunter’s dogs be led by the animals themselves and the hunter hopes to get a kill in the end? Could a housefly pass a bad judgment on an open sore?”
― A. O. Nathaniels, The Last Agent: A Novel

“Each Of Us Has Flaws And Shortcomings Being An Imperfect Mankind. We Have Reached Spiritual Success When We Identify These Flaws And Shortcomings And Make Positive Changes. There Remains Hope For Each Of Us While Living. Regardless Of Our Past Or Present There Remains Hope For A Better Today And Tomorrow.”
― Tom Carman, My Illusion of Normal: The Peculiar Case of Jean Stevens