Showing results by author "Nick van der Leek" in All Categories

Two years after the Watts Family Murders, how much of what we know to be the truth isn’t the truth? What new information has come through the ether in recent months? What has the new Netflix documentary revealed that we didn’t already know? In POST TRUTH, the 100th True Crime Rocket Science [TCRS] title, the world’s most prolific true crime author Nick van der Leek demonstrates how much we still don’t know in the Watts case. In the final chapter of the SILVER FOX trilogy the author provides a sly twist in a tale that has spanned 12 TCRS books to date. The result may shock or leave ...

When was two-year-old Caylee Anthony murdered? Why is it not an accidental death, by drowning or otherwise? Why was she murdered? How was she murdered? Treachery deals with each of the unprecedented 31 days between June 16th 2008 and July 16th 2008, when Casey Anthony kept up the appearance that her two-year-old daughter Caylee was still alive, but was she?

Where civilization ends savagery begins... In their third narrative investigating the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey the two bestselling authors of The Craven Silence 2 have uncovered some startling new evidence. Is another boy from the Boulder neighborhood involved in the Christmas 1996 incident besides Burke? Why was an aborted 911 call made from the Ramsey residence on December 23rd? Was John Ramsey having an affair? Van der Leek and Wilson unravel secret after secret to uncover what lies beneath The Craven Silence.

The 6th narrative in the definitive TWO FACE series examines Nichol Kessinger’s five interviews to law enforcement, while simultaneously interrogating the substantiveness of Chris Watts’ confession. Hidden in the deception and lies are clues, leaks and psychological slips that reveal the true machinery of a monster’s mind.

In 2006 freelance photojournalist and amateur climber Nick van der Leek wrote a five page analysis of the 1996 Everest disaster titled MOUNTAIN MADNESS, and published in HEARTLAND magazine. His distillation was described at the time by THE CLIMB co-author, Weston DeWalt, as ‘the clearest exposition of the 1996 disaster I have ever seen’. Now, nine years later, having honed his penmanship within the rigors and deceits of the True Crime genre, Nick van der Leek is taking on the Everest narrative once more but with a fresh approach. Compared to his 2006 article, NEVEREST is a much larger ...

"All the stars eventually fall from the sky above the Ramsey home in Boulder, all except the Black Star...." 21 years after JonBenét Ramsey case has gone cold, is there anything we can salvage from the ashes of one little girl’s life? Black Star Over Bethlehem targets the 2007-2008 timeline in the Ramsey archive, but delves in laser-sharp detail into many other areas of the case, including the lights inside the Ramsey residence on the night of the murder, the origin of the duct tape, theories around Asperger's syndrome, the polygraph narrative, the bogus DNA narrative and many hitherto ...

Rumor has it Burke Ramsey killed his sister. Once again dark stormclouds have been milling in the media around the Ramsey family. If the rumors are true has the 20 year old mystery finally been solved? Are we really any closer to understanding why the six year old beauty queen was murdered, precisely where in the Ramsey home and exactly how? In this sequel to the bestsellingTHE CRAVEN SILENCE true crime maestros van der Leek and Wilson shine a light where none have dared before. The authors peel back layer upon layer of misdirection obscuring the raw eddies of child psychology. What do the ...

Sensational, deviant, gruesome and explicit. There’s only one trial that trumps everything we’ve ever seen before in a courtroom. One trial that delivers in every department from shock value, to controversy, to erotica, to whopper-sized manipulation. That legal circus stocked with WTF’s belongs to none other than the Jodi Arias trial. Although Jodi takes center stage as the cold-blooded and shockingly haughty killer, in every main player in this narrative there is one characteristic that simply can’t be avoided and yes, it’s AUDACITY. The authors have concentrated their efforts in...

Night Before Christmas fixates on a single week in the Scott Peterson case canon – December 24th to December 31st, 2002. It delves deep, beyond the shallow demeanor of the infamous defendant, further and wider than the media narrative, far outside the demonstrable facts fielded at trial. “Fifteen years later, we have the most powerful tool at our disposal: hindsight. We can see where things were going, how they were evolving, where there was adaptation, and we can see the finish line. With the archives at our disposal, we’re able to filter through it, mine it, and analyze it. We’re ...

What does the 2008 disaster on the world’s deadliest mountain have in common with the 1996 disaster on Mount Everest? It certainly wasn’t the weather in this instance, and if it wasn’t the weather, what was it? Who are the villains [if any] of the Savage Mountain? If journalists profoundly undermined the efforts of Fischer and Hall in 1996, what sinister motives [if any] undermined the 30+ climbers who made their summit bid on August 1, 2008? Climbing voyeurs and aficionados of Alpinism will find K I I an addictive read. If the world’s two tallest mountains are sisters, Everest ...

“The last chapter in particular is grueling and grotesque…” The fifth book in Nick van der Leek’s definitive TWO FACE series on Chris Watts does exactly what the title claims: it drills deep through the mountain of Discovery Documents. The fifth narrative not only makes sense of the 1960 pages of discovery, it also integrates the video footage for the first time into a seamless narrative. Missing pieces are found and new insights revealed and contextualized in the most comprehensive assembly of facts and psychological analysis around this puzzling case yet. The main focus of the ...

Vincent van Gogh is the world’s most popular and expensive artist, the father of modern art, and yet no one really knows how he died, when, how or where. If he didn’t commit suicide, what happened? If Vincent did commit suicide, why would the master of expressionism fail to express himself on his own death? Why would a man whose art, beloved for its effusiveness, remain mum on this most primary of primary motives; why not reveal his motives for snuffing out his own yellow flame? Why would someone who wrote so many letters – 830 that we know of, at a rate of almost a letter a day – ...

By the end of the 1996 season - the deadliest in the history of Mount Everest - 13 climbers in all had perished. If it wasn’t the weather, and if it wasn't just the presence of journalists, what else fatally compromised Rob Hall's team, the Adventure Consultants? Were they really on a winning wicket when things "suddenly" went south on summit day, or was something else insidiously eating at the team's ability to perform all along? If so, what was it? What was the actual psychology that drove a record number of strong, brave men – and a Japanese woman – to certain death? On May 10 two ...

Why was Laci Peterson murdered? When was Laci Peterson murdered? How exactly did Scott Peterson dump her body without anyone seeing him? Even after the landmark court case, the prosecution and the jury couldn’t say exactly what happened, when or how, so what did happen? Scott Peterson was convicted of first-degree, premeditated double murder. Trawling through the extended backstory of this fifteen year old case, the author finds obscure pieces to a familiar puzzle and contextualises all the available information: court records, interviews, media reports, police reports, evidence, court ...

No one has been able to say why - until now. "As we navigate our way through the monster’s murky psychology, pushing through his dark impulses and penetrating his despicable motivations, will we find ourselves far from familiar places, or troublingly closer to them?"

Nobody knows who killed JonBenét Ramsey. Despite the efforts of Colorado’s legendary super sleuth Lou Smit, the JonBenét Ramsey case has – to the present date - defied demystification. Smit, who cracked over 200 cases and had a 90% success record, devoted the last years of his life to finding JonBenét’s killer. Smit died in 2010 having failed to solve this confounding case. 6 years later, despite massive media attention and widespread public scrutiny the most famous of cold cases remains unsolved. Now two rising stars of the true crime genre have put their heads together for their ...

Questions remain around the mysterious death and disappearance of 11-year-old Gannon Stauch. What really happened? Where did the crime happen? Why? What was the murder weapon? How was the poor child's body disposed of not once, but twice? Taking on one of his trickiest assignments yet, true crimes’ most prolific star investigates 36-year-old Letecia Stauch, the stepmother of the boy that disappeared from Colorado Springs on January 27th, 2020. "The 32-page Stauch Affidavit provides clues to the tangled web of Letecia's heart, and mind. But it also reveals her exact movements immediately ...

Written on the 20th anniversary of the ’96 Everest disaster, South African photojournalist Nick van der Leek cunningly unravels the devil hiding in the details of a mountaineering classic. In NEVEREST III two guides are investigated for potential dereliction of duty. Was there negligence on the way to the summit, or simple resignation to charismatic leaders, paying clients and a tightly controlled and choreographed summit bid? If so, how and why did it all go wrong, and can anyone really be blamed under the extenuating circumstances? “Unlike NEVEREST II where we sat on the shoulder of a...

True crime's rising stars Nick van der Leek and Lisa Wilson, fresh from the success of three trilogies dedicated to the unsolved JonBenét Ramsey case, have cast about for a new challenge. In the West Memphis Three case, they find a heart of darkness to rival the webs of shadowy intrigue bedeviling Boulder Colorado in 1996. “Having written about the unsolved Ramsey case,” writes van der Leek, “I was looking for a challenging case to rival and to sharpen the true crime saw even further. The West Memphis Three saga does precisely that.” But where the Ramsey case was a murk of ...

Did the little girl at the centre of the most heavily reported missing-persons case in modern history ever go “missing” to begin with? If Madeleine was never abducted, if she died on May 3rd, why was it reported as an abduction? Despite the absence of a trial, what we have now is a fairly precise version of events from the McCanns themselves, a by-product of their relentless PR. We also know the original lead investigator Goncalo Amaral’s counter-narrative, which is now a legally defensible matter of public record. The questions that arise from these opposing narratives are dead ...