Madeline
I love true crime and I love hearing about the crazy things that happen in this crazy world. It’s amazing how many real people who do bad things are out there. Their motivation and the way they think is often not very clear. Here are five books about real people who do bad things, from worse to less worse but still bad.
I’ll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
I’ll Be Gone In The Dark is Michelle Mcnamara’s comprehensive book on the Golden State Killer. He was one of the craziest serial rapist and serial killer in California during the 70s and 80s. This book was published right before he was caught more than 30 years after his first offense, thanks to a distant relative of his who submitted their DNA and helped to track it back to Joseph D’Angelo. His murders and rapes were so horrific and one took place about 10 miles from where I live today. Thinking about these acts keeps me up at night. Joseph D’Angelo is by far the worst person on the book about real people who do bad things list.
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
Although Joseph D’Angelo is by far the worse person on this list, Harvey Weinstein is a different kind of monster that falls not far behind D’Angelo. In She Said, two reporters expose Harvey Weinstein for the sexual harassment he instilled on women in Hollywood and eventually started the #MeToo movement. The book outlines the activities he participated in and the gatekeepers who knew about these horrible acts and hid them from prying eyes.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Bad Blood is about the secrets and lies in the Silicon Valley startup ran by Elizabeth Holmes called Theranos. At this company, Holmes claimed that she had developed a technology that could run a wide variety of blood tests on a small sample; however, this technology was never made to fruition. By making this claim, Holmes had allegedly mislead investors and government officials resulting in multiple lawsuits, legal charges, and the ultimate close of the startup. Hundreds of millions of dollars from investors were lost in the process.
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
In American Kingpin, the dark web website, The Silk Road, and how it came to be is described. Who created it, why it was created, how it was hidden, what could be found on there, and how it ballooned into a $1.2 billion enterprise.
Although it started as a somewhat innocent project by Ross Ulbricht with the belief that no one should tell anyone what they can and cannot sell. By the final days anyone who could get on the Silk Road could buy and sell everything from hard drugs to body parts. Anything or service you can think of was available.
Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World
I’m not 100% convinced Molly’s Game should be on the real people who do bad things list, which is why it is last. Molly did not do anything nearly as bad as everyone else on this list; however, like every other story on this list, Molly was driven by greed to make a number of unethical decisions.
Molly Bloom started running a poker game in the back of a night club and branched out into holding the most coveted “friendly” poker game in Los Angeles spreading to New York and Las Vegas. As there were hundreds of thousands of dollars exchanging hands, the US government was alerted, and although the games were a grey area when talk about legality, Bloom was arrested on money laundering and illegal gambling.
