#murder

It's not the dead even. They're gone. Nothing you can do about that. It's what's left behind - the echo. These woods you're walking through. There are some old timers who think a sound echoes here forever. Makes sense when you think about it. That Billingham kid. I'm sure he screamed. He screams, it echoes, just bounces back and forth, the sound getting smaller and smaller, but never entirely disappearing. Like a part of his is still calling out, even now. ↗

— Harlan Coben

#murders #scream #death

You see, this would be a death by the imagination. And though the imagination feeds on phantoms, it needs a premise in reality to begin with. Then it can go on from there under its own power. ("Mind Over Murder") ↗

— Cornell Woolrich

#imagination #murder #death

The men stop coming after Hunt goes missing. We learned from the last brave soul to visit that they whispered all sorts of stories to answer his disappearance. My favorite is that we ate him. We cooked him up with our whore-earned corn, a dozen rats’ eyes, and a bat wing. Even I couldn’t have thought of anything more perfect. ↗

— Rachel A. Marks

#deadly #death #murder #murderers #sacrifice

If they will only hold their hands until the season is over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can he settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard and arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea. ↗

— Jack London

#fighting #murder #sailors #sea #death

For its survival, the satanic cult demanded secrecy and obedience while it made brutality, even killing, appropriate. Denial and disavowal were inevitable responses to required behaviors so bizarre as to seem unreal, even to those who enacted them. What they could not deny or disavow, they could distort. They could blame the victims, who deserved to die for fighting or crying or for failing to fight or cry. They found encouragement for such a stance in a general culture accustomed to blaming victims for their misfortunes, and in specific contact with child victims eager to blame themselves. By believing that victims had a choice when there was none, they could see victims as culpable. They could even see the deaths as right and purposeful in the nobility of sacrifice. ↗

— Judith Spencer

#cult #denial #evil #evil-men #human-sacrifice

In some counties, there is an actual named crime of ritual abuse and there too, there have been convictions. ↗

— Laurie Matthew

#child-abuse #childabuse #childhood-abuse #crime #death

An unhappy woman with access to weed killer had to be watched carefully. ↗

— James Ruddick

#poison #poison-study #poisoning #true-crime #victorian

Black Creek Burning: “It was a polite, white lie,” Brie whispered. “I’ll have to remember you think that way,” Nathan said. ↗

— R.T. Wolfe

#black-creek-burning #gardening #murder #romantic-suspense #sweet

In his imagination, he grabbed his dad by the throat and squeezed until an old mans face turned purple. No pleading, no begging, simply... nothing. ↗

— Stephen Craig

#death #farm #murder #son #death

Really now: If you can't get me my newspaper on time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people? ↗

— Jeff Lindsay

#killing #murder #newspaper #serial-killers #dreams