On August 4, 1892, at 92 2nd Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby Durfee Gray Borden, were found dead of multiple wounds inflicted by a sharp-edged hacking instrument.

Abby Borden was found upstairs lying facedown on the floor of a guest bedroom, the victim of nineteen blows to the head. Downstairs, Andrew Borden was discovered in the sitting room, slumped on a divan, the victim of eleven similar blows to his face and head.

After the inquest into their deaths, Andrew Borden’s eldest daughter, Lizzie, was indicted for the murders. Lizzie was tried for the crimes and acquitted. No other suspect was ever brought to trial, and the murders remain unsolved.

Did an intruder break into the Borden home and slaughter the couple for reasons we can’t imagine? Or did the social-climbing spinster Lizzie kill her parents over money? Was the family’s maid her lover and accomplice or did she act alone? We may never know if it’s true that Lizzie Borden took an ax….

Biological attacks, kidnappings, hijackings, horrific murders that rocked the nation…
and were never solved.

Reeling from the devastation of 9/11, America anxiously waited for the other shoe to drop. Then the anthrax letters came, branded by the FBI as the worst biological attacks in US history. Despite a lengthy and expensive investigation, no suspect was ever charged.

In 1969, as the first astronaut stepped on the moon and 350,000 Americans flocked to Woodstock, the Zodiac Killer terrorized California residents, claiming his murder victims would be his slaves in the afterlife. Despite one of the longest-running investigations in the state’s history, the killer has never been identified.

Journey back through time from 2001 to 1892 as veteran PI Denise Huddle brings her field-honed investigative skills and trademark snark to bear on seven of America’s most notorious unsolved mysteries. Who mailed the anthrax letters? Who killed JonBenét Ramsay? Who was D.B. Cooper? Who was the Zodiac Killer? Who killed the Black Dahlia? Who really kidnapped the Lindbergh baby? Who killed Lizzie Borden’s parents?

From A to Z, Huddle lays out the events and evidence, identifies patterns, and tests theories. As the mysteries that have haunted America for decades are laid bare, the cases you thought you knew may not be so clear-cut after all.

You be the judge. Who perpetrated these crimes that have stumped investigators for decades?

See some of the old newspaper articles Denise used to research the book—articles that are real-life records of the events told in the language of the time from the perspective of those living and reporting on the experience—complete with the author’s research notes in the margins.

View historic photos that aren’t in the book, like mug shots of Arthur Leigh Allen, one of the prime suspects in the Zodiac killings, and pictures of convicted Lindbergh kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann’s car and the fateful gold certificate from the ransom money that ultimately led to his capture.  Check out glamour shots of Lizzie Borden’s friend, Nance O’Neil (the movie actress rumored to have also been Lizzie’s lover).

And read the actual letter written twenty years after Hauptmann’s execution by an inmate who knew Hauptmann at the Trenton prison death house. In it, the writer purports to tell Hauptmann’s version of what really happened when the child was taken, including a claim that the mastermind of the kidnapping was none other than Charles Lindbergh himself.

In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Austin, Texas was booming. The future seemed bright for Austinites, both Black and white—that is until December 30, 1884, when the Servant Girl Annihilator claimed his first victims. The murderer wreaked havoc on the city for a year, killing and mutilating five Black women and one Black man and seriously injuring four other Black residents. On the bloody night of Christmas Eve, 1885, he butchered two white women within an hour of each other and then disappeared into the ether. Despite multiple eyewitnesses to his crimes, the killer was never identified, and the crimes remain unsolved.

Less than three years later, five thousand miles away in the gritty slums of the Whitechapel district of London, Jack the Ripper struck the first time on August 31, 1888, killing Mary Ann Nichols. Over the next seventy days, the Ripper terrorized Whitechapel claiming four more victims, each more severely mutilated than the last. And just like the Annihilator, his spree culminated in a crescendo of violence with the horrendous murder of Mary Ann Kelly on November 9. Then, as suddenly as it began, the killing stopped, and the murderer vanished into the London fog, never to be captured or punished for his crimes.

Veteran PI Denise Diana Huddle takes a deep dive into these fascinating cases, looking at the context, the victims, the case facts, and the investigations. She analyzes theories of the crimes and considers possible suspects, all in an effort to answer the question:

Who were the first modern serial killers?