The I-5 Killer By Ann Rule

This book is based on a true story of the killer called 'The I-5 Killer'. It is written by veteran true-crime novelist Ann Rule. She wrote this book under the pseudonym Andy Stack. It was released in 1988. Ann Rule has also written books about serial killer Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer.

The I-5 Killer was a man called Randy Woodfield(pictured above). He is called The I-5 killer because his crimes were committed along the I-5 Highway running from Washington to California. Randy was a handsome guy and he was pretty popular at school. He was athletic too and he played football in school and college. But, underneath his perfect exterior was a young man with sexual desires which were not normal. He went out and exposed himself in public while he was still in school. He was lucky that he didn't get in trouble because he was such a good athlete. He also committed smaller crimes, but despite his arrests, he still managed to get onto the Green Bay Packers team in 1974. Eventually he got kicked off when his lewd behaviour caught up with him

That was the start of his real criminal life. After he was dropped from the team, he began to rob stores etc at knife point. He sexually assaulted young women and he always wore a band aid across his nose as someone had told him that it made it harder for people to see his face. He murdered women and he sexually assaulted many. He was caught when the police were investigating another shooting and his name came up. They searched his home and they found evidence that he was the man they were looking for in connection with dozens of assaults and murders. Randy Woodfield was sentenced to life in prison and another 165 years were added for other crimes. He is currently 58 years of age and he is serving his sentence in the Oregon State Penitentiary. He was linked to other crimes from years ago and he was suspected in many more.

This book was very interesting and detailed. It chronicles Woodfield's life from his childhood up until he was caught and it shows how he grew from a normal kid into a monster who used women for his own sexual desires and how he thought that he was smarter than the cops. He was a Romeo to many women and they could not believe that he was a killer. That was how he managed to elude the cops for so long. Ann Rule(pictured above) is a very good writer and the book is very well written. It is a must for any true-crime readers like myself and Jigsaw. I really recommend this book and I would say that it was very enjoyable.

Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown Book Review 6

Derren Brown is an English illusionist, mentalist, magician or whatever name you like to call guys like that. Yes, Derren is how he spells his name!! He would be like David Blaine or Penn and Teller if you have not heard of him. I first saw him on TV specials such as The Heist and The System. The Heist was a programme where he basically influenced regular people to rob a security van by implanting ideas into their heads. The System was where he let one person bet on a horse that he would select and it always won. He kept doing this so that they were betting all of the money they had on each horse. The Messiah was another programme where he went to the USA and made people believe in God and that that he had psychic abilities also. He does not have either but he knows how to make people believe that he does. He had other specials too like The Seance and Russian Roulette and you should try and see all of them as he is very good at what he does.

As I like his shows a lot, I picked up his book called "Tricks of the Mind". This is not a magic book and it does not tell you how to do tricks. This is more of a discussion of what he does and what he thinks about magic and anything related to it. He talks about his own experiences and how he came to be a magician or 'illusionist'. So the book is part autobiography and part discussion. He reveals quite a lot about what he thinks and he takes the reader on a thoroughly entertaining ride. The book is divided into six parts. He goes through each part in detail and the parts are called Disillusionment, Magic Memory, Hypnosis and Suggestibility, Unconscious Communication and Anti Science, Pseudo-Science and Bad Thinking.

In the first part- Disillusionment, he describes how he was a Christian but he began to question his beliefs over time. He saw a hypnotist show and wanted to learn more so he read everything on the subject. He then read magic books and learned how to do magic tricks. His new love of magic taught him to question his beliefs and not just take them at face value. The second part- Magic, deals with tricks such as coin and card tricks and using suggestion on people. The third part- Memory was one that i found incredibly useful. I can't remember how to do it now, but it was useful! No, really it was very good as he goes through systems and methods for remembering long lists or names of people. Part four is Hypnosis and Suggestibility and he goes through his ideas on hypnosis. I found this part very heavy going and this part requires a re-read as he goes into hypnosis in depth. Neuro-linguistic programming is talked about and is obviously very hard to explain. It has something to do with communication and personal change and claims vary from the simple to the ridiculous. This was a bit too heavy for me but would require me to go back over it a few time to try and understand it more. He gives advice on how to use it in your life also.

Part five is Unconscious Communication which deals with reading body language and how to spot if someone is lying. Part Six is called Anti Science, Pseudo Science and Bad Thinking and it deals with problems. A very relevant thinking problem could be compared to the Swine Flu. If we assume a disease affected one in ten thousand people and it is lethal and you take a test for it.
The test is 99 percent accurate. You get the result and it says you have the disease. You would be devastated. But Derren Brown shows us that you really should not be worried. It is a mind-boggling idea but he shows us that we all tend to think incorrectly about things. He goes into depth about psychics and he reveals them all to be fakes and charlatans. They are just cold-reading people and he shows that we dismiss what they guess wrong and only remember the correct things. This is why people believe in them. When they guess something wrong, they can get out of by saying that we will know what they meant in the future or that we are not getting their messages. They win by throwing the onus back onto the person listening to them.

Derren Brown ends the book with his final thoughts and some hilarious reprinted emails and letters from weird fans. I would thoroughly recommend this book as it is a very interesting ride and you do learn a lot about magic and why we think the way we do. He did lose me a bit in part 4 where he talks about Neuro-linguistic programming and it got a bit tedious trying to follow along.This is probably due to the fact that the subject is hard to explain and complex though.All in all Tricks of the mind by Derren Brown is not only funny but interesting and informative so go read this book now!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tricks of the mind - Derren Brown (8/10)

You can order this book here at amazon.com

You can visit Derren Brown's website here.

Beyond Belief by Emlyn Williams

I found this book in a second hand book shop and I hadn't heard anything about it before, but I am interested in true crime so I wanted to read it. This book is based on The Moors Murders which happened in Manchester, England in the 1960's. The killers were a man, Ian Brady and a woman Myra Hindley and they killed five people, four of which were children. The murders sparked outrage in Manchester at the time and people hated the killers who killed innocent children. The author is Emlyn Williams(pictured at bottom of page) who wrote many plays and who died in 1987. Ian Brady was a loner and a strange child. He was interested in Nazi stuff and he listened to the speeches of Hitler. He read books which fed his lust for violence and sex. He wanted a submissive mate and then he met Myra Hindley when he was working at a firm and they became a couple. She was in love with him and she would do anything for him. She was besotted with him and he treated her like a servant. She would do anything to keep him, so she didn't disagree with him. On the other hand, she was a willing participant in what they would do together and she shared the blame for the horrific murders that they committed. Their victims were children who they lured to their car. In those days, it would be very easy to pick up children as people didn't realise that there were perverts and killers around. Children were allowed out late and they were allowed out on their own sometimes. It seems incredible in these times, but we are more in tune these days. They killed the children and buried their bodies up on a lonely moor. The bodies were recovered, except for one, who is still out on the moor somewhere. People would never have suspected a woman in murders and it is still unusual that Myra Hindley participated in these horrific acts. That was why they found it so easy to get away with the killings for so long. They lived a normal life, they had normal jobs and they were the perfect couple until they invited Myra's brother in law to participate in the final killing. He was appalled and he went straight to the police. This brought their killings to an end.The book is semi-fictional and I think that the author is assuming what the killers were thinking etc, but that doesn't take away from the book. I have to say that it was a great read and I felt sad for the families of the victims and I felt that I understood the minds of the killers more. They were both evil and horrible people who should have been executed, but hanging in England had gone by the time they were caught. Brady is in a mental institution for the rest of his life and Hindley died in 2002. The book has no mercy for the killers and I would think that nobody could have. I would recommend this to fans of true crime. It is an interesting and thought-provoking book.