True crime stories beckon to you from news headlines, sparking morbid curiosity and intrigue.

Here’s a yearlong compendium of some of the most thrillingly sordid true crime tales, featuring serial killers, kidnappers, cult leaders, and more.

Like the New Orleans axe-murderer with a soft spot for jazz, or the “Long Island Borgia,” who poisoned her family members - after making herself their life insurance beneficiaries.

Plus photographs, gory details galore, and spine-chilling quotes: I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. - H. H. Holmes, the killer who terrorized Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair.