Rod Kackley

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About Rod Kackley
Rod Kackley is an award-winning journalist and author who has created The St. Isidore Collection and the Shocking True Crime Stories Collection.
He lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., but was born and raised in Metro Detroit. Rod's suburban upbringing is reflected in much of what he writes about St.Isidore, a community that he created in his mind.
Rod has had a lifelong fascination with crime, which is reflected in his writing. Much of the St. Isidore Collection is based on true crime stories. In fact, many of the books, such as The Coffee Shoppe Killer and A Wicked Plan could best be described as true crime novels.
Rod has also written for such publications as Crain's Detroit Business, MiBiz, and PJ Media.
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Books By Rod Kackley
November 2, 1945: On her way to a high school football game with friends, a fourteen-year-old girl vanishes after driving away with a man who says he needs a babysitter.
The FBI unleashes its top kidnapping expert, an agent who helped bring John Dillinger down. Will that be enough to find the girl and her abductor?
Agents chase the suspected kidnapper from California to Illinois and back again.
Arrested in Los Angeles, he admits abducting the child. He also tells the FBI he killed the girl and threw her body into the Pacific Ocean. A search for her corpse proves fruitless.
Then, when all hope is lost, authorities discover the skeleton of another young woman who's fallen victim to this madman.
Ready for another twist? The wife of the man who made that discovery is found dead at the bottom of the cliff.
During the accused killer's trial, women around the country fall in love with the handsome monster and literally break down the doors of a courthouse to get close to him.
Wild enough for you? Wait. After the child's killer is convicted and sentenced to the gas chamber, a scientist shows up and says he can bring the murderer back from the dead.
The Murder of Thora Chamberlain: A Shocking True Crime Story: This is the wildest, most shocking, true crime story you've ever read.
A successful young mother, Kelsey Berreth, vanishes on Thanksgiving Day 2018. The FBI is afraid they’ll have to do a deal with the devil to find her.
Kelsey, a pilot so good she taught the military how to fly, goes shopping at a Safeway store, and simply disappears.
Her fiance, Patrick Frazee, says he doesn't have a clue. In fact, he says they broke up just a few days before. He's as mystified as everyone else.
But Kelsey's mother, Cheryl, is afraid she knows what happened to her daughter.
A task force of FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents believe they also know what happened to Kelsey. They have cell phone records and more, including surveillance video and DNA. But they have run into a roadblock.
The agents have to get someone close to the killer to flip and turn state's evidence.
Are they going to have to do a deal with the devil to find justice for Kelsey Berreth?
The Murder of Kelsey Berreth: A Shocking True Crime Story.
This is a riveting story of a young woman's disappearance, her family's will to find out what happened, and a 21st-century police investigation that nearly cracks the case wide open.
Nearly.
Will the FBI do a deal with the devil to solve this crime?
#Justice For Ashley is not just a shocking true crime story. It's an amazing, compelling true crime story. Ashley: a beautiful young woman. Utterly open to life and love. Yes, she was gullible, but she was the light of so many lives. Jared: Scum of the earth. A monster without a conscience. He did Ashley wrong. But, she took him back, because, well, that was Ashley. Her mother knew Jared was terrible for Ashley. She didn't want this to happen. But it did. Now, Kristine demands justice for Ashley. She wants her daughter to be returned to her. All of her. You won't believe how this fantastic, shocking true crime story ends. #Justice For Ashley is a true-crime thriller that will have you hooked from the very first page. And this is one book about a shocking true crime that you'll never forget.
#Justice For Ashley: A Shocking True Crime Story is only one of the tales of murder and mayhem you'll read in this book.
Bonus Stories! Killed in The Backseat! Husband Arrested, Wife's Remains Discovered: A Mother's Worst Nightmare! Cheerleader's Murder Hooker, Serial Killer Or Both? Serial Killers Are Everywhere And More!!!! New to true crime? This is a great place to start.
If you love true crime, and you know it, you'll never forgive yourself if you don't read #Justice For Ashley. Buy this book right now!
The MacCormack’s marriage looks ideal from the sidewalk outside their home. But inside it’s living hell of drugs, deceit, and disappointment for Vanessa MacCormack. Soon it will be a house of death.
With her husband, Andrew, snorting $500 a week worth of coke up his nose and pawning Vanessa’s wedding ring to pay for his blow, she wants out. No more marriage. Vanessa wants to take their child and leave.
Suddenly, Vanessa is dead, the victim of a horrible, bloody, violent murder. Andrew collapses in tears on the front lawn of his home that’s now a crime scene.
Andrew tells Vanessa’s mother he can’t believe someone could do this to beautiful Vanessa. But his mother-in-law, Karen, is sure that she knows who murdered her daughter.
"No one in this world ever loved Andrew the way Vanessa did, and he repaid that love by killing her,” says Karen Masucci.
But Andrew says she, and everyone else who calls him a murderer, are wrong. “The explanation is a simple one: I did not murder her. I have never raised a finger to Vanessa, and I sure as hell didn't kill her.”
So who did it? Who’s responsible for the murder of Vanessa MacCormack?
Don't miss your chance to get totally wrapped up in this true-crime thriller, an amazing tale of domestic violence, family murder, and gut-busting true crime.
The Murder of Vanessa MacCormack: A Shocking True Crime Story is a page-turning, heartbreaking tale of love, marriage, and murder, that you’ll never forget.
Someone you know or even love is the person who will kill you. Usually, that’s true.
But that is not what happened in 2018 to two college students in Iowa.
Two young women who had everything to live for, were killed by two men with nothing to lose. Completely random attacks. Neither case had anything else in common except they both shocked the nation and even the world.
What’s worse, being murdered by a loved one or a stranger who jumps out of the bushes when you are most vulnerable?
Previously published as We’ll Find You and Let’s Do Murder, The Iowa Murders tells the shocking true crime stories of the senseless deaths of Mollie Tibbetts and Celia Barquin Arozamena.
When Mollie Tibbetts disappeared on July 18, 2018, her mother, Laura Calderwood, promised she would never quit searching.
For five weeks in the summer of 2018, she searched, and the whole world watched Brooklyn, Iowa because this was more than a murder story — it also became one of the top political stories of 2018.
Then, just after her killer led police to Mollie’s body, hidden in a cornfield, news of another shocking, senseless homicide came from Iowa.
Celia Barquin Arozamena was ready to begin the next phase of her life, including a professional career and marriage.
Collin Richards only wanted a woman to rape and murder.
Celia had everything to live for, and Collin had nothing to lose.
They would come together one day in September 2018.
Only one would survive.
The Iowa Murders is the shocking true crime story of two communities and two families coming to grips with the worst crime imaginable, knowing that even if the killer’s put behind bars today, another could be waiting tomorrow.
The Iowa Murders: A Shocking True Crime Story is a heartbreaking, gripping, page-turning thriller that you won’t want to miss.
Doug Stewart even has an ironclad alibi. He's been seen hundreds of miles away when his lovely wife, Venus, vanishes. What better plan could any murderer hope for?
But Doug's forgotten one thing: the power of a mother's love.
Venus' mother believes her daughter's husband lured her outside. They fought. He won. Venus' mom wants her daughter back, dead or alive.
Never Forgive, Never Forget: A Shocking True Crime Story by Rod Kackley tells the true story of a woman whose fear of her husband seems to turn out to be justified. It's also the story of a mother’s quest to win the return of her child — her best friend — even if it’s only to bury her.
The disappearance of Venus Stewart is a shocking true crime story that rocked southwest Michigan and eventually the nation. Hundreds of volunteers spent thousands of days searching for the mother of two young girls.
The police and her mother were sure Venus’ husband killed her. But he was in Newport News, Virginia when the crime was committed in Michigan. The neighbors saw him. He used his credit cards and even paid on his account at his lawyer’s office.
And it wasn’t just the day that Venus disappeared that her husband was seen in Newport News. He was spotted the next day too. How can anyone be in two places at one time?
Here’s something else: no corpse. That’s right, the police don’t have a body. How can investigators even be sure Venus is dead?
Her mother had to wait more than eight long years — 3,101 days — before finding out what had happened to her child.
A community rose up to stand by Therese McComb and her mission to learn the truth, and after searching for Venus hundreds of times, they stood by Therese at the very end.
Never Forgive, Never Forget: A Shocking True Crime Story is a page-turning, hard-hitting tale of a mother’s undying devotion and love for her child; and two police officers’ refusal to give up. It's a story that you will never forget. This gripping book will also leave you with a question. If you were Venus' mother; could you ever forgive?
Never Forgive, Never Forget: A Shocking True Crime Story by Rod Kackley. If you love page-turners that keep you up all night, you need to order this book, now.
Two eighteen-year-old women go out for a night of cruising and partying in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Only one returns home.
Now, Major Crimes Division inspectors William Gagnon and Scarlett Gauthier have to find a killer. Someone so evil they beat and strangled a woman to death with bare hands and a leather belt.
It had to be a man, right? How could another woman have done this?Oh, a woman could have done this-- a woman who learns how easy it is to cross that line between guilt and innocence and how hard it is to shoulder the burden of knowing you’ve committed a truly heinous crime.
Murder is no stranger to Saskatoon.
Still, “The Murder of Emma Brown,” inspired by the shocking true crime short story, “Her Best Friend’s Killer,” stuns this blue-collar Canadian community.
The pressure’s on Inspectors Gagnon and Gauthier.Has a gang war broken out in Saskatoon? Emma’s only one of two young people killed in a single night.
Friends turn on friends in this gripping crime fiction novel, battling it out on social media and blaming each other for Emma’s death. Gagnon and Gauthier soon realize it’s going to take more than 20th-century crime-fighting techniques to solve this vicious homicide case and bring Emma’s killer to justice.
Guess what? Friends. Kill. Friends.
The Murder of Emma Brown, a thrilling, page-turning crime novel you’ll never forget.
In three violent, murderous stories, you’ll learn the answer was “no” for nine people who fell victim to the horror of three women who’d never killed before.
What was it that made them snap?
In one case, a female murderer snuffs out the life of her ex-husband’s new lover. Does right in front of their Christmas tree, with her twin daughters watching.
In another, a woman loses it and guns down her daughters on a suburban street simply because she wants to hurt her husband.
And in the third, a young woman just unloads on her co-workers.
What possible reason could there have been for this violence.
As you turn the pages of Please Don’t Shoot: A Shocking True Crime Story, you’ll see that sometimes there is no reason.
There’s just an angry woman and a loaded handgun.
Please Don’t Shoot: A Shocking True Crime Story. Read this now and you’ll be looking over your shoulder before you turn the last page.
That’s why she hooked up with “Hard Mike” on Craigslist. That’s what killed her family.
All she asked for was $50. “Hard Mike” offered $120. How could Brooke turn that down?
She Deserved Better: A Craigslist Killer is a tragic, heartbreaking, gripping story of an eighteen-year-old woman, eight months pregnant, who was ready to sacrifice everything for her family.
It’s also the story of a thirty-one-year-old man who lived alone after being dumped by his fiancee. He had nothing but his computer and his fantasies.
She Deserved Better: A Craigslist Killer is also a Shocking True Crime Story that should serve as a wakeup call to anyone meeting strangers online for casual sex.
The moral of this story is you never know what you’re going to get online. STDs might be the least of your worries.
All she wants is someone to love her.
Every time Martha Ann and her husband Earl get into an argument, he runs off to his lover, Stanley, and one of Martha's children dies.
The doctors say it must be Sudden Death Syndrome. Martha Ann says it's nothing but bad luck; however, Earl and Stanley think Martha Ann is a serial killer.
No one will listen to them, though, until Earl and Stanley find one cop who won't give up and a reporter who knows this is a story that has to be told.
Mommy Deadliest: The Shocking True Crime Story of a Murdering Mother is a gripping, fascinating, and bittersweet story. It's the tale of a simple woman who understands what she's doing is wrong but can't or won't stop.
She just wants to find someone to love her as much as she is willing to love them. Is that too much to ask?
A thirteen-year-old girl is kidnapped, ripped from the arms of her murdered mother by a man who fantasized about someday abducting a girl, any girl, and making her his own. Living under a bed for most of her eighty-eight days of captivity, the girl never gives up hope. Then one day, left alone, she seizes her opportunity and runs to freedom. Will she make it? If she does run to freedom, can her life ever be the same again?
88 Days: The Abduction of Jayme Closs is the most compelling, shocking true crime story you’ve ever read. Previously published as part of a short story collection titled Kalamazoo’s Suitcase Killer, author Rod Kackley has republished this amazing true crime thriller as a stand-alone true crime novel, and packed it with new information.
88 Days: The Abduction of Jayme Closs is more than a shocking true crime story; it’s a thrilling story of survival, justice, and above all, hope.
Driven by his unquenchable lust to have a woman he couldn't have, a loving father of two turned into a "Jekyll and Hyde" madman, murdering four people one night, committing a mass murder that a small, rural community in Western Michigan would never forget.
After eight long months of investigation by a special task force of fifty detectives and forensic specialists, it was the testimony of a crack-smoking prostitute who survived one of his brutal attacks, and a jailhouse confession to his cellmate that brought this monster to justice.
Lustful Desire: A Shocking True Crime Story is a gripping, at times heartbreaking tale of mass murder and a killer who so hated women that he believed bullets were too good for them. This homicidal sex fiend preferred to beat his female victims to death.
A loving father of two, he could turn so selfish, brutal and full of hatred that he could put his lustful desires about the lives of four people he'd known since childhood; burning their house down around them to hide the evidence of his hideous crime.
However, Lustful Desires: A Shocking True Crime Story is also an inspirational tale. It is the story of the families who buried their loved ones and moved on, never forgetting those who died so tragically that night in September 2008, but still carrying on with their lives.
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