The Book · True Crime
How Not to Get Away
with Murder
Forty-three true cases from Canadian and American courts — and the single thread of evidence that undid each killer. By Frank Alfano.
Almost no one is caught the way the movies promise. There is rarely a surprise witness or a confession that shatters on the stand. What catches a killer, nearly every time, is smaller and quieter: the one thing he forgot he left behind.
A cell tower that puts a phone on a lonely road at the wrong hour. A Fitbit still counting a woman's steps after her husband swears she was already dead. A car's black box that remembers the last five seconds before a fatal crash. A search for "what happens when you die," typed minutes after a murder by a man checking his work.
In forty-three true cases from Canadian and American courts, Frank Alfano traces the single thread of evidence that undid each killer — and then tells you exactly where to read the court decision yourself.
Inside you'll meet
Every case is real. Every mistake is fatal.
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1
The man who handed police the very hairs that would convict him — because they asked nicely.
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2
A wife reported dead by her husband, contradicted by the fitness tracker on her own wrist.
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3
A phone that photographed the inside of a pocket on the way to a murder — stamped with the time and the place.
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4
A bullet that cleared the man everyone saw firing — and pointed at the shooter no one was watching.
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5
A retired judge, a "Mr. Big" police sting, a letter from the grave, and a staircase argued over for twenty years.
True crime with the receipts
You never have to take the author's word for anything.
Every case is real. Every chapter is built on an actual appellate court decision, with the citation and a free link — so you can read the ruling yourself. And it is honest about the other edge of the blade: the cases where the science was wrong, the evidence was thrown out, or an innocent person was set free.
Read them in any order. Each chapter is a self-contained story, told with the pull of a detective novel and a forensic scientist's respect for the facts.
"Everything remembers now."
This is the story of what that means — one killer and one fatal mistake at a time.