Jerry Bledsoe

In this unrelenting real-life drama of three wealthy families connected by marriage and murder, Bledsoe recounts the shocking events, obsessive love, and bitter custody battles that led toward the bloody climax that took nine lives. Reissued to coincide with Bledsoe's new hardcover Blood Games (11/91).

A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder

Bitter Blood

An account of the murder of wealthy North Carolinian Lieth von Stein describes how von Stein's stepson, a young man obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, attacked his mother and stepfather in their beds while they slept. Reprint.

A True Account of Family Murder

Blood Games

The New York Times–bestselling author of Bitter Blood weaves “a powerful account” of greed that led to an unspeakable crime (The New York Times Book Review). As they slept in their North Carolina home, wealthy Lieth Von Stein and his wife Bonnie suffered a vicious assault with a knife and a baseball bat. Bonnie barely survived. Lieth did not. The crime seemed totally baffling until police followed a trail that led to the charming stepson, Chris Pritchard, and his brilliant, drug-using, Dungeons and Dragons–playing friends at North Carolina State University. “Haunting . . . Addictive, chilling and a masterpiece of reportage,” Blood Games is the true story of depraved young minds and a son’s gruesome greed turned to horrifyingly tragedy (Patricia Cornwell). Jerry Bledsoe masterfully reconstructs the bloody crime and its aftermath as he takes us into the secret twisted hearts of three young murderers. “Mr. Bledsoe goes straight to the bigger issues.” —The New York Times Book Review “In Mr. Bledsoe’s hands, a mega-load of inert facts becomes a human story of hurricane force.” —The News & Observer “Devastating . . . A brilliant account.” —Publishers Weekly

In 1960, at age 18, future bestselling author Jerry Bledsoe ("Bitter Blood" & "The Angel Doll") told an Army recruiter that he wanted to be an artist. This was his lucky day, the recruiter informed him. The Army had the best art school in the world. But after being sworn in, Bledsoe was pulled aside by a major and informed that no Army art school existed. He was being assigned instead to Information School.Although Bledsoe, who had flunked high school English for failure to write book reports and term papers, had no idea what this unexpected decision entailed, it would set the direction for the rest of his life.Bledsoe limits this warm, deeply personal and often humorous memoir to the turbulent '60s, which he began as a psychological warfare writer in the early stages of the Vietnam War. His Army experiences led him to become a newspaper reporter and columnist, thrusting him into the major stories of the decade and leading him to meet and write about hosts of remarkable and engaging people, including a relatively unknown musician named Jimi Hendrix who was opening for the Monkees, comedy legend Brother Dave Gardner, and civil rights leader Ben Elton Cox. From moments of true Catch-22 absurdities in the Army to historic events of the civil rights movement, "Do-Good Boy" gives its readers an insider's view as a young author discovers his calling.

An Unlikely Writer Confronts the '60s and Other Indignities

Do-Good Boy

Relates how Bonnie Von Stein's well-loved son and his overprivileged friends, floating in a fantasy world of drugs, fast cars, and sex, bludgeoned her and killed her husband while they were sleeping in their North Carolina home

Recounts the case of Barbara Stager, a seemingly devoted wife and community member whose murder of her husband was nearly ruled an accident until chilling evidence, including the death of her first husband, revealed Stager's secret double life. Reprint.

A True Story of Money, Marriage, Sex, and Murder

Before He Wakes

New York Times–bestselling author: “In the art of true-crime reportage, Jerry Bledsoe is the best in the country . . . Before He Wakes has the suspense of a novel” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Barbara Stager was known as a devoted mother, loving wife, and dedicated church leader in her Durham, North Carolina, community. When she “accidentally” shot her husband, popular high school coach, Russ, the police were inclined to believe her—until they learned that ten years earlier, her first husband had died in a strangely similar way. Sgt. Rick Buchanan’s relentless investigation into Stager’s life revealed a stunning vortex of compulsive lying, obsessive spending, and sexual promiscuity. With every new discovery, more of Barbara’s impeccable image unraveled. But the greatest shock—a damning piece of evidence Russ Stager left behind—revealed the nightmare truth about Barbara. With “the fine-toothed-comb reporting of [an] ace crime journalist,” this book takes us deep into a spellbinding case of double life, lethal lust, and almost perfect murder (Kirkus Reviews). “A shocking and well-written portrait of a dangerous woman.” —The New York Times “Mesmerizing.” —Ann Rule, New York Times–bestselling author of The Stranger Beside Me “This account of manipulation, compulsive spending, lying, promiscuity, and murder is made even more chilling by the fact that appearances are often deceiving.” —Library Journal “A profile of evil . . . Fascinating.” —The Baltimore Sun “Jerry Bledsoe is the master of true crime, the conclusion to what Truman Capote began. . . . Another stunning success.” —Patricia Cornwell, New York Times–bestselling author of Chaos

A True Story of Money, Marriage, Sex and Murder

On Labor Day weekend of 1972, journalist Jerry Bledsoe hooked up with the stock car racing circuit to begin research for his first book. The result of his efforts, first published in 1975, has been called the classic work on stock car racing. Bledsoe captures the beginnings of the modern NASCAR era, a time when legends like Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, and the Wood brothers ruled. It was also a time when independent drivers like Wendell Scott (NASCAR’s first African American driver) and Larry Smith could build a car in their garages during the week and race on Sunday alongside King Richard. With levels of access impossible to achieve today, Bledsoe is not only in the pits and garages with the drivers, but also is alongside their family driving to the next race in a van piled high with ice chests filled with sandwiches and fried chicken. He digs into the sport’s rough and rowdy history and shines a light into its nooks and crannies, uncovering the forgotten role that women drivers played in creating this most macho of motorsports. And then there are the fans. There’s Red Robinson, the self-proclaimed “World’s Number One Stock Car Racing Fan," who collects racing beauty queens the way some people collects stamps. And the fans camped out in the infield at Darlington, the biggest, wildest, whoopingest, holleringest, drinkingest, gamblingest, carousingest, knock-down, fall-out blowout held in the South. More than a book about racing, this is a close-up look at a cultural phenomenon that illuminates America and the South. In 1965, Tom Wolfe called racer Junior Johnson “the last American hero.” “The World’s Number One, All-Time Great, Stock Car Racing Book” shows that a decade later there were still plenty of heroes circling the track with no signs of them disappearing anytime soon.

The World’s Number One, Flat-Out, All-Time Great, Stock Car Racing Book

A North Carolina community college is wracked by controversy when a local reporter writes an article claiming that an adult community-outreach course on the Civil War taught that slaves in the South were happy.

One Teacher's Fateful Encounter with Political Correctness

Death by Journalism?

The author describes his five-month trip along U. S.64, North Carolina's longest highway and tells the stories of individuals he met along the way

A Journey Along North Carolina's Longest Highway, U.S. 64

From Whalebone to Hot House

In this “true story that reads like a novel,” the #1 New York Times–bestselling author reveals the facts behind a notorious Southern murder case (Library Journal). When North Carolina farmer Stuart Taylor died after a sudden illness, his forty-six-year-old fiancée, Velma Barfield, was overcome with grief. Taylor’s family grieved with her—until the autopsy revealed traces of arsenic poisoning. Turned over to the authorities by her own son, Velma stunned her family with more revelations. This wasn’t the first time she had committed cold-blooded murder, and she would eventually be tried by the “world’s deadliest prosecutor” and sentenced to death. This book probes Velma’s stark descent into madness, her prescription drug addiction, and her effort to turn her life around through Christianity. From her harrowing childhood to the crimes that incited a national debate over the death penalty, to the final moments of her execution, Velma Barfield’s life of crime and punishment, revenge and redemption, this is crime reporting at its most gripping and profound. “A painfully intimate, moving story about the life and death of the only woman executed in the U.S. between 1962–1998 . . . With graceful writing and thorough reporting, it makes the reader look hard at something dark and sad in the human soul . . . Breathes new life into the true crime genre.” —The News & Observer “Undertakes to answer the questions about the justice system and the motives that drive women to kill.” —The Washington Post Book World “An extraordinary piece of writing . . . The most chilling description of a legal execution that we are ever likely to get.” —Citizen-Times “Taut and engrossing on the nature of justice and the death penalty as well as on guilt and responsibility.” —Booklist

The True Story of Velma Barfield's Life, Crimes, and Punishment

Death Sentence

Jerry D. Neal

When Bill Pratt and Powell Seymour got laid off from their technology jobs in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1991, they had no idea that they were about to become leaders of a revolution in electronic communications. They did know that they wanted to start their own company, although they had no means to fund it. They asked their friend Jerry Neal to leave his job at the same company and join them to raise money and market their products. Those products numbered only seven at the time, and they could fit in a small matchbox with plenty of room to spare. But they were unlike any other products. Bill Pratt had designed the first radio frequency integrated circuits, the semiconductor chips that would make the cell-phone phenomenon possible. Within a year of starting the company, Pratt had designed another chip, the first power amplifier using an exotic technology that many considered unreliable and impossible to commercialize. Although the chip failed at first, it became a company builder. Now more than half of the cell phones made in the world contain power amplifiers made by RF Micro Devices of Greensboro, the world's leading supplier. The company has plants and offices around the world, and has broadened its reach into every aspect of wireless electronic communications. Jerry Neal's revealing, entertaining, often funny account of how this came about is much more than a story of one company's beginnings. It's a wild ride through the technology boom of the 1990s, at the peak of which, just nine years after its founding, RF Micro Devices had a market value of $16 billion, twice that of its technology partner, the huge, long-established defense contractor TRW. Fire in the Belly should be a handbook for entrepreneurs and a textbook for college business majors.

Jerry Bledsoe

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