Ted Botha

Todo empezó cuando Frank Bender, siendo estudiante de arte, entró en una sala de autopsias y, al ver el cadáver de una mujer con tres balazos en el cráneo, sintió que sería capaz de dibujar su rostro tal como era antes de haber sido desfigurado. De ahi paso a convertirse en una valiosa ayuda para investigadores forenses y departamentos de policia. La policia del estado de Chihuahua, en Mexico, le encargo la reconstruccion del rostro de cinco victimas de los celebres feminicidios de Ciudad Juarez. Encerrado en un hotel en opresivas condiciones de seguridad, Bender empezo a forjar su propia teoria sobre los asesinatos.

Mother. Nurse. Gold-digger. Cause célèbre. When Daisy de Melker stood trial in 1932, accused of poisoning her son and two husbands, the public couldnt get enough of her. Crowds gathered outside court

In The Girl with the Crooked Nose, Ted Botha tells the absorbing story of Frank Bender, a gifted, self-taught artist who can bring back the dead and the vanished through a unique, macabre sculpting talent. Bender has been the key to solving at least nine murders and tracking down numerous criminals. Then he is called upon to tackle the most challenging and bizarre case of his career.Someone is killing the young women of Juarez. Since 1993, the decomposing bodies of as many as four hundred victims, known as feminicidios, have been found in the desert surrounding this gritty Mexican border town. In 2003, prodded by local political pressure and international attention, the Mexican authorities turn to the United States to help solve these horrific crimes. The man they turn to is Bender. Through breathtakingly realistic sculptures, Bender reconstructs the faces of unknown murder victims or fugitives whose appearances are certain to have changed over years on the run. The busts are based in part on the painstaking application of forensic science to fleshless human skulls and in part on deep intuition, an uncanny ability to discern not only a missing face but also the personality behind it. Arriving in Mexico, Bender works in secrecy, in a culture of corruption and casual violence where the line between criminals and law enforcement is blurry, braving anonymous threats and sinister coincidences to give eight skulls back their faces and, hopefully, their histories. Drawn to one skull in particular"The Girl With the Crooked Nose"Bender gradually comes to suspect that perhaps he is not meant to succeed, and that the true solution to the mystery of the feminicidios is far more terrible than anyone has dared to imagine. Ted Botha brilliantly weaves Benders storythe cases he has solved, the intricacies of his art, the colorful characters he encounters, and the personal cost of his strange obsessionwith the chilling story of the Juarez investigation. With a conclusion as shocking as its story is gripping, The Girl with the Crooked Nose will haunt readers long after the last page is turned. [a] crackling account of a quirky, maverick forensics artist, Frank Bender, and his largely successful efforts in facial reconstruction of murder victims. extraordinary is Bothas writing, with his unerring depiction of Benders painstaking work and the eventual unraveling of the brutal crimes it solves. the tales in this book accurately capture the dark motives and complexities of senseless murder, and even the most savvy true-crime reader will not be able to resist the authors insightful storytelling."--Publishers Weekly

In 1913, a secretive American millionaire, who lived on the top fl oor of the famous Carlton Hotel, had a crazy idea: to make movies in Johannesburg. And not just any movies but the biggest in the world, huge spectacles with elaborate sets, thousands of extras and epic story lines.Isidore Schlesinger better known as IW built a studio on a farm called Killarney, where he set out to challenge a place in America that was in its infancy: Hollywood.The glamour, gossip and high drama of IWs studio fitted perfectly into a city experiencing an intoxicating golden age. There was as much action on the movie sets as there was on screen: from political intrigue and the clashing of massive egos to public outbursts, fiery judicial inquiries, disaster and death.Behind this mad enterprise was a maverick, a tycoon, a recluse, a friend of the famed and the connected. Schlesinger could have held his own in California but he chose as his base the City of Gold, and his indomitable ambition saw his Hollywood on the Veld soar. This is the untold story of the rise and fall of the strangest and most unique movie empire ever.