Peter Vronsky is a
forensic investigative historian, author,
and filmmaker.
He holds a PhD in the history of espionage in international relations and
criminal justice history from the University of Toronto. Peter Vronsky has been shooting and producing investigative documentaries and independent
films since 1975 and currently lectures in history of espionage and
international relations at the Metropolitan Toronto University.
Peter Vronsky is currently interviewing the notorious serial killer Richard Cottingham,
the Torso Serial Killer, and has assisted law enforcement in New York and New
Jersey in closing in
2021-2026 eleven Cottingham unsolved cold case
from 20 now confirmed murders from the 1960s and
1970s, including the oldest cold case closure in American history using
perpetrator DNA (as opposed to familial DNA): the 1968 Cold Case Murder of Diane Cusick in Valley Stream, Nassau County, NY.
Peter Vronsky most recent book is the bestselling
American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years 1950-2000,
published in 2020 by Berkley Books at Penguin Random House.
Vronsky's previous book Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers From the
Stone Age to the Present, was a New York Times
Editors Choice in 2018.
Peter Vronsky is the author of true-crime history bestsellers,
Serial Killers: The
Method and Madness of Monsters (Berkley Books - Penguin Random
House, 2004.) The sequel
Female Serial
Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters was published by Berkley
- Penguin Random House in 2007. His book based on his doctoral dissertation is
Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion
and the 1866 Battle That Made Canada (Allen Lane - Penguin Random House
Canada, 2011) a controversial
study of the hidden history of Canada's first modern battle during the
Fenian Raids of 1866.
He worked extensively in Europe, the former Soviet Union, Middle-East, South
Africa and in Canada and United States
producing and directing numerous cutting edge investigative
documentary
television specials on subjects
ranging from early punk rock and flashback syndrome in Vietnam war veterans to
organized crime and nuclear materials smuggling in the break-away regions of the
former Soviet Union.
Peter
Vronsky is the creator of a body of formal
video art works exhibited
in the 1980s internationally, a former Sony Corporation Artist-in-Residence,
and a cited historian of Lee Harvey Oswald's journey to the USSR
in 1959-1962.
Vronsky earned
a Ph.D. in
the
History Department of the University of
Toronto in the fields of criminal justice history and intelligence in international
relations. His doctoral thesis, “Combat, Memory and Remembrance in
Confederation Era Canada: The Hidden History of the Battle of Ridgeway,
June 2, 1866” on the
origins of the Canadian secret services during the Civil War era and the Fenian
Crisis in Canada focuses on the 1866 battle near Fort
Erie, Ontario fought by Canadian volunteers to stop a 1000 strong invasion
force of
heavily armed Fenian Irish-American insurgents. The
dissertation was published in 2011 by Penguin Books as
Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion and the Forgotten 1866
Battle That Made Canada, a volume in their
Canadian History series, edited by Robert Bothwell and
Margaret Macmillan.
Vronsky
currently lectures in international relations history, the American Civil War,
terrorism, espionage and the
history of the Third Reich at Toronto Metropolitan University
(formerly Ryerson University.) MORE...
