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Peter Vronsky is an investigative journalist and a producer of documentary films for television. His work has appeared on PBS, Discovery Channel, MTV, CNN, and various international channels

Includes the names: Peter Vronsky, Dr. Peter Vronsky

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Peter Vronsky is an investigative historian, author, filmmaker and new media artist. He holds a Ph.d. in the history of espionage in international relations and criminal justice history from the University of Toronto. He was born in Canada and has been shooting and producing investigative documentaries and independent films since 1975.

Peter Vronsky is the author of a true-crime history bestseller, Serial Killers: The Method and Mandness of Monsters (Penguin Books, 2004.) The sequel Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters was published by Penguin in 2007. His current book based on his doctoral dissertation is Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion and the 1866 Battle That Made Canada (Penguin Books, 2011) a controversial study of the hidden history of Canada's first modern battle.

He has worked extensively in Europe, the former Soviet Union, Middle-East, South Africa and in Canada and USA 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 and the history of the Third Reich at Ryerson University.

Vronsky is the producer-writer-director of the acclaimed feature documentary about underground Stalinism in the last days of Soviet Russia: Mondo Moscow: The Art & Magic of Not Being There (1992), produced for TV Ontario and broadcast in City-TV's primetime movie slot for four years running. He was the director of Crash'n'Burn (1977)--an early look at Punk Rock in Toronto and on the road in New York.

He was the co-writer of the National Film Board of Canada feature documentary The Un-Canadians (1996). Vronsky is also the director of a dramatic feature film: Bad Company (1978).

In between his own independent productions, Peter Vronsky has worked as a production manager, line producer, director of photography and new media artist. He field-produced Venice and Adriatic Region coverage for CNN and shot undercover and hidden camera sequences for CTV's W5 and CBC's The Fifth Estate, investigative TV programs.

Vronsky's last undercover shoot took him to the troubled breakaway republic of Chechnya, where his hidden cameras documented the secret market for nuclear weapons materials for a CTV-Discovery Channel USA-FujiTv-ORF Stornoway Productions co-production of The Hunt For Red Mercury (1993).

Vronsky was the Director of Photography on I'll Fly Away Home (2004) and Life Could Be A Dream (2002), feature documentaries for Bravo Canada/Bravo USA.

In 2000 Vronsky was the founding Bureau Chief of the Queens Park/Toronto Bureau of Epress.ca, Canada's first officially accredited internet streaming video news portal. Later that year he joined GlobalNetFinancial.com, a Los Angeles-based global investment streaming video news and online trading platform with sites in Europe and North America, where he was their Broadband Content Specialist. GlobalNetFinancial perished in the 2001 dot-com stock market collapse. Vronsky is highly experienced in convergence of television and video with the Internet, non-linear interactive scripting and online streaming content design.

In 1997-2000 Vronsky was the Head of Documentary and English Language Production in Italy for Panavideo, a service producer for RAI, the Italian national television broadcasting network. Vronsky produced live and taped television broadcasts in the Venice region and is an expert on the logistics of film and video production management in the water-bound city.

Vronsky has extensive international production experience as a producer, director and/or director of photography on locations in Russia, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Netherlands, UK, Austria, former Yugoslavia, Jamaica, South Africa, and in North America.


Peter Vronsky's 1991-1992 research and journey to the USSR to locate a series of never-before-interviewed witnesses to accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's life there is a subject in professor John Newman's academic study of Oswald's alleged CIA connections (Oswald and the CIA.) The results of Vronsky's research and interviews have been featured in numerous books and television programs, including Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, Vincent Bugliosi's 2007 Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, best-selling author David Lifton's upcoming biography of Oswald, and PBS's definitive 1993 television biography of Oswald produced by Frontline. Vronsky maintains an often cited website focusing on Oswald's life in the USSR and is a recognized authority on Lee Harvey Oswald's time in the USSR.
(See: Lee Harvey Oswald In Russia Website )

Vronsky has more than twenty years of experience in the field of digital new media, starting with his role as Artist-in-Residence at the Sony Corporation in 1983-85 where he experimented with Sony's then state-of-the-art digital graphics and interactive laser optical systems. He created a number of formal experimental video art works and new media installations, exhibited internationally and in Canada, including a group showing at the Art Gallery of Ontario and at Canada House in London, England.

Peter Vronsky is fluent in English, Russian and Italian, and currently resides in Toronto Canada and Venice Italy.

http://www.petervronsky.org/cv/

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American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years- 1950-2000 by Peter Vronsky is a 2021 Berkley publication.

Serial killers didn’t suddenly appear out of nowhere- they have always been amongst us- long before such a phrase was coined- but one must admit that between 1950 and 2000 there was a huge surge in the number of prolific serial killers.

In this book the author attempts to explain why that might be- the ‘perfect storm’ of events that created an epidemic of psychosexual murderers. This book does not delve into various other subsets of serial killers- for instance, there are no female serial killers profiled- as he hopes to zero in on the sexual sadist types who terrorized cities, dominated the new cycles, and starred in our nightmares for years and years.

By focusing on this type of serial killer, the author can make a connection between various events- such as wars, the depression, and the easily available pulp magazines that featured images of male dominance over bound, scantily clad women and the sudden sharp increase in the number of serial murders.

This theory holds merit and is certainly worth considering and I was inclined to concede the point to a degree. While Ted Bundy claimed these images led him to harder pornographic material and was the catalyst for his numerous crimes, I felt maybe the author was giving those publications more power, perhaps, than they deserved. Still, I’m not negating the influence of these images, but I’m not sure can blame everything on this type of media- sort of like blaming video games for every incident of violence that occurs- an inability to separate fact from fiction- but- sometimes it can be pure evil and nothing more.

The author went through a plethora of killers- some I was familiar with- some not so much. I felt the point could have been made without comprehensive studies of these killers. In fact, it was just too much for me. Too much violent, sicko stuff to read for any length of time without it causing mental stress. So, it took me few weeks to complete this book- even with a few skimming sessions. I think it could have been condensed down a bit and it might have been more effective- making the point with more efficiency.

The author is well versed on this topic, so of course, the book is researched, and the material was organized, and I had no trouble with the writing- just that it droned on far too long. But, for true crime readers, and serial killer aficionados, this is a book you’ll want to consider.

The conclusion of the book warns of another perfect storm in the making and I can’t say I disagree. I have a feeling it’s going to get worse before it gets any better….

3 stars
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gpangel | 1 other review | Jan 10, 2024 |
I found it an enjoyable read. A good history should bring you side by side with people in question, the soldiers, the civilians so that it feels like your there. Mission accomplished.
 
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charlie68 | Jul 14, 2023 |
This book is about the scarborough rapist/sexual sadist Paul Bernardo and his willing and enthusiastic accomplice Karla Homolka.
Canada's worst serial rapists/serial killers but unfortunately not the only well-known serial killers in Canada.
Karla wasn't a virgin when she married Paul Bernardo so offered her virginal younger sister Tammy to make up for not being a virgin as a "christmas wedding present" What he did to Karla's sister and the rest of the victims, with Karla's help is absolutely disgusting.
Before Paul met Karla Homolka he was stalking potential victims, he would then hit them to subdue them and drag them into bushes so they wouldn't be seen, he ordered them to lay on their stomach so they wouldn't see his face, then he would beat and sodomise them.
If they did not meet I don't believe they would have done what they did individually, but each person inspired and encouraged the other to act out their darkest fantasy/obsession with luring, drugging, mutilating, torturing and raping their virginal teenaged victims that were innocent and didn't deserve to be treated like a piece of meat.
I believe that Paul Bernardo would have continued to rape women, but it would have escalated he would have changed his modus operandi and would probably rape/murder more women.
He would have liked to spend more time with his victim(s) by torturing them over several days and repeatedly raping the victim and get other people involved so he could hold it against them as leverage that he could use later to his advantage.
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EvilCreature | Sep 17, 2022 |
Just. Not. Good. Very flat. It started out like a lot of True Crime stories do...at the point of capture. I was waiting for the author to go back and develop the character of the murderer, what was his childhood like, where did he come from, who was he, but there was only about a paragraph about that:
"He had a happy childhood". No conjecture as to why he did it. No psychological theories of how someone with his background could become the monster he did. Then I was expecting some development of the victims but only got very little information (again a couple paragraphs) about just one of the victims, the final one. From there it quickly went right into the trial and the aftermath and never really discussed the other victims other than their names and how they were murdered. A lot of it was just reprinted transcripts from the trial and news paper reports, so the writer didn't really do much of the work. Pretty much a disappointment and honestly a disservice to the families of the victims. This author had the opportunity to tell their stories and didn't. This might have just been a long news paper story for what it contained. Just the facts ma'am, just the facts.… (more)
 
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Jen-Lynn | Aug 1, 2022 |

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Works
14
Members
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