This book is very well researched, in fact, maybe over researched. The thing about over researched books is that they tend to include copious amounts of superfluous information that slow reading to a crawl. Although the Mad Sculptor includes some anomalous bits, it is overall a very interesting a...
It seems that most murderers have the spotlight for a few months, or a few years, and then they fade into obscurity as something else takes their place. That is exactly what happened to the murderers profiled in this book; at one time, they terrorized and titillated the American public, but for w...
THE DEFINITIVE DOSSIER ON HISTORY’S MOST HEINOUS!Hollywood’s make-believe maniacs like Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal Lecter can’t hold a candle to real life monsters like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and scores of others who have terrorized, tortured, and terminated their way across ...
In an era that produced some of the most vicious female sociopaths in American history, Jane Toppan would become the most notorious of them all. AN ANGEL OF MERCY In 1891, Jane Toppan, a proper New England matron, embarked on a profession as a private-duty nurse. Selfless and good-natured, she ...
In terms of sheer numbers, Albert Fish would seem to be little more than a lightweight in the annals of crime; he was only charged with and found guilty of one murder. But that one highly disturbing case--the brazen 1928 kidnapping and brutal killing of a New York City 10-year-old, Grace Budd--ev...
From the author of 'Depraved' and 'Deviant', 'Bestial' is the dark journey into the mind of an unrepentant sadist. In the winter of 1926 Earle Leonard Nelson erupted into a 16 month long frenzy of savage rape, barbaric murder and blood lust.
A MONSTER PREYED UPON THE CHILDREN OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOSTON. HIS CRIMES WERE APPALLING -- AND YET HE WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A CHILD HIMSELF. When fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874, a nightmarish reign of terror over an unsuspecting city came to an end. "The Boston Boy Fiend"...
From renowned true-crime historian Harold Schechter, whom The Boston Book Review hails as “America’s principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers,” comes the riveting exploration of a notorious, sensational New York City murder in the 1890s, the fascinating forensic science of an ear...
This is the second book by Harold Schechter that I've read, the other being a biography of serial killer Albert Fish (my review here). Again, I reiterate my point that this is not a book you read for the content in the way that you don't exactly get enjoyment (unless you're really messed up) from...
Well, this man is such an awesome writer that I had to start a shelf of ONLY his books!!! I plan to read each book that Mr. Schechter writes and am currently reading both Deviant and Psycho USA - Famous American Killers you Never Heard Of. This man, Schechter, has a way of uniting you with eras l...
I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. —“THE FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE PLEDGE” FOR MUCH OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, HOSPITAL nursing was typically handled by a bunch of remarkably unqualified women. In New York City, for ...
Except for a brief interval during the early 1880s—when he, along with the other inmates, were temporarily transferred to another institution while Charlestown underwent renovations—he would remain immured within its grim, granite walls until 1929: a period of fifty-three years, extending from th...
R. Toyne, Chief of Detectives, Even before Moore and his escorts arrived in Creston, the strangler had already migrated southward to Kansas City, Missouri, where, within twenty-four hours, he added three more victims to his tally. At approximately 2:00 P.M. on Monday, December 27, a twenty-eight-...
Particularly in Britain there have been some notorious male serial poisoners, including Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, who dispatched a string of prostitutes with strychnine in the late 1800s. His Victorian compatriot, Dr. William Palmer, used the same substance to murder his motherin-law, his brother, ...
MILTON MILLER“In many ways, this patient has lived a psychotic life for many years. He has substituted human parts for the companionship of human beings and at the same time has gone through the superficial existence so that in the eyes of people around him he appeared quite rational. This can ha...
Benjamin was still an adolescent when, tired of tending his father’s cattle, he fled the farm and found work in a stone quarry. There, he saw firsthand “the power of dynamite to blow things up”—an experience that would leave a lasting imprint on his imagination. A brilliant, if largely self-educa...
His brother’s arrest for murder, however, was, by a considerable measure, the worst. And for Sam, it couldn’t have come at a less opportune time. Since his meeting in June with Secretary of the Navy George Badger, Sam had been awaiting the passage of the naval appropriation bill with its promised...
J. Simpson circus. But even without cable TV at their disposal, Pulitzer and Hearst—the great pioneers of what would come to be known as tabloid journalism—knew how to whip the public into a frenzy. The Journal in particular pulled out all the stops for the start of the “Great Poison Trial” on Tu...