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 civilization throughout the ages. Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the seri...

An in-the-room account of John Colt's scandalous nineteenth-century murder trial from "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" ( Boston Review).In this masterful account, renowned true-crime historian Harold Schechter takes you into the life and crimes of convicted murderer John Caldwell Colt, drawing parallels between John's rise to notoriety and his brother Samuel Colt's rise to fame as the inventor of the legendary revolver. ...

FROM SOCIAL OUTCAST TO NECROPHILE AND MURDERER -- HIS APPALLING CRIMES STUNNED AN ERA.San Francisco, the 1920s. In an age when nightmares were relegated to the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and distant tales of the Whitechapel murders, a real-life monster terrorized America. His acts of butchery have proved him one of history's fiercest madmen.As an infant, Earle Leonard Nelson possessed the power to unsettle his elders. As a child he was unnaturally obsessed ...

From the author of “top-drawer true crime” (Booklist) books comes the definitive account of Ed Gein—the man whose shocking crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.The year was 1957. To his Wisconsin neighbors, Ed Gein was a slight, Midwestern farmhand with a twisted little smile. To an unsuspecting nation, he would become one of the most notorious crime figures in history, having lived f...

AMERICA’S MOST COLD-BLOODED!In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the ...

The unputdownable true crime story about a killer who preyed on children but was not much older than his victims.When fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874, Boston’s nightmarish reign of terror came to an end. Called the “Boston Boy Fiend,” he was finally safely behind bars. But questions remained about how and why a teenager could commit such heinous crimes.Acclaimed true crime writer Harold Schechter brings his brilliant insight and fascina...

LURED FROM THE SAFETY OF HOME -- INTO THE JAWS OF HELL"America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" (The Boston Book Review), Harold Schechter shatters the myth that violent crime is a modern phenomenon -- with this seamless true account of unvarnished horror from the early twentieth century. Journey inside the demented mind of Albert Fish -- pedophile, sadist, and cannibal killer -- and discover that bloodlust knows no time or place....On a...

From veteran true crime master Harold Schechter comes a unique look into the history of crime told through the dark objects left behind.The false teeth of a female serial killer from 1908, the cut-and-paste confession of the Black Dahlia killer, the newly cracked cipher of the Zodiac killer, the shotgun used in the Clutter family murders, which were made famous by Truman Capote's true crime classic In Cold Blood—these are more than simple artifacts that on...

The heinous bloodlust of Dr. H.H. Holmes is notorious -- but only Harold Schechter's Depraved tells the complete story of the killer whose evil acts of torture and murder flourished within miles of the Chicago World's Fair. "Destined to be a true crime classic" (Flint Journal, MI), this authoritative account chronicles the methods and madness of a monster who slipped easily into a bright, affluent Midwestern suburb, where no one suspected the dapper, charming Holmes -- who alterna...

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 earlier age, and the explosively dramatic trial that became a tabloid sensation at the turn of the century.Death was by poison and came in the mail: A package of Bromo Seltzer had been anonymo...

The shocking story of one of the most notorious female serial killers in American history from “an author who shows real mastery of the true crime genre” (NPR).In 1891, Jane Toppan, a proper New England matron, embarked on a profession as a private nurse. Selfless and good-natured, she worked for some of Boston’s most prominent families, but they had no idea what they were welcoming into their homes.Her dark past of tragedy, abuse, and mental illness was ca...

Bestselling true-crime writer Harold Schechter, a leading authority on serial killers, and coauthor David Everitt offer a guided tour through the bizarre and blood-chilling world of serial murder. Through hundreds of detailed entries that span the entire spectrum -- the shocking crimes, the infamous perpetrators, and much more -- they examine all angles of a gruesome cultural phenomenon that grips our imagination.From Art (both by and about serial ...