Harold Schechter

Pri vsem uzhase i otvraschenii, kotorye vyzyvajut v nas serijnye ubijstva, nevozmozhno otritsat, chto eto javlenie obladaet mrachnym svojstvom pritjagivat vnimanie. I delo zdes ne tolko v ljubopytstve. Nam khochetsja ponjat, pochemu ljudi, s vidu obychnye, pokhozhie na kazhdogo iz nas, obladajut serdtsem i razumom chudovischa.Avtory etoj knigi amerikanskie issledovateli-kriminalisty Devid Everit i Garold Shekhter reshili zagljanut v bezdnu i razgadat prirodu zla, tsarjaschego v soznanii prestupnikov. Otvety na vse voprosy, kotorye vy ne reshalis zadat, v etoj knige!

Shel 1957 god. Dlja svoikh sosedej iz fermerskoj obschiny v Amerike Ed Gejn byl neprimechatelnym, tikhim kholostjakom s krivoj ulybkoj i strannym jumorom. Nikto ne znal, chto uzhe 10 let on zhivet v svoem tajnom mire zhestokikh ubijstv i nemyslimykh izvraschenij, i vot nastal moment, kogda raskrylas vsja pravda o ego zverstvakh... Avtor Garold Shekhter - amerikanskij pisatel-kriminalist, pochetnyj professor v kolledzhe Kuins, spetsializirujuschijsja na prestuplenijakh, v chastnosti serijnykh ubijstvakh 19-go i 20-go vekov. Ispolzuja gazetnye vyrezki i sudebnye zapisi, on predostavljaet podrobnuju dokumentatsiju kazhdogo opisyvaemogo sluchaja, pri etom sozdavaja zakhvatyvajuschie povestvovanija i polnostju prorabotannykh personazhej. Ego raboty publikovalis v takikh izdanijakh, kak The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times i mnogikh drugikh. V knige "Ed Gejn" Garold Shekhter rasskazyvaet istoriju serijnogo ubijtsy, che imja progremelo na ves mir. Ed Gejn izvesten kak "mjasnik iz Plejnfilda". On byl raskhititelem grobnits i izvraschentsem, kotoryj prevratil svoju fermu v masterskuju po izgotovleniju mebeli, posudy i odezhdy iz chastej chelovecheskikh tel. - Kak detstvo Eda razrushilo ego psikhicheskoe zdorove? - Chto pobudilo ego sovershat takie veschi, kotorye dazhe ne ukladyvajutsja v golove? - Kakie shokirujuschie sekrety khranila ferma ubijtsy? - Chto proiskhodilo s Edom Gejnom posle ego razoblachenija? - Kak ego obraz povlijal na kulturu? V etoj knige vy najdete otvety na eti voprosy i okunetes v strashnuju, no zakhvatyvajuschuju dukh istoriju.

From true crime master Harold Schechter, author of Murderabilia, comes 50 States of Murder, a geographic telling of some of the most notorious but lesser-known murders for each US State.Filled with hundreds of entries organized by location, 50 States of Murder is both a lively and chilling work of storytelling and an authoritative survey of the homicidal history of the United States-perfect for any true-crime obsessive. Certain crimes are impossible to imagine happening anywhere but where they did: Could the Manson murders have gone down somewhere besides the 1960s sex-and-drug-fueled, occult-dabbling culture of Southern California? Would Truman Capote's In Cold Blood been as powerful if the Clutter family massacre happened anywhere besides the tightly knit world of Holcomb, Kansas? Or would the "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski have been able to hole up in the woods evading notice for decades anywhere but in Montana? Discover each state's most memorable and notorious crimes through expert authorship and stunning visuals and interactive design.

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 for ten years in his own secret world of brutal murder and unthinkable depravity. Here is the grisly true story of "the Butcher of Plainfield," a deranged killer whose fiendish fantasies inspired such works as Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs. More horrifying than any movie or novel however, Deviant dares to explore in chilling detail the life and times of one of the most twisted madmen in the annals of true crime--one who still haunts us to this day--and how he transformed his small, nondescript farmhouse in the American heartland into his own private and inescapable domain of ghoulishness and blood.

ETO NE KINO, ETO REALNYE PRESTUPLENIJa! Fraza "Osnovano na realnykh sobytijakh" v nachale filma momentalno delaet ljuboj sjuzhet stokrat interesnee. Ved zhizn - luchshij stsenarist. To, chto poroj proiskhodit v realnosti, kuda bolee shokirujuschee i neverojatnoe, chem sposoben pridumat dazhe samyj iskusnyj dramaturg. I eta kniga kak raz o tekh filmakh, sozdateli kotorykh vdokhnovljalis realnymi prestuplenijami. Gromkie ubijstva, nevoobrazimaja zhestokost, izvraschennye pytki, derzkie ograblenija, koshki-myshki s detektivami i ledenjaschij dushu strakh - izljublennyj nabor ljubogo poklonnika tru-krajma. - "Psikho"; - "Alfa Dog"; - "Krik"; - "Pokhititeli tel"; - "U kholmov est glaza"; - "Ubijstvo v "Vostochnom ekspresse"; - "Grjaznyj Garri" - i esche bolee 30 filmov s nevydumannymi istorijami prestuplenij! Vy dumali, chto znaete pravdu obo vsekh kinoshnykh manjakakh i ubijtsakh? Kak by ne tak! "Trukrajm v kino. Prestuplenija, kotorye legli v osnovu kultovykh filmov" rasskazhet o prestuplenijakh, kotorye davno pozabyty, no prodolzhajut zhit blagodarja kinematografu!

Iz-za nesovershenstva sistemy nachala 20-go veka prestupnik mog legko: - izmenit svoe imja neskolko raz i ostatsja beznakazannym; - pokinut gorod, v kotorom rodilsja, i stat tem, kem on khochet byt; - pridumat sebe alibi, kotoroe prakticheski nevozmozhno proverit; - ostavit javnye uliki na meste prestuplenija, na kotorye nikto ne obratit vnimanie. "Garold Shekhter, amerikanskij ekspert po prestuplenijam, v ocherednoj raz zakhodit v samye temnye ugolki. Opisannye im prestuplenija napominajut istorii o prividenijakh, kotorye rasskazyvajut u kostra: zakhvatyvajuschie, pugajuschie i nezabyvaemye". - Robert Kolker, avtor knig "Chto-to ne tak s Gelvinami" i "Ischeznuvshie devushki""Uvlekatelnoe i maksimalno detalnoe povestvovanie o dejstvitelno zhutkikh prestuplenijakh v SSHA v nachale 20-go veka. Kak odin chelovek sposoben pogubit desjatki nevinnykh ljudej? Pochemu prestupniki ne zhalejut dazhe malenkikh detej? Raskaivajutsja li oni na sude ili na eshafote? Vnutri etoj knigi vy, vozmozhno, najdete otvety". - Aljona Lenkovskaja, ugolovnyj jurist, juridicheskij psikholog i avtor populjarnogo bloga alenushkalen

Klounskie kartiny Dzhona Uejna Gejsi, rozhdestvenskie otkrytki s avtografom Teda Bandi, shifr Zodiaka, lestnitsa, ispolzovavshajasja pri pokhischenii rebenka Lindberga, vstavnye zuby zhenschiny - serijnoj ubijtsy 1908 goda, zadokumentirovannoe priznanie ubijtsy Elizabet Short, drobovik, iz kotorogo zastrelili semju Katter, i mnogie drugie veschi, kotorye kogda-to prinadlezhali izvestnym ubijtsam ili byli kak-to svjazany s ikh prestuplenijami. Vo vremena, kogda politsija esche ne dogadalas otsepljat territorii prestuplenij, okhotniki za "suvenirami" sobiralis v mestakh zhestokikh ubijstv, unosja s soboj kazhdyj element potentsialno vazhnoj uliki. Tak, posle ubijstva semi Diring "muzhchina toroplivo opustilsja na koleni na kuchu solomy i navoza, nashel okrovavlennuju solominku, akkuratno zavernul ee v bumagu i esche bolee akkuratno polozhil v karman zhileta".

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. With a killing that made headlines around the nation, John Colt became a cultural touchstone whose shocking villainy inspired and provoked such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Herman Melville. Unlike his brother, John lived a nomadic existence, bouncing from one job to another. His one distinction, writing a reference accounting book, would play a part in his fall from grace. For in New York City, on September 17, 1841, John murdered printer Samuel Adams with a hatchet during a heated argument over proceeds from book sales. A media circus ensued, galvanizing the penny press, which printed lurid headlines and gruesome woodcut illustrations. The standing-room-only trial created unforgettable moments in legal history, including such dramatic evidence as Samuel Adams’s decomposed head. The verdict and its aftermath would reverberate throughout the country and beyond, giving John Colt lasting infamy. “[Schechter] leads us through Colt’s trial with such precision that you can smell the cigar smoke in the courtroom. . . . Killer Colt succeeds in making us care about this story now by showing why it mattered to so many people then.” —HistoryNet

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 artefacts that once belonged to notorious murderers. They are objets of fascination to the legion of true crime obsessives around the world. And not merely for fleeting dark thrills, but because they represent a way to better understand those who we typically label monsters in lieu of learning how they actually became one.In Murderabilia, veteran true crime writer Harold Schechter presents 100 murder-related artefacts spanning two centuries (1808-2014), with accompanying stories of various lengths. A visual and literary journey, it presents a history unlike any previously told in the true crime genre, one that speaks to the dark fascination of true crime fans while also presenting a larger historical timeline of how and why we continue to be captivated by the most sensational crimes and killers among us.

A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age “Bluebeard” who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America. While other infamous homicides from the same eras—the Lizzie Borden slayings, for example, or the “thrill killing” committed by Leopold and Loeb—have entered into our cultural mythology, these four equally sensational crimes have largely faded from public memory. A quartet of gripping historical true-crime narratives, Butcher’s Work restores these once-notorious cases to vivid, dramatic life.

Harold Schechter, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Hell’s Princess, unearths a nearly forgotten true crime of obsession and revenge, and one of the first—and worst—mass murders in American history.In 1927, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan, was celebrating a new primary school—one of the most modern in the Midwest—Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans. The local farmer and school board treasurer was educated, respected, and an accommodating neighbor and friend. But behind his ordinary demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia. On May 18 he detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone in it. Thirty-eight children and six adults were murdered that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history.Maniac is Harold Schechter’s gripping, definitive, exhaustively researched chronicle of a town forced to comprehend unprecedented carnage and the triggering of a “human time bomb” whose act of apocalyptic violence would foreshadow the terrors of the current age.

Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, and lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films.The necktie murders in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy; Chicago’s Jazz Age crime of passion; the fatal hookup in Looking for Mr. Goodbar; the high school horrors committed by the costumed slasher in Scream. These and other cinematic crimes have become part of pop-culture history. And each found inspiration in true events that provided the raw material for our greatest blockbusters, indie art films, black comedies, Hollywood classics, and grindhouse horrors.So what’s the reality behind Psycho, Badlands, The Hills Have Eyes, A Place in the Sun, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Dirty Harry? How did such tabloid-ready killers as Bonnie and Clyde, body snatchers Burke and Hare, Texas sniper Charles Whitman Jr., nurse-slayer Richard Speck, and Leopold and Loeb exert their power on the public imagination and become the stuff of movie lore?In this collection of revelatory essays, true-crime historian Harold Schechter takes a fascinating trip down the crossroads of fact and fiction to reveal the sensational real-life stories that are more shocking, taboo, and fantastic than even the most imaginative screenwriter can dream up.

Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, and lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films. The necktie murders in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy; Chicago’s Jazz Age crime of passion; the fatal hookup in Looking for Mr. Goodbar; the high school horrors committed by the costumed slasher in Scream. These and other cinematic crimes have become part of pop-culture history. And each found inspiration in true events that provided the raw material for our greatest blockbusters, indie art films, black comedies, Hollywood classics, and grindhouse horrors. So what’s the reality behind Psycho, Badlands, The Hills Have Eyes, A Place in the Sun, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Dirty Harry? How did such tabloid-ready killers as Bonnie and Clyde, body snatchers Burke and Hare, Texas sniper Charles Whitman Jr., nurse-slayer Richard Speck, and Leopold and Loeb exert their power on the public imagination and become the stuff of movie lore? In this collection of revelatory essays, true-crime historian Harold Schechter takes a fascinating trip down the crossroads of fact and fiction to reveal the sensational real-life stories that are more shocking, taboo, and fantastic than even the most imaginative screenwriter can dream up.

"A deeply researched and morbidly fascinating chronicle of one of America's most notorious female killers." --The New York Times Book ReviewAn Amazon Charts bestseller.In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana "murder farm." Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn't merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. They'd been butchered.Hell's Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter's gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery--and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare.

2015 Edgar Award NomineeBeekman Place, once one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan, had a curious way of making it into the tabloids in the 1930s: SKYSCRAPER SLAYER, BEAUTY SLAIN IN BATHTUB read the headlines. On Easter Sunday in 1937, the discovery of a grisly triple homicide at Beekman Place would rock the neighborhood yet again--and enthrall the nation. The young man who committed these murders would come to be known in the annals of American crime as the Mad Sculptor.Caught up in the Easter Sunday slayings was a bizarre and sensationalistic cast of characters, seemingly cooked up in a tabloid editor's overheated imagination. The charismatic perpetrator, Robert Irwin, was a brilliant young sculptor who had studied with some of the masters of the era. But with his genius also came a deeply disturbed psyche; Irwin was obsessed with sexual self-mutilation and was frequently overcome by outbursts of violent rage.Irwin's primary victim, Veronica Gedeon, was a figure from the world of pulp fantasy--a stunning photographer's model whose scandalous seminude pinups would titillate the public for weeks after her death. Irwin's defense attorney, Samuel Leibowitz, was a courtroom celebrity with an unmatched record of acquittals and clients ranging from Al Capone to the Scottsboro Boys. And Dr. Fredric Wertham, psychiatrist and forensic scientist, befriended Irwin years before the murders and had predicted them in a public lecture months before the crime.Based on extensive research and archival records, The Mad Sculptor recounts the chilling story of the Easter Sunday murders--a case that sparked a nationwide manhunt and endures as one of the most engrossing American crime dramas of the twentieth century. Harold Schechter's masterly prose evokes the faded glory of post-Depression New York and the singular madness of a brilliant mind turned against itself. It will keep you riveted until the very end.

In February 1874 Alfred Packer staggered out of the Colorado mountains and into the Los Pinos Indian agency. Snowbound and lost, he claimed to have been abandoned by his five companions. But behind the wilderness grime he looked rather well fed. And he had in his possession a skinning knife... When questioned, Packer confessed that four of the group had survived by eating two who had died of exhaustion; later he killed another in self-defence, eating him also. Packer was arrested on suspicion of murder but escaped. That same month, the half-eaten bodies of five men were discovered near Los Pinos… Packer's guilt was assumed, but the law did not catch up with him until 1883. Initially sentenced to death, he received a 40-year jail term. Paroled in 1901, he lived his last years in Denver. Was Packer the flesh-eating monster of myth, or a wretch who acted out of self-preservation? MANEATER tells his story in page-turning prose and also reveals how recent forensic developments may shed light on Packer's long-assumed cannibalism.

Historical fact and startling literary invention converge in this stunning novel by "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" (The Boston Book Review). Praised by Caleb Carr for his "brilliantly detailed and above all riveting" true-crime writing, Harold Schechter brings his expertise to a marvelous work of fiction in the tradition of Carr's own The Alienist. Superbly rendering the 1830s Baltimore of Edgar Allan Poe, Schechter taps into the dark genius of that legendary author -- and follows a labyrinthine path into the heart of a most heinous crime.He is an aspiring writer, plagued by dreadful ruminations -- a man whose troubled nights are haunted by dreams of his angelic cousin Virginia. He is Edgar Allan Poe, a literary critic known for his uncompromising standards and scathing pen. His recently published attack on the autobiography of Colonel David Crockett, U.S. congressman and celebrated American hero, has brought the indignant frontiersman -- unexpected, uninvited -- to the chamber door of Poe's private sanctum. Neither man is prepared for where this fateful meeting will take them: on a quest for a killer through the city's highest and lowest streets and byways.In a modest boarding house, an elderly widow of sad circumstance has been found murdered by an unknown assailant. On the wall above her bed, scrawled in the victim's blood, is a single, cryptic word. But the meaning of the chilling clue is merely one piece in a complex puzzle that ensnares the writer and the politician in a twisted and deadly game. For the ghastly crimes, each more bizarre than the last, have only just begun.Combining the phantasmagoric voice of Poe's legendary tales with an historian's exactness, Harold Schechter hovers between fact and fiction, horror and passion, destiny and doom, while conjuring historical detail with uncanny precision. Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Poe's death, Nevermore is both a tour de force of narrative suspense and a dazzling secret history of one of American literature's unique and enduring figures.

A professor of American literature and culture, renowned for his true-crime writing, Harold Schechter's Outcry discovers that a killer's instincts never die.When reporter Paul Novak investigates a series of brutal murders, he didn't plan to pry into the legend of Ed Gein, the butcher of Plainfield, Wisconsin. But when local lore leads him to the ramshackle home of a bizarre young man and his mother, Paul realizes he's stumbled across Ed Gein's best kept secret