Quotes from Harold Schechter

Owing, among other factors, to the exceedingly slow working of the lunacy commission, Bob's trial was postponed until the fall of 1938. By then the city had a new district attorney: Thomas E. Dewey, the fearless young "gangbuster" whose relentless crusade against racketeers like Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano would propel him to the governor's mansion in Albany and two runs for the White House as the Republican presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948.

The rise of modern mass communication, he argues—railways, telegraphs, and especially newspapers—has made it difficult for certain highly notorious criminals (like himself) to receive fair and impartial trials.

In short, while brain damage is often present in the case histories of serial killers, other kinds of damage play a central role, too—especially the emotional and psychological damage inflicted by a shockingly abusive upbringing.

It is not enough for a woman to murder an enemy; she wants to make him suffer, and she enjoys his death.

To be sure, not every abused child grows up to be a psychopathic killer. But virtually every psychopathic killer has suffered extreme, often grotesque, mistreatment at the hands of his or her parents or guardians. In the language of logic, severe child abuse may not be a sufficient cause in the creation of serial murderers, but it appears to be a necessary one.

Recent scientific research has reinforced the findings of people like Otnow and Athens by demonstrating that a traumatic upbringing can actually alter the anatomy of a person's brain. Brain scans performed on severely abused children have found that specific areas of the cortex—related not just to the intelligence but to the emotions—never develop properly, leaving them incapable of feeling empathy for other human beings.

a symptom of a widespread social ill: "the vain principle of personal honor," an insidious ideal that led "the youth of the present age of the world" to demand violent satisfaction for any insult. To Bennett and others, Colt's murderous deed was the direct consequence of this "false and bloody code" and Colt himself the living incarnation of what was widely perceived as a prevailing social pathology.

Empirical evidence, however, has little effect on irrational belief.

fast. When Roy Armstrong and Joe Young drove into Wakopa twenty minutes later—having finally extricated their car from the mud—they saw a crowd gathered outside Morgan's general store. Still dreaming of splitting the reward down the middle, the two men could feel their hearts sink

When Roy Armstrong and Joe Young drove into Wakopa twenty minutes later—having finally extricated their car from the mud—they saw a crowd gathered outside Morgan's general store. Still dreaming of splitting the reward down the middle, the two men could feel their hearts sink

Within hours, Governor Fred W. Green had arrived with his wife, Helen. Stunned by the devastation, the governor stripped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and threw himself into the rescue work, while his wife hurried to the grassy knoll to assist the nurses attending to the grievously injured children.3

side. In return, the kaiser's government would reward its new ally not only with "generous financial support" but with the reacquisition of Mexico's "conquered" territories—Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona—once the United States suffered its inevitable defeat.

The scene is an early example of a theme that preoccupied Lang throughout his career: the speed at which ordinary, law-abiding citizens can turn into a savage mob.

Plato made this point several thousand years ago when he wrote: "The virtuous man is content to dream what the wicked man really does.

In the English language, the word "sadism" only goes back a hundred years or so. (It wasn't until 1897 that it first appeared in print, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.) In that sense, "sadism" is like "serial killer": a modern expression for an age-old phenomenon.

Though his formal education had ended after seventh grade, he grew up to be a voracious consumer of dime detective novels, tabloid newspapers, and the tracts of various occult and pseudoscientific beliefs—phrenology, astronomy, palmistry, spiritualism.

When they arrived in Rochester, Buell and his companion proceeded straight to the Powers Hotel, where they informed the house detective of their suspicions.

Next to Krafft-Ebing, the psychiatrist who made the most detailed study of sadistic behavior was one of Freud's former colleagues, Dr. Wilhelm Stekel. Stekel's two-volume, 1929 work, Sadism and Masochism, contains dozens of extraordinary case histories: men and women in thrall to the most extreme, and often appalling, sexual aberrations.

Shortly before Valentine's Day in 1948, the two miscreants—posing as brother and sister-in-law—traveled to Royersford, Pennsylvania, to meet Ray's latest mark, Esther M. Henne, a forty-one-year-old teacher at the Pennhurst Asylum for "feeble-minded" children.

Two major motives fuel the spree killer's final, hate-filled act: revenge against the world and a desire to show that—all evidence to the contrary—he is a person to be reckoned with. Tormented by his failure to achieve those things that seem to come so easily to others—satisfying work, loving relationships—he will prove that he is special in at least one regard: in his power to wreak havoc.

landlocked Wisconsin

The defining difference between the spree killer and the mass murderer has to do with motion. Whereas the mass murderer slaughters in one place, the spree killer moves from site to site, killing as he goes. In that sense, spree killing might best be described as mobile mass murder.