Psycho USA

Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

By: Harold Schechter

Narrated by: Danny Campbell

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 US history. In this book you'll meet:

• Robert Irwin, "The Mad Sculptor": He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved, but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead.
• Peter Robinson, "The Tell-Tale Heart Killer": It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim, but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan.
• Anton Probst, "The Monster in the Shape of a Man": The ax-murdering immigrant's systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later.
• Edward H. Rulloff, "The Man of Two Lives": A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality.

©2012 Harold Schechter (P)2016 Tantor

Mediocre.

Unfortunately, Schechter cannot separate his political inclinations from what should be objective reporting. He does pick up the off the beaten path stories, but with his skewed reporting it becomes tiresome.

No more murder ballads!

I thought this book was great. I was a little hesitant because of some of the reviews, but I decided to give it a chance and I'm glad I did. The cases are relatively short, but still long enough to be interesting and packed with details. There was one in particular that had me so invested that when it got to the reveal of what happened to the victim I had to stop what I was doing and take a break for a few minutes because... wow. Some of the cases are a little similar but none are repetitive. All in all I would recommend this book.

The reason I took a star off is because if there was a murder ballad written for a case the author insisted in including it, and bonus! One case had two! I never knew what a murder ballad was, but now I know they're bad poetry that makes up stories about murder cases and if I ever hear one again I'm going to scream.

Great listen!

More books like this would be great. Really factional and enlightening about real and true criminals

The Stories

This is worth reading if you have a fascination for Serial Killings. I also enjoy the author Harold Schecter.

great read

engrossing tales of crimes in the past. very detailed analysis of the criminals and what drove them to kill.