Summary of Harold Schechter's Psycho USA

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The American public has always feared new types of killers: the family annihilator, the formerly loving father who, in a sudden fit of homicidal frenzy, hidously slaughtered his children and wife.
#2 The author, who was a serial killer, decided to kill himself and his family. He justified his intended atrocity as an act of love and kindness. He first procured a noble supper of oysters, then died.
#3 On December 11, 1782, Beadle murdered his family. He killed his wife, then his four children. He left a trail of bloody footprints on the stairs, and then went to the kitchen and killed himself.
#4 The funeral of Beadle and his victims was a ceremonious affair. The body of Beadle was exhumed and transferred to an obscure spot. His victims’ funeral was a solemn event, and their deaths were mourned by the community.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)
• Autobiography
• Outlaws
• Biography
• Criminals
• Sexualité
• sexualité
• Sexualité

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 10 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822501478
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Harold Schechter's Psycho USA
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The American public has always feared new types of killers: the family annihilator, the formerly loving father who, in a sudden fit of homicidal frenzy, hidously slaughtered his children and wife.

#2

The author, who was a serial killer, decided to kill himself and his family. He justified his intended atrocity as an act of love and kindness. He first procured a noble supper of oysters, then died.

#3

On December 11, 1782, Beadle murdered his family. He killed his wife, then his four children. He left a trail of bloody footprints on the stairs, and then went to the kitchen and killed himself.

#4

The funeral of Beadle and his victims was a ceremonious affair. The body of Beadle was exhumed and transferred to an obscure spot. His victims’ funeral was a solemn event, and their deaths were mourned by the community.

#5

The rate of wife murder increased fivefold in the early nineteenth century, and moralists began to publish detailed descriptions of domestic butchery that sometimes bordered on the pornographic.

#6

The latest research into familicide confirms that modern-day perpetrators fit the same psychological profile as their early American counterparts. They are typically middle-aged men who are good providers, but who suffer financial setbacks that make them feel inadequate.

#7

The author, Caleb Carr, states that psychopathic killers are the result of severely abusive childhoods. Many forensic psychiatrists today agree with this theory.

#8

Green’s master, after having narrowly escaped death from his apprentice, rid himself of the boy, who returned to the home of his now aged parents. Green fell in with a local crook who became his mentor in vice.

#9

Green and his accomplice, Ash, began terrorizing the Northeast, becoming what crime historian Jay Robert Nash refers to as America’s first Public Enemy Number One.

#10

Samuel Green was a serial killer who traveled from Vermont to New York City, burglarizing stores and homes. He was arrested and sentenced to death, but his friend Ash helped him to escape. He returned to the remote mountains of New Hampshire, where he hid for some months. He then went on another crime spree, burglarizing stores and homes in Albany, New York and New York City.

#11

On April 25, 1822, Samuel Green was executed on Boston Common. He was just 25 years old. For his contemporaries, the young malefactor was a kind of prodigy, whose energies would have singled him out for high distinction had they been put to better use.

#12

The 1920s case of Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd Gray, who helped murder her husband, was seen as emblematic of the anything goes ethos of the Roaring Twenties. However, a similar crime had occurred a century earlier in America, when Elsie Whipple and Jesse Strang eloped.

#13

Elsie suggested that Jesse forge a check on the bank in John Whipple’s name, which would allow them to travel to Vermont. When that didn’t work, she came up with another plan: to kill her husband.

#14

The story of Jesse and Elsie Strang is one of adultery and murder. They had pledged mutual loyalty to each other, but Jesse immediately tried to pin the blame on Elsie. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to hang.

#15

The scaffold had been erected in a little valley called Beaver Hill Hollow, situated a short distance south of the Capitol. It was an ideal site for such a spectacle: surrounded by hills capable of affording each spectator a perfect view of the gallows.

#16

The murder at Cherry Hill made a deep impression on one of America’s greatest authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was addicted to murder pamphlets and trial reports throughout his life.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

In 1840, William Brown, a veteran of the War of 1812, married his first wife, Rosanna, in 1817. They settled in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, where they bought a 126-acre farm on the east slope of Jack’s Mountain. Four of their children still lived at home: seventeen-year-old Betsy and the three youngest boys, David, Jacob, and George.

#2

After hearing his dog bark and howl, Brown crossed the border between his land and his neighbor’s. As he stepped onto the log stoop, he was shot at by McConaghy, who had killed his son-in-law and attacked his family.

#3

McConaghy was arrested after the murders, and while he initially claimed innocence, he eventually admitted to them. He was sentenced to die, and when the rope snapped during his execution, he was infused with hope.

#4

McConaghy was eventually caught and arrested. He confessed to the murder, and when asked why he had done it, he replied, Because they had a little bit of property. He was sentenced to death, and before the black hood was drawn over his head, he called William Brown to his side and begged his forgiveness.

#5

In 1843, a Native American man named Samuel Mohawk was accused of committing a crime more atrocious than any pirate or Indian, and was sentenced to four years in prison. Four years later, a similar massacre occurred in Pennsylvania. This time, the perpetrator was a Native American.

#6

James Wigton and several others were bent on lynching Mohawk, but cooler heads prevailed. At the coroner’s inquest, he confessed to the murders and explained that he had gone on his rampage because he had been mad at white people because they treated him so badly.

#7

In 1840, Abraham Suydam, a prominent man in New Brunswick, disappeared. His wife posted a large reward for any information about him. Rumors spread that he had absconded to Europe, but the general consensus was that he had met with foul play.

#8

Vail arrested Robinson, and when he went before a magistrate, he offered up such flagrant falsehoods that he was immediately charged with murder. When the police found Suydam’s body, they arrested Robinson.

#9

The judge in the trial was clear about his sentence: Robinson must die. He could not intend to assume an idle indifference to his fate, the judge said, and he could not deceive God. His eye was on him, as it was at the moment he struck the fatal blow.

#10

Robinson was sure that his creditor, Suydam, was dead. He dragged the body into the cellar, and then began to dig a hole. He heard a muffled groan, and realized that Suydam was still alive beneath the dirt. He rolled him into the grave alive.

#11

The Robinson-Suydam case and the Palmer-Knapp case, which took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1830, both influenced the story The Tell-Tale Heart.

#12

The American woman named Polly Bodine was accused of hacking two family members to death in the 1890s. She was eventually exonerated, but most people believed she was guilty.

#13

On Christmas Day, 1843, Polly was eight months pregnant and spent the holiday with her brother-in-law, George Waite, at his apothecary shop in lower Manhattan. She bought a hood and a green veil.

#14

On Staten Island, the Houseman house was silent all day. Around 9:30 p. m. , two boys returning from a skating party saw smoke billowing from the house. They shouted, and the neighbors came running. They extinguished the fire, which was confined to the northwest corner of the kitchen. They found a charred object with a vaguely human shape.

#15

On December 26, a witness saw Polly Bodine trudging toward the ferry landing in Tompkinsville. She had apparently made the six-mile trip from Granite Village on foot. She boarded the little steam vessel and drank a glass of gin.

#16

In 1844, six months after the murders, Polly was brought to trial. She was convicted, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on circumstantial evidence. Her second trial, held in Manhattan in March 1845, generated even more feverish excitement than the first.

#17

Polly was a famous sideshow attraction who was convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison. She moved back to Staten Island and lived with her son and daughter. She was partially paralyzed by a stroke at the age of seventy-five, but she survived for another nine years.