Like our other two Killer books, we’ve tried to make this one as interesting as possible for, one might say, fans of murder. And there are such fans. I know of at least two—Mike and Tom Philbin.
This time we have taken on the subject not of ordinary murder, but of infamous murder. That is, murders that for one reason or another shocked us because they go way beyond what is considered ordinary murder for a variety of reasons, such as when the people who kill are not expected to do so, or the method of murder takes us aback, or they involve famous people, or perhaps a blend of all three reasons. For whatever reason, they just stick in our minds; such crimes, you might say, are the superstars of murder.
Like the other two Killer books, this one contains longish stories and a host of shorter pieces such as Notable Quotables, Q & A’s, Match Games, facts and factoids, and “Who Am I?” sections where readers guess from the facts presented who the particular infamous killer is.
The book contains infamous murders that go all the way back to the 1800s. For example, there is the famous case where a spinster schoolteacher named Lizzie Borden was charged with the ax murder of her father and stepmother in the little town of Fall River, Massachusetts.
Murdering your parents is known as parricide, and there is another parricide story here involving a teenager named Sarah Johnson. Curiously, males usually murder their parents, but in these cases, females did.
Cold-bloodedness is well represented in this book. For example, In Cold Blood retells the story of the mass murder of the Clutter family, which Truman Capote immortalized in his true-crime classic of the same name.
Another is the Leopold and Loeb case where a gay couple kidnapped and killed a boy just, as it were, for the fun of it.
Another spectacularly infamous case was that of Jeffrey MacDonald. One of the authors, Tom Philbin, had been very aware of the MacDonald case, but it wasn’t until his brother started to research for this book that he came to know the malignancy of it, the horror. The crime scene photos beamed that home loud and clear, where they showed how not only his wife but his two little children, ages two and five, had been bludgeoned and stabbed to death multiple times. Up-close details revealed it to be one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century.
Another worthy inclusion in this book is the Dr. Sam Sheppard case, which occurred in a little village near Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid-fifties. It had a couple of things in common with the MacDonald case. It involved the murder of Sheppard’s wife and it was years and years before a final determination of guilt was decided by a court.
Illicit sex is often an ingredient in murder, particularly infamous murder, and the case we call “Seduced to Murder,” where twenty-two-year-old Pamela Smart beguiled and sexually bedazzled a fifteen-year-old boy into murdering her husband, has that in spades.
There are a couple of stories that shocked people who live in the tri-state New York area, the home turf of Tom Philbin, and which he worked on quite closely. One, called “A Cold, Vicious Bastard,” involved the oldest cold case ever solved (at the time) and a killer who used a horrifically brutal weapon—his bare hands—in assaulting his victims.
The other story is about the murder of a thirteen-year-old girl named Katherine Woods in 1976 and here Tom Philbin actually got involved in the investigation. The case has not yet been solved, but Tom believes he knows who the killer is and details why.
It is relatively rare when a cop is murdered, but the story of a cop who was killed in New York City is recounted.
For good measure we have also included one of the most infamous mass murders of the twentieth century, where James Huberty walked into a California McDonald’s and started to kill everyone he could—men, women, and children.
The toughest story of all to write, and as infamous as any, is about nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford, who was the victim of a homicidal pedophile.
Thanks for reading our books.
Tom and Michael Philbin