Decidedly Grim

As promised, here’s my review of…

The Murder Of Helen Jewett
by Patricia Cline Cohen
Immaculately researched book about an infamous 1836 prostitute murder that was a sensation in New York tabloids. The most interesting part of the book was its exploration of 1830′s New York brothel culture, and Miss Helen Jewett (a.k.a. Dorcas Doyen) herself – who was a bit of 19th century feminist. She was educated, intelligent, manipulative, and independent – the ultimate threat to an insecure 19th century man (which explains her doom). There’s a tendency in society to feel sorry for women who have to “resort to prostitution” to support themselves, but this book does an excellent job of explaining just how well off high-end prostitutes like Helen Jewett were during their time – receiving $5 per “visit” (and an average of 2-3 visits per day) at a time when highly skilled working men were earning $10-12 a week.  Unfortunately, the second half of the story – of murderer Richard Robinson and his maddeningly biased trial (the judge suggested the jury can disregard the testimony of Jewett’s fellow prostitutes who saw Robinson leave Jewett’s room the night of the murder) - is less compelling than the first, causing me to lose interest and take forever to finally finish the book.  (3/5)

More Murderous History is available to peruse at The Library Eclectica‘s Maniacal Monsters aisle.

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Today’s Torturous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Houston serial killer Dean Corll subjected his young male victims, ranging in age from nine to twenty-one, to sexual tortures, which included plucking their pubic hairs one by one, shoving glass rods up their penises and then crushing them, and shoving large bullet-like objects in victims’ rectums. A sheet of plastic was placed under the plywood torture board to catch the excreta, blood and vomit that would invariably be discharged during the abuse, and the radio would be cranked up full blast to drown out the victim’s screams. Occasionally he’d castrate his victims, often their severed genitals would be buried next to the bodies in small plastic bags. At least one boy’s corpse was found with his penis gnawed nearly in two. He was shot and killed by a teenage accomplice, who he had paid $200 per head to procure victims, in 1973.

Culled from: Wikipedia
Generously submitted by: Pamazon

How have I never heard of this monster, Dean Corll, before? I simply must get a copy of this book about him:

The Man With The Candy: The Story Of The Houston Mass Murders
by Jack Olsen

Facts, Library

Rock n Roll Librarian sent me a book recommendation that has immediately been added to the ol’ Wish List:

The Last Face You’ll Ever See
by Ivan Solotaroff

Here’s the description from Amazon:

In fascinating detail, Ivan Solotaroff introduces us to the men who carry out executions. Although the emphasis is on the personal lives of these men and of those they have to put to death, The Last Face You’ll Ever See also addresses some of the deeper issues of the death penalty and connects the veiled, elusive figure of the executioner to the vast majority of Americans who, since 1977, have claimed to support executions. Why do we do it? Or, more exactly, why do we want to?

The Last Face You’ll Ever See is not about the polarizing issues of the death penalty — it is a firsthand report about the culture of executions: the executioners, the death-row inmates, and everyone involved in the act. An engrossing, unsettling, and provocative book, this work will forever affect anyone who reads it.

Sounds like a must-read to me!

More books about Execution and Torture can be perused at The Library Eclectica.

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Beyond Belief

by Emlyn Williams

I just finally finished this book, which I have been anemically gnawing on for weeks now. It’s a “classic” true crime book about the infamous Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.  There are many rave reviews about this book on Amazon, so maybe I just don’t “get it”… but I didn’t get it.

There are few crime cases that I am more interested in than these two monsters… but after reading the book, I really don’t feel like I know much more than I did before I started, mainly because the writing style of Emlyn Williams absolutely aggravated me. He tells the story by slipping into writing in a lower-class English accent and mocking up dialogue: “I fancy a fringe, Mrs. ‘Owells, an’ what’s more I’m sick o’ bein’ dark. I don’t think it’s me image, could I ‘ave a root tonin’? If I won the pools, I’d buy a car, I may still emigrate, I’m fed oop.” etc. It’s a pet peeve of mine when writers make up dialogue in non-fiction works. Just tell the facts as they are known, don’t go all ‘creative writing’ on us!

The most annoying thing about this book, from a morbid-enthusiast perspective, is that Williams doesn’t mention the crimes in any detail until the police investigation is discussed, and then it’s rushed through in the last quarter of the book. And most of the goriest and most disturbing details were left out. Yeah, I know, it’s an old book… that’s probably how they wrote them back then. But still… come on. I feel like I wasted 2/3 of the book waiting for the story to be told… and then I was cheated by a weak pay-off.

Williams also adds some God-talk editorializing at the end as well, when he wishes that God would have killed Brady and Hindley (“If only the God of the Old Testament had come back into His own!”). Sheesh. Yeah, and I wish that the Flying Spaghetti Monster would have strangled them with his noodly appendages, but let’s get back to reality, shall we?

Oh, and also… no PICTURES! This is a case where photographs taken by the killers were used to find the bodies. Photographs are CENTRAL to the case. And yet… not a single photo. (At least in the 1968 version I have… maybe they were added to modern additions.) Thanks a lot, Emlyn! I feel like I just read this entire book on the Moors murders and now I have to go look it up in my Crime Encyclopedia to find out anything about the crimes thanks to the awful writing and lack of illustration.

Literally, the only redeeming thing about this book is its place in Smiths lore. Lines from The Smiths song “Suffer Little Children” litter the book and it’s easy to see how Morrissey would have been influenced by the references to “the Smiths” (Myra’s sister and brother-in-law) in choosing his band’s name. Otherwise, steer clear. What a disappointment…

More foul books about monstrous killers are available for perusal at The Library Eclectica‘s Maniacal Monsters aisle.

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Katie has a Wretched Recommendation of the non-fiction variety:

The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood
by Mark Kurzem

Katie says:

I read the most unbelievable book last week.  It was quite morbid in parts.  I finished it in about 8 hours,  it was so riveting. Best read I have had for awhile.

It certainly sounds fascinating!  Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:

When a Nazi death squad massacred his mother and fellow villagers, five-year-old Alex Kurzem escaped, hiding in the freezing Russian forest until he was picked up by a group of Latvian SS soldiers. Alex was able to hide his Jewish identity and win over the soldiers, becoming their mascot and an honorary “corporal” in the SS with his own uniform. But what began as a desperate bid for survival became a performance that delighted the highest ranks of the Nazi elite. And so a young Jewish boy ended up starring in a Nazi propaganda film.

After sixty-three years of silence, Alex revealed his terrible secret to his son Mark. With his son’s help, Alex retraced his past in search of answers and vindication. His story is at once a terrifying account of survival and its psychological cost as well as a brutally honest examination of identity, complicity, and memory.

More disturbing non-fiction reflections on warfare can be found in the Wretched Warfare aisle of The Library Eclectica.

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Robyn has a fiction recommendation.

The Red Dahlia
by Lynda La Plante

I’m 2/3 of the way through and LOVING it. Not as icky as it could be but a good read for all that. Call it light reading for the morbidly inclined… and yes, it is based around the Black Dahlia case.

More morbid fiction recommendations can be found at The Library Eclectica‘s Frightening Fiction aisle.

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Aimee has another recommendation for us, this time a non-fiction one:

Driven To Kill
by Gary C. King

Aimee’s review:

“[It's] the story of Westley Allan Dodd, hanged by the state of Washington on January 5, 1993 for the rapes and murders of three little boys. It was very good. Very, very sad. Also horrifying, as it had lengthy excerpts from Dodd’s ‘murder diary’ where he jotted down his fantasies of torture, rape and murder. He referred several times to ‘surgical experiments’ and had copied diagrams of the male reproductive system from an encyclopedia, and had actually built a ‘torture rack’ out of wood with ropes attached to the corners. Also chilling because Dodd had a history of progressively more aggressive sex offenses against young boys going back to the age of about 13 or 14, but as I recall he only served four months in jail at the most, and they didn’t keep careful track of him or notify anybody when he would move. He vowed he would escape and kill again if he wasn’t hanged. We’re well rid of him, in other words.”

Sounds engrossing to me! To the ‘Wish List’ with you!

More true crime recommendations can be found at The Library Eclectica‘s Maniacal Monsters aisle.

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Aimee has a fiction book recommendation for us – one that has been recommended many times before. One of these days perhaps I’ll actually read it?

Geek Love: A Novel
by Katherine Dunn

Aimee’s Review:

It’s about this family of circus people who try to create their own freak show. The mother pops pills and snorts bug spray and all that while she’s pregnant and she has all these weird deformed kids that do their own thing in the traveling circus, including a pair of Siamese twins named Electra and Iphigenia who fight a lot and end up dying tragically. Not a true story of course, but pretty good.

More Fiction recommendations can be found at The Library Eclectica’s Frightening Fiction aisle.

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Aimee has a book recommendation for us:

You might enjoy a book by Jim Knifel called These Children Who Come At You With Knives. It’s very twisted fairy-tale type stories. The title of course is a Charlie Manson quote. The stories include ‘Six-Leggity Beasties’ about a rotten fat boy who finds himself plagued with a terrible cockroach infestation while his parents are off on vacation; ‘The Maggot in the Red Sombrero’ about a lonely and very poor old woman who makes friends with the title maggot; and ‘Stench the Crappy Snowman’ about a snowman made more out of mud and garbage than snow. Very funny, very warped.

These Children Who Come At You With Knives
by Jim Knifel

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As promised, I thought I’d give a review of one of my favorite recent reads, “Death In California” by David Kulczyk.

Death In California: The Bizarre, Freakish, and Just Curious Ways People Die in the Golden State
by David Kulczyk

This is another wonderful little dare-you-to-put-it-down anthology of Horrible Things that have happened in the Golden State. What I love most about David’s anthologies (his previous work was California Justice) is that many of the stories he writes about occurred in my old neck of the woods (Northern California near Chico), an area that isn’t often discussed in books. The fascinating but true stories he dredges up make me wonder why on earth I hadn’t done research of this variety myself when I lived there. How much more enriching would my trips to various destinations in the state have been if I’d known the morbid history that played out there? The answer: Much more enriching. Of course. As they will be the next time I visit them with Death In California in hand!

This particular volume is my favorite of his tomes, as it discusses a wide variety of interesting deaths from murderous drunken pioneers, wicked stepmothers, and doomed snake charmers to plane crashes, mysterious celebrity deaths, and toddlers trapped in wells. Some of the stories you will no doubt have heard before, though rarely told as well, but the best tales are the ones veiled in obscurity – like the Wheatland Hop Riot of August 3, 1913, where a labor dispute ended with three men dead and several injured. It was the second major labor dispute in United States history – and I’d never heard of it before.

Another highly fascinating tale is that of The Ape Boy, Gordon Stewart Northcott, who raped and murdered several boys at the Wineville Chicken Ranch in Los Angeles County. In fact, the photographs of Northcott that accompany the text are creepy enough all by themselves!

However, for me, the best part of the book comes early on, when David tells a story that is all too rarely voiced in California history: the plight of the Native Americans of the state, who had lived in peace and prosperity for thousands of years before they were hunted, double-crossed, enslaved, and impoverished by the invading pioneers. In fact, reading a few of the stories left me hungry to learn more about the atrocities. Perhaps the most disgusting was the poisoning of hundreds of Shasta Indians at a treaty-signing feast on November 4, 1851. Stories like this really put into perspective the horrible price paid for Manifest Destiny.

I sincerely hope David keeps up the good work. There are so many obscure tales just waiting for him to get out the shovel and exhume them. I’m looking forward to his next collection of esoteric morbidity!

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