Harold Schechter - Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR HAROLD SCHECHTER

In Harold Schechters lucid and well-researched Hells Princess, Gunnesshis ruthless, devious protagonist and, according to the books subtitle, a butcher of mendeserves a prominent place in the annals of Americas serial killers.

Wall Street Journal

With riveting and thorough detail, Schechter tracks the mystery of Lampheres culpability in the arson and closes with a possibly related murder that took place decades after the 1908 house fire. True-crime fans will be hooked from the start.

Publishers Weekly

Featuring previously undiscovered details and rich historical context, this authoritative account firmly establishes Schechter as one of Americas leading crime chroniclers. A fascinating and dramatic page-turner that will be a new favorite among true-crime fans.

Kirkus Reviews

[Schechters] goal is to help us understand not just what his subjects did but also why they did what they didwhat internal torments and psychological traits drove them to become brutal killers. A sharply written, compelling account from a proven winner.

Booklist

Hells Princess is an excellent, spellbinding read. Schechter is a master storyteller and a true ethnographer of the old Midwest.

New York Journal of Books

This biography of a prolific and brutal serial killer will be of interest to Midwestern regional history buffs as well as true-crime fans.

Library Journal

Schechters deep research and storytelling flair ensure readers will hang in to see if he can solve this century-old puzzle.

Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine

The best books regarding criminality involve serial killers, and that is certainly the case for the best true-crime books of 2018... Harold Schechter delivers a full-length background and overview of one of the worst murderers in American history that no one has heard of.

Criminal

This true-crime narrative does justice to the larger-than-life Belle Gunness and her fascinating context, keeping the reader immersed in the story even as we recoil from its many horrors.

CrimeReads

Hells Princess takes its place among Schechters other true-crime classics as the definitive rendering of one of the most beguiling and brutal of all female serial killers. His gruesome page-turner about Belle Gunness, grounded in meticulous historical research, confirms his reputation as one of the top true-crime writers of our time.

Katherine Ramsland, Psychology Today

Harold Schechters Hells Princess had me on the edge of my seat to the last page! Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyles The Hound of the Baskervilles, Schechters hound that is always ready to pounce is Belle Gunness, Americas most notorious female serial killer. Schechters achievement is humanizing this inhuman monster, while making us feel the sexual neediness and loneliness urging Belles victims to give up everything to get into her bed. How the case ultimately turns out is a seminal event in jurisprudence written by one of Americas greatest storytellers and historians.

Fred Rosen, author of Murdering the President: Alexander Graham Bell and the Race to Save James Garfield

Harold Schechter demonstrates why he is the dark prince master of American true-crime history, in this first definitive account of notorious female serial killer Belle Gunness and her human slaughterhouse murder farm.

Peter Vronsky, author of Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters

ALSO BY HAROLD SCHECHTER

NARRATIVE NONFICTION

Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend

The Devils Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century

The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder That Shook the Nation

Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal

Hells Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men

NONFICTION

Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment

Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer

Fiend: The Shocking True Story of Americas Youngest Serial Killer

Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster

Depraved: The Shocking True Story of Americas First Serial Killer

Deranged: The Shocking True Story of Americas Most Fiendish Killer!

Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho

The Whole Death Catalog: A Lively Guide to the Bitter End

The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the Worlds Most Terrifying Murderers

Ripped from the Headlines!: The Shocking True Stories Behind the Movies Most Memorable Crimes

FICTION

The Tell-Tale Corpse

The Mask of Red Death

The Hum Bug

Nevermore

Outcry

Dying Breath

Text copyright 2021 by Harold Schechter

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Little A, New York

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ISBN-13: 9781542025324 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 154202532X (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781542025317 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1542025311 (paperback)

Cover design by Faceout Studio, Jeff Miller

First edition

For

NORTH PETERSON

CONTENTS

Introduction

As a historian of American crime, I spend an unhealthy amount of time poring over old newspapersin archives, on microfilm, and, increasingly, online. While researching a book on Belle Gunnessthe infamous Lady Bluebeard who slaughtered an indeterminate number of victims at her Indiana murder farm in the early twentieth centuryI had occasion to consult the July 7, 1902, issue of the Fort Wayne Daily News.

Along with stories on a strike by twelve hundred railroad freight workers, a visit to the United States by the Crown Prince of Siam, a local man who survived a shark attack while swimming off a pier in Atlantic City, and an elderly negress who inherited four hundred acres of prime Kentucky farmland from her former mistress, the front page featured articles on one Peter Dempsey, who attempted to slay all seven members of a Montana family in a scheme to abduct their seventeen-year-old servant, a quarter-breed Indian girl with whom he had become enamored; another seventeen-year-old girl, Maude Bernice Fritz of Kokomo, Indiana, who, after allegedly being gang-raped by three high school acquaintances, went into the woods, soaked herself with kerosene, and set herself on fire; an adulterous pair from Knoxville, Tennessee, Howard Jenkins and Mrs. Agnes Fleming, who conspired to murder Mrs. Flemings husband and Jenkins wife in order that they might marry themselves; and the massive manhunt for the

Whats always striking to me about such dreary news itemsand examples could be multiplied indefinitelyis not the sheer volume of appalling crimes that occurred on an everyday basis in a past many romanticize as a more halcyon age but, rather, how instantly even the most horrific were forgotten. Harry Tracy, it is true, remains a figure of some renown to aficionados of Wild West outlawry. Compared to such legends as the James boys, Butch Cassidy, and Billy the Kid, however, he has utterly faded from public memory.