The Misbegotten Son

Download or read book The Misbegotten Son written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Little Artie Shawcross bullied classmates, insulted teachers, started fires, tortured animals, and roved the woods of New York's hardscrabble North Country with imaginary friends, talking in a high squawk. He also scored top grades, excelled in sports and shared his money and toys with the children who ridiculed him. From the second grade on, he was subjected to psychiatric examination, regularly confounding the experts. Years later, while serving in Vietnam, Arthur John Shawcross wrote bloodcurdling letters about his battlefield ordeals, then returned to Watertown to commit a string of arsons and burglaries. He served two years in prison, was paroled to his respectable parents - and murdered a boy and a girl. Back in the penitentiary, he proved as enigmatic as ever. Some counselors saw him as a Frankenstein monster, beyond hope, irredeemable. To others he was a troubled young man who could be saved. No two psychiatrists seemed to agree. Shawcross served fifteen years, then conned a parole board into an early release. He settled in Binghamton, but angry citizens learned of his bloody history and ran him out of town. After two smaller communities turned him away, desperate parole authorities finally smuggled the child-killer into Rochester in the dead of night - neglecting to alert the local police. Soon the corpses started turning up, locked in winter ice, covered by reeds in swamps, floating in streams. The homicidal pedophile had changed his M.O., this time murdering diminutive women. As the body count grew, Rochester streets swarmed with police, and still the serial killer managed to snare his tenth victim, then his eleventh. Amazon.com Accounts of more famous serial killers like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer may have ghoulish entertainment value, but I agree with writer Darcy O'Brien that this meticulously factual study of child sex-murderer Arthur Shawcross "comes closer to capturing the psychology of a serial killer than anything else I've ever read." The strength of this book (semi-finalist for a 1994 Edgar Award) comes first from the quality of the materials--including first-person interviews with the killer's wives, girlfriends, co-workers, police officers, therapists, and even a prostitute who "played dead" for Shawcross--and second, from Olsen's ability to weave the information into a highly readable story that reveals, above all, the ineffectiveness of our system of rehabilitation and parole. From Publishers Weekly An experienced and skilled writer, Olsen ( Predator ) proves himself equal to the formidable task of studying serial killer Arthur Shawcross. Born in 1945 in upstate New York, Shawcross was perceived as different even in childhood (his classmates dubbed him "Oddie," and elementary school officials called for mental health evaluations). In the early '70s he murdered two children and was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison; he served less than 15 years before he was paroled in 1987. He was difficult to place--townspeople drove him out as soon as his past became known. After three such episodes, parole officials sent him surreptitiously to Rochester, N.Y., where he killed at least 11 prostitutes. He was arrested in 1990 and eventually sentenced to 250 years in prison. During the trial, he claimed that he had been physically and sexually abused by his mother (untrue, the authorities concluded) and that he had committed horrible atrocities in Vietnam (probably untrue). He did not fit the classic pattern of the sociopath, nor did he seem either schizophrenic or paranoid. It remained for psychiatrist Richard Kraus to hypothesize that physiology was the basis for Shawcross's behavior--he diagnosed Shawcross as suffering from a metabolic ailment known as pyroluria and an abnormal genetic constitution. Told by Olsen with contributions from others affected by Shawcross's crimes, the story is a triumph of true-crime writing.

Download or read book Son: A Psychopath and his Victims written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic from “the dean of true crime” (The Washington Post)—now with a new foreword—this 1983 masterpiece tells the incredible story of a Spokane, Washington serial rapist who was exposed as the handsome, privileged son of one of the city’s most elite families. For more than two years, a rapist prowled the night streets of the homey, All-American city of Spokane, Washington, terrorizing women, sparking a run on gun stores, and finally causing one newspaper to offer a reward—the calls taken by the distinguished managing editor himself, Gordon Coe. In March 1981, luck and inspired police work at last produced an arrest, and Spokane shuddered. The suspect was clean cut and conservative…and Gordon Coe’s son. For eighteen months, Jack Olsen researched the cases of Fred and Ruth Coe to try to learn not only what happened within that family, but how and why. He interviewed more than 150 people and built up a portrait not only of that extraordinary family, but of the mind of a psychopath. And searching the memories of the women in Fred Coe’s life, he unearthed a most horrifying question: What is it like to love and live with a man for years—and then discover he is a psychopathic criminal? In this “gruesomely spellbinding” (Glamour) examination of the mind of a psychopath and of the women—and men—who were his victims, Olsen delivers “a harrowing portrait…It has become fashionable with books about vicious crimes to compare them to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Finally there is a book that deserves the comparison” (Richmond Times-Dispatch).

Download or read book Predator written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack Olsen, "the master of the true crime book,"* now gives us an incisive, probing look into the creation and development of the criminal mind, as well as a shocking case of justice gone awry. From childhood, McDonald Smith took to heart the lessons drummed into him by antisocial relatives and peers. As a teenager, unburdened by conscience or pity, he experimented with child abuse and bestiality, then moved on to larceny, stickups, incest, and, finally, rape. Warned by a "witch" that he was about to be arrested, he fled Los Angeles for Seattle and the Northwest -- already the breeding ground of predatory monsters like Ted Bundy, Kenneth Bianchi, and the Green River Killer. There, for years, he stalked the women of Seattle, seeking his prey on the dark streets and in the quiet homes, then returning to his wife and family: too careful -- and too clever -- to be caught. By fall 1980, Mac Smith's luck still held. A respectable young businessman named Steve Titus found himself charged with one of Smith's most sadistic rapes in a nightmarish case of mistaken identity and injustice. The idealistic Titus was certain that the American system of justice would clear him -- right up to the day that a jury of his peers returned a verdict of guilty as charged. While Mac Smith continued to terrorize the women of Seattle, Titus lost everything: his reputation, his job, his loved ones, his freedom. It was only when a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter answered Titus's pleas for justice that the terrible truth emerged: a truth that was darker than anyone imagined. Predator is a gripping work of true crime reporting: Jack Olsen doing what he does best. It is a searing study of violations: of women, of justice, of power, and of the human spirit. *Jonathan Kellerman Review: With careful reporting that sticks close to the facts, Jack Olsen tells stories that seem straight out of crime fiction, and yet are all the more compelling for being true. This book focuses on three men--a criminal who preyed on women, a carefree partygoer who was wrongly convicted of the predator's crimes, and a reporter for the Seattle Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for tracking down the truth. It's supposed to be a rare event in the U.S. judicial system that someone this innocent gets screwed this badly. Even if it only happened to one person every decade, it would still be a horrible thing. And the smiling rapist, described as having a sweet "Jesus-like" countenance, knowingly allowed that to happen. Olsen not only delivers a real page-turner, but he ties up all the loose ends before the book's memorable and satisfying finale.

Download or read book The Measure of a Man written by JJ Lee and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST - Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction (2012) FINALIST - Governor General's Literary Award - Non-Fiction (2012) FINALIST - BC Book Prize's Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (2012) A son’s decision to alter his father’s last surviving suit for himself is the launching point for this powerful book – part personal memoir, part social history of the man’s suit – about fathers and sons, love and forgiveness, and learning what it means to be a man. For years, journalist and amateur tailor JJ Lee tried to ignore the suit hanging at the back of his closet. It was his father’s suit. But when JJ decides to make the suit his own, little does he know he is about to embark on a journey to understand his own past. As JJ cuts into the jacket, he begins to piece together the story of his relationship with his father, a charismatic but troubled Montreal restauranteur whose demons brought tumult upon his family. JJ also recounts his own ups and downs during the year he spent as an apprentice at Modernize Tailors – the last of the great Chinatown suitmakers in Vancouver – where, under the tutelage of his octogenarian master tailor, he learns invaluable lessons about life. Woven throughout JJ’s tale are stories of the suit’s own evolution, illuminating how this humble garment has, for centuries, been the surprising battleground for the war between generations. Written with great wit, bracing honesty, and narrative verve, and featuring line drawings throughout by the author, The Measure of a Man is an unforgettable story of love, forgiveness, and discovering what it means to be your own man.

Download or read book Arthur Shawcross, the Genesee River Killer written by Joel Norris and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From February 1988 until his capture nearly two years later, convicted child killer Shawcross terrorized the city of Rochester, New York, with his spree of savage slaughter. The gruesome details of his crimes shocked the court, but paled before the facts about his abused early childhood and his tour of duty in Vietnam where he first tasted human flesh. Photographs.

Download or read book Son of a Killer written by K. D. Lewis and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author K.D. Lewis recounts the evolution of the serial killer father he met late in his life. Armed with newly discovered information about his father's past and current debased life, Lewis seeks to explore and understand his own struggles with mental illness that likely plagued both his parents and may have ultimately destroyed him. Son of a Killer has it all- love, loss and liberation of every kind, including the final confrontation of a killer who may have set his son free in unimaginable ways.

Download or read book Black is Best written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although perhaps the world's best known athlete, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) was far more important as an American phenomenon of the 1960’s than as a prizefighter. In his career as a boxer, he followed a traditional, even a stereotyped road to the top for an African American, but his distortion of the American rags-to-riches story is peculiarly his own. When he defeated Sonny Liston for the world's heavyweight championship in 1964, he was hailed by press and public alike as the clean-cut kid who would, by his exemplary life, restore wholesomeness to the tainted world of boxing. Three years later, he has made a hash of these earlier impressions. His affair with the Black Muslims, his outspoken support of black power, his inflammatory statements about Vietnam and his controversial draft status have all contributed to the vilification to which he is currently subjected. Olsen talked at length with those who surrounded Clay – his family, his first boxing coach, his trainer, his physician, the group of white businessmen who gave him his start and dozens of others, thereby allowing those closest to the champion to offer, through observation and anecdote, their own interpretations of what makes Cassius run. Even more to the point, the author dogged Clay's footsteps and his own account of what he saw and heard, including Clay's extensive conversations, presents a firsthand record of the life of a truly puzzling personality. A classic sports biography.