Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

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Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 179 ratings · 36 reviews

AMERICA’S MOST COLD-BLOODED!

In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten...more AMERICA’S MOST COLD-BLOODED!

In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the hugely acclaimed author of The Serial Killer Files and The Whole Death Catalog gives them their dark due in this absolutely riveting true-crime treasury. Among America’s most cold-blooded you’ll meet

• Robert Irwin, “The Mad Sculptor”: He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved—but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead.

• Peter Robinson, “The Tell-Tale Heart Killer”: It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim, but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan.

• Anton Probst, “The Monster in the Shape of a Man”: The ax-murdering immigrant’s systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later.

• Edward H. Ruloff, “The Man of Two Lives”: A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality, and his oversized brain gave new meaning to “mastermind.”

Spurred by profit, passion, paranoia, or perverse pleasure, these killers—the Witch of Staten Island, the Smutty Nose Butcher, the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell, and many others—span three centuries and a host of harrowing murder methods. Dramatized in the pages of penny dreadfuls, sensationalized in tabloid headlines, and immortalized in “murder ballads” and classic fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and Theodore Dreiser, the demonic denizens of Psycho USA may be long gone to the gallows—but this insidiously irresistible slice of gothic Americana will ensure that they’ll no longer be forgotten.(less)

Paperback, 416 pages

Published August 7th 2012 by Ballantine Books

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Oct 04, 2012 Jillyn rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: crime fans, nonfiction fans

Shelves: first-reads

I received this book through Goodreads First Reads.

Psycho USA is a nonfiction book that documents forgotten or not well known murderers or killers in American History. There's a nice (is that a word that can be used when discussing serial killers?) sprinkling of weapons and poisons, making the overall theme of "murder" a more varied read.

My favorite part (again, that sounds creepy) were the songs and poems that were written about some of these killers to keep the story alive. It sounds dark, bu...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Juanita rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime, schechter, 5-stars

Completed yesterday, this book was A W E S O M E!!!
Worth the read and a complete page-turner.
Schechter is a really profound writer. He has a way of making complex terminology really simple and gives life to past villains that have been forgotten by history. There were some cases that were simply shocking to me that we'd allowed to drop from our collective memory that he resurrected with ease.
Ca't wait to read his next book!!!

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Oct 29, 2012 Renee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: death-murder, horror, non-fiction

So I kept saying to myself I need to read a scary book for Halloween. But I just could not find anything that I thought would thrill me. Then I stumbled upon the jewel. Truth, I had heard of several of the killers in this book, but not many. It was a great collection of murderers from different time periods. Those who stabbed, choked, poisoned, shot, blew up, mutilated, raped, beat and drowned their victims.

I enjoyed the way the author wrote, it wasn't dry like some of these books can be, and h...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Ariel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime

I almost didn't pick this up due to the rather unfortunate cover that creeps me out and the sensationalized title. In spite of the disturbing cover I was pleasantly surprised to find how much I enjoyed reading this book. It is the perfect marriage of history and true crime. The book is full of stories that mimic the crimes we are all so familiar with today but the catch is that happened a long time ago and have largely been forgotten by the public. Today when something sensational happens in the...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Laura Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Due to the grisly subject matter, I can't say I really "enjoyed" this book. I did, however, find it darkly fascinating - It's very strange (and, in an odd way, reassuring) to know that our country has always had its Bundys and Dahmers, and it's not that just late 20th-century society is singularly disturbed. Every society, and every era, has its monsters. From a cultural perspective, it's also interesting to consider why some killers live forever in infamy (like Lizzie Borden, for instance) when...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Kaitlyn added it

Just received my copy of it from a Good Reads giveaway! Very excited to start reading it :)

First thoughts:
So far, I have only read the introduction. It seems to be a well thought out book written by someone who actually knows what they are talking about (the author States they are a student of American serial murder; far too many authors of books like this just wing it and write about press reports and whatnot). In the back of the book there is a list of quotes chosen from the author. I quite en...more Just received my copy of it from a Good Reads giveaway! Very excited to start reading it :)

First thoughts:
So far, I have only read the introduction. It seems to be a well thought out book written by someone who actually knows what they are talking about (the author States they are a student of American serial murder; far too many authors of books like this just wing it and write about press reports and whatnot). In the back of the book there is a list of quotes chosen from the author. I quite enjoyed that; Schechter chose very relevant, very thought-provoking quotes. I found that the pictures and diagrams that I saw sniping flipping through it were very interesting. There are also little tidbits mentioned with certain murderer descriptions that are relevant to the murderer being mentioned. This looks like a very promising book! And, if it isn't, well, at least it has a killer layout (pun intended, bro).

This book was quite interesting. Besides the layout, the descriptions were well thought out and bey clever. I felt like I was getting true facts in a descriptive story-telling, not a bunch of garbled news press stories filled with opinions, false information, and poor structure. The author did a fantastic job writing this. It was informative, scary, and sensationally delicious. I would reccommend anyone who has any interest in murderer take a look at this. I also loved that these weren't the same killers you always hear about. This is truly a book of killers you've never heard of!

It's hard to write a review about this going into details of the text and data because it doesn't have a plot persay. I will instead note a few terrifying tales that I thought were the most interesting:

Dr. Valorous P. Coolidge, the Waterville Poisoner
Henrietta Robinson, the Veiled Murderess
Edward H. Rulloff, the Man of Two Lifes
Ada LeBoeuf, the Siren of the Swamp

This was a nicely compiled book of stories. It is almost fun to read a story a night with the windy nights of fall approaching!

-This story was given to me through the Goodreads giveaway-(less)

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Sep 06, 2012 Kristi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime, history, nonfiction, fourstars

This is a really interesting look at a number of gruesome mass and serial killers in American history who have been forgotten, some only in the last half-century. Poisoners, kidnappers, thieves, bluebeard husbands and mutilators are all covered. An interesting inclusion are the murder ballads. These were songs or poems written at the time for people to hear about the gruesome goings on when there wasn't widely broadcast news.

One thing bothered me, though, is that the author unnecessarily mentio...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, 2012, nonfiction

Kinda creeped out and horribly excited about reading this book!!

I won Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of through the Goodreads First Read Giveaway on 08/23/2012 and received on 09/04/2012!

I was really surprised with how much I enjoyed this book! I absolutely LOVED how Schechter would state what authors were influenced by certain murders and where they used that inspiration. I found that to be a wonderful surprise when I started the book.

You hear about all of these horrific s...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Michelle added it · review of another edition

Psycho USA is one of those nonfiction novels that are interesting without containing a lot of substance. The individual stories themselves are curious in their macabre details but contain little else other than a rundown of the events and persons involved. In spite of the lack of details or insight, among the collection of killers are quite a few that are memorable either for their collective interest or from sheer horror at the crimes. These include the “American Borgias” and the fascination/us...more Psycho USA is one of those nonfiction novels that are interesting without containing a lot of substance. The individual stories themselves are curious in their macabre details but contain little else other than a rundown of the events and persons involved. In spite of the lack of details or insight, among the collection of killers are quite a few that are memorable either for their collective interest or from sheer horror at the crimes. These include the “American Borgias” and the fascination/use of arsenic as the go-to poison for housewives everywhere, as well as Charles Freeman and his wife, who murdered their daughter out of religious zeal, convinced she too would rise after three days and signify the advent of the Second Coming. Essentially, Mr. Schechter’s findings showcase that people are willing to commit the most atrocious of acts for a multitude of reasons.

Psycho USA reads like a Dateline expose, broken up by date and divided into easily tackled chapters on individual killers who made headlines and then faded into obscurity. This makes it an easy book to set down and even easier to avoid picking back up for further reading. The information presented is fairly sensationalized, as Mr. Schechter uses direct quotes from news sources of the period, complete with its embellished language. After a while, the stories do tend to bleed into one another, making it difficult to distinguish one killer from another and doing much to prove how quickly a person can become desensitized to the most gruesome crimes.

Mr. Schechter is not afraid to use judgmental language in describing the killers he is referencing. While its usage ties together his own words with those from the newspapers and court documents he frequently quotes, a reader will still be surprised given the fact that nonfiction is best without the personal opinion of its author interspersed among its pages. Still, it is unpredictably appropriate given the subject matter. He is describing psychopaths and sociopaths who were found guilty of some absolutely horrific crimes against others. Being pronounced as evil or depraved is fitting if unconventional.

What is truly interesting is the lingering question as to why some crimes capture the imaginations of an entire population and never leave the collective consciousness and yet others, equally ghastly, quickly become forgotten and slip into oblivion. Mr. Schechter cannot answer this question as to why even today, people remember Andrea Yates but not Dena Schlosser, nor does he really try to solve this mystery. It is a question to be answered another day and perhaps by another author, but a reader will frequently ponder it as reading about these killers who remain inexplicably forgotten. In fact, it is an opportunity lost that would have made Psycho USA go from merely interesting to absolutely fascinating.

While Psycho USA is brutal in its graphic descriptions and highly judgmental language used to describe each killer, it is easy for a reader to distance oneself from all of the horror and depraved violence depicted. Without an overarching narrative to tie the individual vignettes together, it is a book meant to be read in pieces, thereby furthering the reader’s ability to remove oneself emotionally from the details. Interesting without being thought-provoking, Psycho USA is more “fun facts” than serious academic psychoanalysis of the human mind.

Acknowledgments: Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for my e-galley!(less)

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Oct 21, 2012 Belinda rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime

Probably the best true crime book I have read in a very long time. I want this for my permanent library which is rare for me with true crime. I have read more true crime than anyone I know and I enjoyed it a lot when I was younger. After awhile it becomes repetitive and often badly written as it's about as easy to get into as writing romance. This title is an exception--well written and researched, it touches on crimes that were sensations in their day and have since become obscure. It's fantast...more

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Sep 04, 2012 Audrey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012_publish, netgalley, nonfiction, serial_killers, true-crime, audrey-s-2012-books, history

I may be a weirdo, but I love reading about murder and true crime. Maybe because part of me says, “This could never happen to me,” but then a small voice says, “Oh, but it could!” And the tiny bit of fear makes me want to know more, because the scariest thing is not knowing and not being prepared for the worst that life (and death) can throw your way. It might seem sometimes like vicious murders and serial killers are a product of our modern society, but Schechter shows that this worst of crimin...more I may be a weirdo, but I love reading about murder and true crime. Maybe because part of me says, “This could never happen to me,” but then a small voice says, “Oh, but it could!” And the tiny bit of fear makes me want to know more, because the scariest thing is not knowing and not being prepared for the worst that life (and death) can throw your way. It might seem sometimes like vicious murders and serial killers are a product of our modern society, but Schechter shows that this worst of criminal acts has been at work since the earliest days of the American republic, and that as long as there have been murders there has been an audience clamoring to know more.

It would have been easy to give a rehash of the major historical murder cases that influenced our country, like the Lizzie Borden murders, or Harry Thaw’s shooting of Stanford White. However, Schechter has done his research and presents a book full of the murder cases that were huge in their days, but are now largely forgotten. Most were lauded in their time as being the crime of the century, although they’ve now dropped out of our collective conscience. Schechter also demonstrates how the crimes that best grabbed their audiences seemed to echo the fears of the age, much as terrorist attacks do for us now, or Manson did for the hippie culture fearing public in the late 60s.

What I loved about this book was the level of research that was done, and how well each chapter is presented. Schechter ties the crimes to other better known crimes, and situates each story in time. He also shares many of the murder ballads that were written to describe the crime for the general public, gives images of contemporary broadsides of the murderers, and speaks a bit about “murderabilia,” where people would collect items attached to the crime, often destroying crime scene evidence in an effort to take home a piece of the action.

Psycho USA is surprisingly readable and fascinating, working on both true crime and historical levels. Fans of the true crime genre will definitely want to pick this one up.(less)

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Sep 28, 2012 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is an absolute must for anyone interested in true crime and history. There never seem to be enough books that cover murderers before the late 20th century, since most tend to focus on modern monsters. Psycho USA does a good job of not just listing forgotten murderers throughout American history, but also exploring what it is about them, and the times when they lived, that gave them less lasting fame than other killers. I've read some of Harold Schechter's other books, and find that he'...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Erika Schoeps rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't usually foray into the true crime genre, but I really enjoyed this book. It branched out into the more obscure killers of America, and included lots of background and side information that connected you to other resources. The stories stayed nice and brief, and ended just when you got tired of hearing about a certain person. It's a great entry point into the genre. Also, I consider myself a lover of gore, but my stomach was still turned at some of the murder descriptions described in thi...more

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Feb 14, 2013 Jennie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 20, 2012 Rae M. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: net-galley, 05-stars, serial-killers-know-how-to-party, true-crime, nonfiction, history, read-in-2012, review-or-comment

There's nothing I love more than reading about some true crime--the more unknown the better. Sure, I like learning new things about all the cases I've already heard about but it doesn't beat learning about it for the first time. I'm not ashamed to say I hadn't heard about any cases gone into detail here. The little asides, especially the ones about "murder ballads" were also fascinating. Everything about this book is a five star for your average true crime connoisseur.

a copy was given to me by a...more

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Jan 22, 2013 Rebeka rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime

Wonderful and informative book! I'm a forensics student and I've read dozens of true crime books in my life, so I thought I knew all about the most famous mass murderers and serial killers in the USA, but apparently I was very wrong! I'd heard of a few of the people described in this book, but most of them were completely new to me, and for the first time in ages, I was learning a lot. This book was fantastic and I loved it!

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Sep 20, 2012 Cassie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, non-fiction

I've watched lots of true crime shows when I was a teenager but for some reason I never got around to reading a true crime book.

I'm pretty pleased with this book. It was interesting reading about all the different murderers and their fucked up reason for killing someone through different time periods. The author doesn't get overly detailed about each murderer which is good because too much detail can make a book boring. I thought it was fairly well written though I did take issue with the talk...more

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Oct 09, 2012 Diane Pollock rated it 4 of 5 stars

Forgotten fiends are brougt back to chilling life by this expert on serial killers.

Anyone who like being chilled by horrific murderers will enjoy this book, but it also has a lot to offer the historical researcher or the serious student of crime.

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Aug 30, 2012 Sonata Wilson rated it 4 of 5 stars

A great description of the forgotten villians of America's past, this book goes into detail of all the once-famous murderers and their henious crimes. After reading this book, one will see why our country needs a death penalty. An awesome book.

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Nov 05, 2012 Naomi rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really found the layout of this book annoying. Told almost in a encyclopedia format, it just gave snippets of the murderers and their victims. Not enough to really get to know the behind the scenes story. I think I will give the authors full length novels a try though.

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Oct 02, 2012 Zazzu rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-books

Of ghoulish interest, but a bit repetitive at times. A good read for October when a girl's mind turns to the bumps and skritchings in the closet, but not a book to really bother much looking for.

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Dec 17, 2012 Gina rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: shivery, misc-nf, five-stars

Ignore the sensational title and you have an extremely well-written true crime anthology comprised of monstrous murderers and murderesses you've never heard of before.

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Oct 22, 2012 Stacy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Interesting survey of forgotten true crime in America; the anthology format and shortness of each piece becomes a bit repetitive over the course of 300+ pages.

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Aug 23, 2012 Wennifred marked it as to-read

I just won a copy from Goodreads. Looking forward to reading it. Thank you.

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Jan 09, 2013 Jennie Hearne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Very interesting. I loved to see how our judicial system has progressed over the years.o

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Mar 12, 2013 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love true crime and after Capote Schechter is the best

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Oct 25, 2012 Camille marked it as to-read

I heard about it on the BTR: True Murder podcast

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Nov 10, 2012 Leah B rated it 4 of 5 stars

Loved the content! I do wish there were a few more pictures of the accused, victims, crime scenes, etc. Overall a fascinating book!

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Apr 16, 2013 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-stores

Many times while reading this book, I was heard muttering "Why am I reading this?".

If you are into this genre, you will love it.
If you have a queasy stomach, stay away as there are some descriptions of the crime that are just gruesome.

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Sep 05, 2012 Peacegal rated it 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars -- Despite the lurid title, this is no trashy tabloid collection but rather a well-written account of murders that once made headlines in American history but have since been forgotten. Show this to people who claim that "things are so much worse these days."

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About Harold Schechter

Aka Jon A. Harrald (joint pseudonym with Jonna Gormley Semeiks)

Harold Schechter is a professor of American Literature and culture at Queens College, the City University of New York. Among his nonfiction works are the historical true-crime classics Fatal, Fiend,Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved. He also authors a critically acclaimed mystery series featuring Edgar Allan Poe, which includes The Hum Bu...more

More about Harold Schechter...

Books by Harold Schechter

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

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

The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers

Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-Of-The-Century Chicago

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