Murderers Sane & Mad

by Miriam Allen deFord

Case Histories in the Motivation and Rationale of Murder.

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Miriam Allen deFord was a suffragette, feminist, and Fortean who became better known for her science-fiction, true crime, and mystery writing after the 1940s. Her short fiction has been widely anthologized; she also edited an anthology of stories mixing science fiction with mystery called Space, Time, and Crime.

She received the 1961 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in the category of Best Fact Crime book for The Overbury Affair, which involves events during the reign of James I of Britain.

Reviews

[Jose Antonio Moch · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only case Mrs. Deford failed to write about was Ed Gein's. Otherwise it is a really interesting and thorough study on psychopaths and their murderous motivations. I noticed that in about eight or nine of the thirteen cases those personalities were the product of an upbringing by overprotective, fussy and sometimes domineering mothers. After their parents' deaths they were left alone in the world with no caring relatives who would help them in any possible way. They were left alone to fend for themselves with little more than a small inheritance and sometimes not even that. Really appalling was the case of Francis Ballum. The only child of middle aged parents who could not foresee that their son's future would be a disastrous one since he was afflicted with psychosis, paranoia and no valuable skills to support himself.
My mother died September 15,2015. I suffer from organic brain damage and OCD. Left an orphan with no siblings or relatives those cases presented in this book surely gave me much to think about.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: thirteen cases of psychopaths and murder are analyzed: Louise Peete, Penny Bjorkland, Leopold and Loeb, John Christie, etc.