Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer

by Harold Schechter

Only the rich, after all, had to worry that their offspring might be stolen for money. But no child was safe from the evil that had befallen Grace Budd—from the treachery of a smiling stranger, whose friendliness concealed a sinister intent.

The Daily News informed its readers that Staten Island was aswarm with sexual perverts—“overrun with old men, morons, degenerates of all types, men picked out of the gutters and bread lines of New York City and sent to the city farm colony on the island. At present, there are nearly five hundred men on the poor farm and many of them are known to be degenerates.”