Psycho USA Quotes

“Trilby’s face appeared on dolls, fans, writing paper, puzzles, and there were ice cream bars made in the shape of her feet.”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

“set off a marketing frenzy, during which the heroine’s name was bestowed upon a hat, several shoe designs, candy, toothpaste, soap, a brand of sausage, and even a town in Florida.”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

“Outraged at having the site of the tragedy transformed into what one observer called a “mass murder amusement park,” an angry mob tore down the barricade, “and everyone was then free to visit the death spot without charge or restraint.”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

“the worst rioting in the city’s history when a mob of ten thousand citizens, outraged over the lenient sentence given to one of the killers, ransacked the courthouse and set it on fire in March 1884.”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

“almost without exception, psychopathic killers are subjected to extreme and unrelenting cruelty as children.”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

“For a growing number of husbands, this societal pressure “to be sober, industrious, and successful only intensified their sense of themselves as failures” and bred an unbearable shame that climaxed in the destruction of their families and—more often than not—themselves.”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

“Harry Powers, the Depression-era Bluebeard who kept his victims in a torture bunker on his West Virginian “murder farm” and whose crimes inspired the cinematic classic The Night of the Hunter.”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

“landlocked Wisconsin,”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of

“Nowadays, we have come to understand that brutalizing a child is a surefire way to turn him or her into a sociopath. If a person is hideously maltreated from the earliest years, it is almost guaranteed that he or she will grow up with a malignant view of existence. To such a person, the world is a hateful place where all human relationships are based not on love and respect but on power and domination. Having been tortured by his primary caretakers, he will, in later life, seek to inflict torture on others, partly as a way of taking revenge—of making other people suffer the way he has suffered—and partly because he has been so psychologically warped by his experiences that he can feel pleasure only by inflicting pain.”
― Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of