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London in 1952 was a still recovering from the devastation wrought
by World War II: rationing was still in effect, rates of crime and
unemployment were high, and the national economy was in shambles.
In an effort to repay its massive war debt, the British government
was selling its clean-burning coal to America, and Londoners were
forced to make do with the cheap brown coal. That winter, as the
weather turned bitter, buses, trucks and automobiles, and thousands
of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air.
But the smog that descended on December 5th of 1952 was different;
it was a sulfurous type of smog that held the city hostage for five
long days. Mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the
streets, and some 12,000 people, many of them elderly or ill, died.
What would later be called the Great Smog of 1952 remains one of
the greatest environmental disasters of all time. That same
December, there was another killer at large in London. John
Reginald Christie murdered at least seven women in his flat in
Notting Hill--luring women to his home with the promise of a home
remedy for bronchitis, instructing his victims to inhale
carbon-monoxide laden coal gas until they passed out. He then raped
and strangled them, burying two in the garden, stashing several
more in a papered-over kitchen alcove, and his wife of 34 years
beneath the floorboards of their parlor. The arrest of the "Beast
of Rillington Place" caused a media frenzy; moreover, Christie's
role in sending an innocent man to the gallows was the impetus for
the abolition of the death penalty in the UK. The smog, meanwhile,
was slow to be implicated. Indeed, the British government did their
level best to disavow any connection between the death rate and the
air quality, blaming the sudden spike in deaths on fictitious flu
epidemic. Eventually, however, the media and one crusading Member
of Parliament launched a fight that would be the beginning of the
global clean air movement. The Clean Air Act of 1956 was a direct
result of the Great Smog, and that legislation provided a model for
the rest of the world, including the U.S. In a braided narrative
that draws on extensive interviews, never-before published material
and archival research, Kate Winkler Dawson captivatingly recounts
the intersecting stories of the these two killers and their crimes.
'A master-class in bringing history to life, in all its creepy,
twisted glory' - Karen Kilgariff, co-host of My Favorite Murder
podcast 'Every true crime fan will be riveted by Kate's master
story-telling of this unforgettable tale' - Paul Holes, author of
Unmasked: Crime Scenes, Cold Cases and My Hunt for the Golden State
Killer The thrilling story of Edward Rulloff - a serial murderer
who was called 'too intelligent to be killed' - and the array of
19th-century investigators who were convinced his brain held the
key to finally understanding the criminal mind. Rulloff was a
brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer - some have called him a
'Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter' - whose crimes spanned decades, but
by 1871 he was captured, chained in a cell - a psychopath holding
court while curious 19th-century 'mindhunters' got to work. From
alienists (early psychiatrists who tried to analyse the source of
his madness) to neurologists (who wanted to dissect his brain) to
phrenologists (who analysed the bumps on his head to determine his
character), each one thought he held the key to understanding the
essential question: is evil born or made? Expanding on her hit
podcast, Tenfold More Wicked, acclaimed crime historian Kate
Winkler Dawson draws on hundreds of source materials and
never-before-shared historical documents to present one of the
first glimpses into the mind of a serial killer - a century before
the term was coined - through the scientists whose work would come
to influence criminal justice for decades to come.
'Kate Winkler Dawson is an unbelievable crime historian and such a
talented storyteller.' Karen Kilgariff, cohost of the My Favorite
Murder podcast 'Heinrich changed criminal investigations forever,
and anyone fascinated by the myriad detective series and TV shows
about forensics will want to read [this].' The Washington Post 'An
entertaining, absorbing combination of biography and true crime.'
Kirkus 'Kate Winkler Dawson has researched both her subject and his
cases so meticulously that her reconstructions and descriptions
made me feel part of the action rather than just a reader and
bystander. She has brought to life Edward Oscar Heinrich's
character, determination, and skill so vividly that one is left
bemused that this man is so little known to most of us.' Patricia
Wiltshire, author of Traces and The Nature of Life and Death
Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities -
beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners and hundreds of books - sat an
investigator who would go on to crack at least 2,000 cases in his
40-year career. Known as the 'American Sherlock Holmes', Edward
Oscar Heinrich was one of the greatest - and first - forensic
scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing
evidence and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost
supernatural. Based on years of research and thousands of
never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock
is a true-crime account capturing the life of the man who
spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools,
including blood-spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests
and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence.
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