Unprovoked Murder: Insanity Or Demon Possession?

by Lester Sumrall

Book by Sumrall, Lester Frank

Genres: True Crime

Mass Market Paperback

Published December 1, 1981

Reviews

[Fishface · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was hilariously naïve. The author believes that all murders, committed for reasons he can't understand, are the product of demonic possession. Similarly, all attempts by violent offenders to cover their tracks by faking mental illness, like Gacy's attempt to fake multiple personalities, are also proof of possession. Oh, and the ones who really are mentally ill? Possession again. This guy doesn't know the difference between mental illness and mental retardation, and believes neither contributes to violent behavior; he seems incapable of grasping that sexual deviance is a major contributor to rape-murders; and he states over and over that if these guys only got Jesus they would be all better. Whatever would he make of fundamentalist, Bible-studying cannibal Jeff Dahmer? To be fair, not everything Sumrall says is totally wrong, but he embeds every good idea in this morass of bad ones. I enjoyed the book, but for all the wrong reasons.

[Victoria The Frog · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have no idea what I expected, but somehow I hoped just not feeling that I wasted time while reading. Well…
I feel like it could go in many places and author could make this book way more interesting, but nah, too much bullshit.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this would be a cool book - but I was disappointed. Overall it sounded like a high schooler's paper (maybe a B+ or A-)...there was a significant lack of sources used, there were judgment calls when there needed to be none, there was a lot of assuming going on (and you know what happens when you assume) and I didn't feel that there was a significant amount of evidence used. It might have been more interesting if he would have described his personal experiences first - but talking about your personal experience with demon possession AFTER talking about the murder cases made it sound like he was stretching the facts. If his experience was his background, and that's what he was basing his arguments on, then I would have liked to been clued in BEFORE I read his thoughts on each case of murder. It felt like he was just taking famous cases and saying - "yup, this one was demon possession too..." (blaming everything on the demons) and then he went back and said that demons couldn't make you do anything beyond your own will - so it was still the people's fault - they were murderers by their own will (so it was the people's fault)...so which is it supposed to be?
Oh yeah, and the book is called "Unprovoked Murder..." but he made several statements (ok, maybe 2) that said something like "every murder is preceded by a rebellion" but if you're rebelling against something when you murder - then it's not unprovoked.
So here's what I got from the book. There is no unprovoked murder. The murders that people think are unprovoked are actually provoked by what we can't see - the murderer's are victims of demon possession but they're still murderer's in their heart so they deserve to die themselves. Yeah...now maybe you see why I didn't like it.