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True Evil: Monsters, Murderers & Maniacs
The dozens of men and women profiled in this book represent some of humanity’s greatest flaws. Most started out in life ordinary enough. They grew up, got married, raised kids, went to church, paid their taxes on time.
Then something went horribly wrong.
Reality gave way to a twilight world of dark, perverted fantasies. In the end, these otherwise normal people--teachers, doctors, farmers, soldiers, engineers, insurance salesmen, aristocrats and emperors--became monsters--maniacal malcontents and vicious psychopaths who slaughtered, maimed, butchered and cannibalized untold thousands of innocent people before justice finally caught up with them.
Richard Speck, Ed Gein, Belle Gunness, Charles Whitman, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, John Wayne Gacy Jr., Henry Lee Lucas, Richard Chase, Alferd Packer, Idi Amin, Dr. Josef Mengele, Dr. Karl von Coser, the Harpe Boys, Lizzie Borden, John Brown, Jack the Ripper,..
Names like these continue to haunt our dreams, stir us with images too dark and disturbing to contemplate. These two-legged creatures rank among the worst of the worst, a veritable Who’s Who of the underbelly of crime—the sickest, most twisted and dangerously depraved creatures who ever walked the earth. They became the monster in the closet, the stuff of nightmares.
In a word, they became Nietzsche's monsters.
To be sure, bad people have always been with us. Warlords and military conquerors laid waste to entire civilizations across the broad sweep of history. Millions of innocent men, women and children have fallen before gleaming swords and amid the blast of bullets and bombs.
However horrific and inhumane, state-sponsored murder and mayhem remains outside the reach of this book. My goal here is not to re-hash the horrors of history, but to focus instead on individual acts of pure evil.
Numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course. Idi Amin can order the execution of five-thousand tribesmen and there’s hardly a yawn from the civilized world. A beast like Pol Pot can wipe out an entire village with a mere wave of his hand and the media rarely notices. Closer to home, a grinning gunslinger like John Dillinger can mow down a dozen lawmen and it’s nothing more than pulp chatter.
But let it be discovered that a respected surgeon sleeps with his long-deceased wife every night; or that the cheerful little man down the street who dresses up like a clown and showers the neighborhood children with candy stores more than boxes and old auto parts in his basement and you’ve got the makings of a gruesome tale far more extraordinary than the most bizarre fiction.
Then something went horribly wrong.
Reality gave way to a twilight world of dark, perverted fantasies. In the end, these otherwise normal people--teachers, doctors, farmers, soldiers, engineers, insurance salesmen, aristocrats and emperors--became monsters--maniacal malcontents and vicious psychopaths who slaughtered, maimed, butchered and cannibalized untold thousands of innocent people before justice finally caught up with them.
Richard Speck, Ed Gein, Belle Gunness, Charles Whitman, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, John Wayne Gacy Jr., Henry Lee Lucas, Richard Chase, Alferd Packer, Idi Amin, Dr. Josef Mengele, Dr. Karl von Coser, the Harpe Boys, Lizzie Borden, John Brown, Jack the Ripper,..
Names like these continue to haunt our dreams, stir us with images too dark and disturbing to contemplate. These two-legged creatures rank among the worst of the worst, a veritable Who’s Who of the underbelly of crime—the sickest, most twisted and dangerously depraved creatures who ever walked the earth. They became the monster in the closet, the stuff of nightmares.
In a word, they became Nietzsche's monsters.
To be sure, bad people have always been with us. Warlords and military conquerors laid waste to entire civilizations across the broad sweep of history. Millions of innocent men, women and children have fallen before gleaming swords and amid the blast of bullets and bombs.
However horrific and inhumane, state-sponsored murder and mayhem remains outside the reach of this book. My goal here is not to re-hash the horrors of history, but to focus instead on individual acts of pure evil.
Numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course. Idi Amin can order the execution of five-thousand tribesmen and there’s hardly a yawn from the civilized world. A beast like Pol Pot can wipe out an entire village with a mere wave of his hand and the media rarely notices. Closer to home, a grinning gunslinger like John Dillinger can mow down a dozen lawmen and it’s nothing more than pulp chatter.
But let it be discovered that a respected surgeon sleeps with his long-deceased wife every night; or that the cheerful little man down the street who dresses up like a clown and showers the neighborhood children with candy stores more than boxes and old auto parts in his basement and you’ve got the makings of a gruesome tale far more extraordinary than the most bizarre fiction.
197 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 12, 2017
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 24, 2021
Twains contempt of reader.
Book is fascinating . those of us who grew up with a pica ruler in one Hand and a style book in the other see such things and get tickled. I have read other books by this author and will continue to follow him just the same.
Book is fascinating . those of us who grew up with a pica ruler in one Hand and a style book in the other see such things and get tickled. I have read other books by this author and will continue to follow him just the same.
Displaying 1 of 1 review