Panzram : Butchering Humanity: Carl Panzram - The Autobiography

by Carl Panzram

This book collects and represents the confessional statements of convicted and executed American serial killer; Carl Panzram. These writings were created by Panzram whilst in prison serving a sentence towards the end of his life, where he met an officer named Henry Lesser who provided him with writing materials. This provides insights into the mind of an unbound, destructive monster through a lens of nihilism. Ideal for Philosophy, Sociology and Criminal students to gain first hand knowledge of what makes some men do the things they do.The writing here contains a number of disturbing scenes and a large quantity of offensive language and racial slurs. They do not in any way represent the beliefs of the Author or Publisher of this book and are only retained to properly express the opinions and mindset of the original author, Carl Panzram in the social situations he existed within.

Genres: True Crime, Psychology, Nonfiction, History, Crime, Biography, Autobiography

50 pages, Paperback

Published November 3, 1928

About the author

From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Pa...

Carl Panzram was an American serial killer, rapist, arsonist, robber and burglar. In prison confessions and his autobiography, he claimed to have committed 21 murders, most of which could not be corroborated, and over 1,000 sodomies of boys and men. After a series of imprisonments and escapes, he was executed in 1930 for the murder of a prison employee at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.

Reviews

[lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

2⭐
I was listening to morbid podcast and their episode on Carl whilst being overwhelmed with uni work. Was a short read and I enjoy true crime so...🙃
I listened to the podcast first and it had more information so if I was to recommend anything to anyone interested. I would recommend the podcast.

[SteffyJay (Little Booky Nook)]

Eeek I can’t rate this one. On one hand, old mate is actually not a bad writer. On the other hand, he is absolutely depraved and just the worst. Pretty interesting that one of his only regrets (other than not getting to kill everyone in the world) was that he harmed a few animals and wishes he hadn’t. That is not a redeeming feature by any means - this dude kills, rapes and steals his way around the world with not even a shred of remorse. The way he writes about it is similar to how I would tell someone I brushed my teeth this morning.

A word of warning. Don’t read this book if you can’t stomach reading something that comes straight from the mind of a serial killer and rapist. He is also incredibly racist, a pedophile and anti-women, though most of his violence is committed against men.

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed this by any means, but it was definitely interesting. His younger years are really fucking sad, and it’s heartbreaking that he was literally made the way he was because every single adult and authority figure failed him. He honestly wouldn’t have known kindness or love if it punched him in the face. And while this does not excuse what a wretched human he became, it definitely brings the whole “nature vs nurture” debate to light, and makes me wonder if he would have turned out different if even one person showed him love as a child.

So yeah. An interesting yet grim read, definitely worth reading if you like true crime and hearing confessions of serial killers.

[Anda]

I honestly don't know what to rate it? Should I even?
Anyway, I read this book on the recommendation of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson in one of his lectures on YouTube. This book talks about how Panzram was all out to get humanity. He found it reprehensible and was consciously malevolent with the intention to wipe out the entire human race.
As a child he was sentenced to a correctional facility and he wasn't treated well, to put simply, he was treated with absolute horror that humans are capable of and thus he was set out with a single conscious mission to take his revenge on humanity by wiping it out. It talks about how human beings are not all nice and some people are just straight up evil and consciously decide to inflict and cause as much mayhem as they possibly can, just because they've decided so.
However, one thing that really stood out to me was his encounter with an "idealist", Study Murphy. The only incharge at one of these prisons/correctional facilities who assumed the good in him and Panzram not knowing why, did stand up to pursue his best behaviour under his supervision despite being his worst for more than a decade!
He talks about how Stud Murphy told him he didn't believe what other guards and previous prison officers had to say about him and believed Panzram to be a good man, despite. And if he promised and didn't try to run away or cause any ruckus till the afternoon he would open the prison gates for him, and he did! And seeing that there wasn't any mischief or shady intentions behind it Panzram in fact did not run away and continued to stay back at the correctional facility for around 8 months and did all the work for Stud Murphy which he never did for any prison officers, ever!
While reading the book, The Courage To Be Disliked, I took the whole "show confidence in people to be good, and they will turn around" with a pinch of salt. I still do.
But if Panzram out of all, resorted to his best self for Stud Murphy (not knowing why because he hadn't come across someone being this nice to him), it must mean that all it takes is one good man to show light to the corrupted humanity.
I know this wasn't the point of the book, however, i found this point really interesting.
Give it a go, if you want to know that some people are extraordinarily brutal and evil, and each of us possesses the same capability under the "right" circumstances and environment.
As, Aleksandr Solzheinitsyn put it, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being".

[Crystal M · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was written by Carl panzram when he was in prison awaiting sentencing for multiple crimes including murder which he committed in the early 1900’s. It was short and there wasn’t as much detail as I would have liked.

[gustavo Inacio ferreira assis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is evil.

The casualty on how he talks about the killing and rapes. The human soul can go low, very low into the depths of hell.
Like the other of the gulag said “ the line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Amazing book as a in-depth dive into the mind of a psychopath.

[Jolanta · Rating 4 out of 5]

« Men made me what I am today and if men didn't like what they have made of me, they must put the blame where it belongs. »

Like many, I picked up this book after Jordan Peterson’s recommendation, and it was one of the most harrowing yet fascinating reads I’ve encountered. Carl Panzram’s autobiography offers an unfiltered look into the making of a « butcher » —shaped by relentless brutality, institutional abuse, and a world that seemed to cultivate his hatred at every turn.

Panzram was beaten, humiliated, abused, raped, and dehumanized from childhood, and he became exactly what the world treated him as—a monster. While he ultimately made his own choices, his story is a stark reminder that none of us exist in isolation. What really hits hard is the reminder that, for better or worse, we leave marks on everyone we encounter, whether we realize it or not—and that’s a responsibility we all carry.

But beyond that, this book forces you to ask yourself an uncomfortable question: If you had lived his life, if you had faced this level of brutality and injustice, would you have turned out any different? We like to believe we are inherently good, but how much of that is simply the result of our rather good experiences? Panzram’s story is disturbing, not just because of what he did, but because it makes you question the very nature of morality itself.

Either way, it’s a disturbing yet gripping read for anyone curious about the darkest corners of the human mind. I kept wishing he’d gone into more detail.

[Christian]

3.25-3.5⭐️
Not bad, as some reviews led me to believe, especially at merely 50 pages, but I’m hoping Panzram’s other memoir is more illuminating.


“All that I had in my mind at that time was a strong determination to raise plenty of hell with anybody and everybody in every way I could and every time and place I could.

I was the spirit of meanness personified. I had not at this time got so that I hated myself, I only hated everybody else.

At this time of my life I was about 20 years old, 6 foot tall and weighed about 190 pounds of concentrated hell-fired man inspired mean-ness. I was as strong as two or three average men.”

Laird Barron prose much??

[Glenn Thomas]

I can’t rate this. It’s about someone sadistic and I read it to understand how people get to that point and how destruction in society is made. When people talk about nature vs nurture in how people are raised, this is a book on how the opposite of nurturing can create something very dark indeed. Would not recommend this unless someone is studying psychology or criminology

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes a strong argument to reform our current prison system.
Are psychopaths born? Or are they created?

“When I was discharged I was told that I was as a lily, free from all sin, to go and sin no more. 18 days later I commited 6 or 8 burglaries and 2 days later I commited a murder in Philadelphia.”

[Corian defulltimelevensgenieter Koelewijn]

Nul sterren want dit is het ziekste boek wat ik ooit heb gelezen. Je kijkt letterlijk in de gedachten van een seriemoordenaar, pedofiel, crimineel, verkrachter etc…

Het wekt ook de vraag op is hij zo geboren of gemaakt? Want zijn jeugd ging ook absoluut niet over roosjes.

Nature nurture?

[Frank Garrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only one piece of the story

Interesting from a first person perspective but no explanation, just events. It would have been better with a narrator to give depth.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

What initially interested me in reading this was the famous last words of Carl Panzram to the undertaker before being hung for his crimes: “Hurry it up, you Hoosier b*stard! I could kill a dozen men while you’re screwing around!”

It’s like something the main antagonist in a film would say, in fact parts of his autobiography reminded me of fictional characters, like the Trashcan man from Stephen King’s: The Stand, in which an abused outcast turned pyromaniac aims to fulfil his ambition of setting the world on fire by joining forces with the devil. Or the famous speech in the movie: Batman the Dark Knight, where Alfred tries to help Bruce understand the psyche of the Joker by explaining that some men “just want to watch the world burn”. Of course these fictional narratives pale in comparison to the real life of Panzram. Unless I missed a scene I’m pretty sure the Joker never sodomised his victims. But the point I’m making is that the themes within the stories we’re drawn to also exist in the real world and in the case of Panzram, it’s not hard to see that a childhood filled with torture and abuse is what resulted in him inflicting the same behaviour patterns to other humans throughout his adult life.

One of the hardest things about reading this book is on the one hand you’re repulsed by the sheer evilness of it, but on the other hand you can (or should) empathise with the atrocious upbringing he endured. I don’t think he should be held entirely accountable for what he did, as evil as his crimes were. I personally believe that every person that ever interacted with Panzram bears some accountability for his actions. In fact I think this is true for everyone regardless of morality. If human behaviour is largely determined by past experiences and those experiences are shaped by our interaction with one another, then every person has the potential to positively or negatively influence the future behaviour of all those they interact with. That’s a responsibility I think everyone should treat with more attentiveness and I hope by sharing this insight it will encourage you to go and read this book.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe my opinion is tainted from reading too many gory detailed accounts of evil psychopaths but this chapbook was pretty mild. This guy is known to be one of the most evil people ever born, and I really hoped to gain insight into details of his crimes and the mentality he had during. This book feels like a very rushed version of those events. His writing is surprisingly decent, but he skates through hundreds of crimes in just 49 pages. He describes them in almost no detail, saying things like he robbed this place, went to jail, escaped and robbed another place, then ended up back in the same jail within a sentence or two. Still very interesting to hear his non character descriptions which do give the kind of ethos he lived by which was simply that he hated all people and looked for ways to disrupt and torture humanity in any way he could think of.
Something else of note is that he had a very similar beginning to that of Pee Wee Gaskins.

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crime and punishment

If you assume this is an authentic account of his deeds, he was a one man crime wave and the book leaves you wondering why no one offed him long before he died. I had no idea it was so easy 100 years ago to commit horrendous crimes one after another and just drift in and out of jail.

It’s poorly written and it jumps around. But it’s not meant to be high minded literature.

It does draw attention to the ancient nature versus nature debate as to the origins of evil acts.

[Brady Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Carl Panzram's autobiographical account reads less like genuine introspection and more like the grandiose posturing typical of inmates who transform personal failures into elaborate mythologies of victimhood and menace. Written while imprisoned, Panzram's narrative exhibits the classic pattern of exaggerated storytelling that corrections professionals encounter daily—the inflated sense of importance, the dramatic reframing of mundane criminal behavior as philosophical rebellion, and the desperate need to be seen as significant despite claims of not caring what anyone thinks.

The central irony of Panzram's account is impossible to ignore: a man who claims complete indifference to humanity while simultaneously crafting a detailed autobiography designed to shock and captivate readers. If Panzram truly "didn't care" as he repeatedly insists, why the compulsive need to document every grievance, every act of violence, every perceived slight against him? The very existence of his writings betrays the hollow nature of his nihilistic posturing.

This contradiction reveals what many who work in corrections recognize—the gap between an inmate's constructed persona and their underlying psychological needs. Panzram desperately wants to be remembered, to matter, to have his pain acknowledged, but frames this need within a narrative of supreme indifference and superiority. It's performative.

Panzram positions himself as uniquely damaged, uniquely violent, uniquely insightful about humanity's true nature. But strip away the dramatic language and what emerges is a more common story—childhood trauma inadequately processed, poor decision-making compounded over time, and a refusal to engage honestly with personal responsibility. The "monster" persona serves as both shield and sword, protecting him from vulnerability while demanding attention and fear.

One of the most telling aspects of Panzram's narrative is his relationship with his own sexuality. His accounts of sexual violence, particularly against men and boys, combined with his vehement expressions of hatred and disgust, suggest a man deeply conflicted about his own sexual identity. Living in an era when homosexuality was heavily criminalized and stigmatized, Panzram appears to have channeled what might have been natural sexual impulses into acts of domination and violence.

His sexual crimes read less like expressions of pure evil and more like the actions of someone who couldn't reconcile his desires with societal expectations or his own self-image. The violence becomes a way to experience sexual contact while maintaining a narrative of power and dominance rather than vulnerability or desire. This pattern—sexual repression manifesting as sexual violence—represents a tragic waste of human potential and a failure of both individual and social understanding.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I started out in life enjoying it and hating no one. I am winding it up now by hating the whole human race including myself and having no desire to live any longer. For all the misery and tortures that I have went through, I have made other men go through many times over, only worse."

This is the story of Carl Panzram, told from his own perspective. As a young boy, he experienced a load of abuse and scapegoating from the people around him.

"It seemed to me then and still does now that everything was always right for the one who was the strongest and every single thing that I done was wrong. Everybody said so anyway. But right or wrong I used to get plenty of abuse. Everybody thought it was all right to deceive me, lie to me, kick me around whenever they felt like it and they felt like it pretty regular. At this time, that is the way my life was lived until I was about eleven years old. At about that time I began to suspect that there was something wrong about the treatment I was getting from the rest of the human race."

When he was about 14 years old he was gang raped twice by two different groups of men, which probably played a large part in the crimes he later committed and why he targeted men and boys in particular.

I'm not going to lie, a lot of this book was sarcastic and witty. The crimes are not described in the amount of detail we would see today due to the time period.

Carl Panzram was sent to an abusive Christian school at a young age and learned to manipulate the people around him by claiming to be a man of God and a true follower of Jesus.

"Naturally, I now love Jesus very much. Yes, I love him so damn much that I would like to crucify him all over again."

A lot of people assume that serial killers are all psychopaths, but there have been scientific studies that show that psychopathy is something you are born with, not something you are made. Not all psychopaths go around committing horrible crimes or doing horrible things to people.

I don't believe that Carl Panzram was a psychopath, although he might qualify these days for a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder (also not a disorder that makes people kill others).

I think he is a great example of how the environment you grow up in can greatly affect your actions and the beliefs you have about other people. A lot of people cannot understand why people like this do the things they do. A lot of people also did not have his life.

[Mikey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This brief autobiography was not especially well-written but reflected the authentic voice of this self-aggrandizing serial killer and rapist. It certainly serves as an interesting psychological study. Those who are looking for something deeply grisly probably won't find it here by modern standards. For the 1920s, when homosexuality was a taboo subject in the US, this must have been mind-bendingly shocking. This is the result of someone who had genetic proclivities towards psychopathy experiencing cruelty, violence, and abuse during their formative years and transformed their pain into nihilistic rage. Almost 100% of the time whenever you read about famous serial killers you see a story of someone in which every system has failed them - repeatedly. Their family, the education system, and the justice system are all such that normal safeguards have been removed. Of course, there is also always an element of personal choice, and what is disturbing about Panzram is that it is very clear that he has actively made the choice to be as hurtful and spiteful to other people and the world at large as he possibly can. This is a macabre gem and a unique piece but would probably be more suitable to those interested in human psychology than an average reader looking for a well told memoir.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, this one is difficult to review. I first heard of this case through a true crime podcast and was surprised that I had never heard of the story before. The book was written by the serial killer himself, so it's certainly not professional quality writing, although it wasn't terrible. The book is short and is Panzram telling about all of his crimes in a very matter of fact tone before he was put to death. It's not a book to read for enjoyment in any way, but if you're researching true crime, it could be beneficial. Not for the faint of heart.

[India · Rating 4 out of 5]

It didn't provide me with any information I didn't already know but it offered a different perspective to get it straight from the source.

This was a very damaged man who was failed at every point of his life. All his crimes he stated so matter of factly and it proves his emotional disconnect from not only his crimes, but himself.

I would say it's a good introduction for people who are just learning of Carl Panzram and entering the "true crime" community. He would be a good case study for nature vs. nurture.

[Jake Howat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Straight from a sick and troubled mind - this book is not for everyone. On one hand, he’s not half bad at writing, yet on the other, he’s a racist, pedophile, rapist, woman-hater and serial killer whose only regret in life was harming a few animals. Maddening.

Read in one sitting, I was both fascinated and appalled by Panzram’s 36 years, especially his youth. I wouldn’t dare to cross-check his life’s stories as he suggests the reader to do so. His writing satisfied my imagination enough.

[Violet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very interesting, because it is a first-hand account. (Any autobiographical text, even one written by a lying serial murderer, can provide important information about the writer.) Psychology fans, true crime junkies, profilers, and those generally working in law will enjoy this.

*The merit of such a text is not due to any great artistry but simply in being what it is: a valuable tool. I feel like I need to say that. 😂

3.6

[Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A man who claims to have committed countless burglaries, arsons, and assaults, sodomized 1000 men and boys, and murdered 22 people. The book is filled with typos, bad grammar, and likely exaggerations. However, there are some interesting psychological thoughts. He claims that his meanness is the product of the abuse he suffered in reform school and that he turned away from women after being robbed and getting gonorrhea from a prostitute.

[Justin Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very poorly produced book. Autobiography or not there was a ton of spelling mistakes, double letters, spacing errors, amongst a myriad of other production issues. Just a garbage book that felt like the actual story was fed through chatGPT, then retyped by 4th graders before given the go ahead to print. If it weren’t 50 pages I would have thrown it in the garbage much earlier than I did. What a waste of organic material.

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very thin book, only 50 pages, but it certainly hit the highlights of a man who was perhaps made into a monster, and didn't fight that making, but went with it and embellished on it. It is a very interesting read, although it lacks a lot of background. It's a primer for more research into the man, if one cares to do so.

[Josh Arendt · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars right in the middle bc I don’t know how to rate a book I’m struggling to comprehend. Hearing about the darkness and evil someone did to others with no remorse is going to take more time to understand.

Can’t say I’d recommend. I read to glimpse into another side and I’m not sure what to make of it.

[Rodrigo Ruiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Increible como funciona la mente de un criminal

No funciona en la kindle paperwhite, pero si en la app kindle para Android en el celular. Muy interesante y corto libro, bastante oscuro.

[Larissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read the edited version with James Long, reading this in his own words makes this book a bit more chilling.
It is extremely interesting, Panzram is a classic example of someone who the system has failed, broken and then raised up.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick read, but FULL of information. The matter of fact way Panzram details his crimes is interesting and concerning. I definitely wish this was longer and had more information. But at the same time, there is something to be said about how straight forward he is.

[Matthew Evans]

No rating. Even if you don't believe what this thing has written, and I don't believe a significant portion, please use this as a reference for the evil that exists out there. It's real and wriggling.

[Devon Gregory · Rating 1 out of 5]

Print too small

There's no way to increase the font and I can't read this. Wish I could get a refund but I'm stuck with it.