A Novelist & Serial Killer : The True Story of Jack Henry Abbott

By Anna Bellows

Being a creative individual doesn't mean you are incapable of atrocities and hurting other people. The perfect example of this statement is Jack Henry Abbott, an inmate, and a criminal who spent the majority of his life behind the bars. Unable to find peace with the outcome of his life, he found a new love while being locked up – literature. He was never a great student, but Abbott clearly had a talent for writing. It helped him become friends with one of the greatest writers of his generation – Norman Mailer. Thrilled and excited by Abbott's writing skills, Mailer supported Abbott's parole and helped him publish his first book named In the Belly of the Beast. 
Abbott wrote about his early life and the events which led him to the federal prison. He blamed both the society and the system for the fact that he was locked up. Hoping that he would turn his life around after the parole, Mailer was very excited to see his friend out of the jail in 1981. But it seemed like rehabilitation was near impossible for the criminal who only knew how to survive in tough conditions. Only six weeks after his release, Abbott killed an innocent man, and he was on the fast lane to prison once again. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jun 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201518547

Book preview

THE REDHEAD MURDERS

JANE CARLISLE

Hey There Little Red Riding Hood...

The Redhead Murders

Hearing about a murder captures our attention. Hearing about a serial killer can put the whole nation on alert. But it is the cases that never get solved, when they get indoctrinated into cult history, that the killer or killers get elevated to an almost more than human status. In these cases there is often barely enough information to tie the murders together, but there are a few chilling continuities that force us to join the dots. It is impossible to know whether it was one person, a group working together, or even copycat murders attempting to emulate the original. This is the case for the Redhead murders. 

The Redhead murders may have involved up to eleven women officially, and there are many separate accounts that claim that this number could be almost as high as twenty or thirty women. The main six murders were committed between October 1978 and the 1980s, but it is thought that the murders might have continued through up until 1992 or beyond. The murders occurred throughout the United States, officially including Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania, but the movement of the killer has caused many to suggest that his mobile nature implicates him in several other cases with similar circumstances all across the nation. While we don’t know much about him, based on potential interactions with the killer by possible surviving victims we do know that he was a middle-aged male. Beyond this, he was incredibly successful at protecting his identity.

The victims, most of whom police were never able to identify, are referred to by the county in which their bodies were dumped. The only connections are that all of them had a reddish hair, some natural and some dyed, and that their bodies were abandoned along major US highways. The fact that they were dumped in this way has caused many to believe that the girls and women were either hitchhikers or prostitutes, and in some cases these backgrounds are confirmed. However, for some of the girls and women they were not murdered directly on the road, but moved there later. This might suggest that the killer is making a comment about their choices in life, or perhaps left their bodies where he had found them when they were living. What is consistent among them is that the people in the town weren’t familiar with the victims, and that no family came forward to identify any of their bodies despite the fact that the cases had national attention. It has therefore been ascertained that the killer was careful in choosing his victims, and that it wasn’t purely based on the color of their hair. He wanted to find girls and women who weren’t going to have anybody come looking for them, and he succeeded in at least six cases. After the cases in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania, the state police from these areas requested help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help to hunt down the murderer, but the main conclusion that came from this interaction was that there were inconsistencies in the cases. Some of the girls and women were found clothing, and others were still dressed. Some had engaged in intercourse before they were murdered, and others hadn’t. On this basis, the FBI narrow the amount of victims that they thought were likely to be tied to one killer or set of killers. Several men have been questioned, but all have been subsequently cleared.

For many of the victims, they were found decomposed to the point that their faces could not be recognized. As hair decomposes slower than skin, all that was found of some of the victims was bones, rotten flesh, and red locks. However, police put together all of the information that they could, and did facial reconstructions based on the evidence that was available to them. Several of the women also had missing teeth, but it is not known whether this was the product of poor dental hygiene during life, a struggle with the killer, or a trophy removed from them before they were killed or dumped.

The first of the victims was the one from Wetzel County, her body being found naked on Route 250 just outside of the town of Littleton, Wetzel County, Virginia. Her body was found on February 13th, 1983 by a pair of senior citizens who initially thought that the body was a mannequin who had fallen out of a truck or been abandoned by the road. However, they then got closer and realized that it was a body. They then called police. Shortly after police arrived, it was determined that she hadn’t been left there long before as it was snowing and there hadn’t been enough time for a significant amount to accumulate on the woman’s body. There was plenty of fresh snow on the ground, and both footprints and tire tracks were visible leading up to and away from the spot. Due to these circumstances, it was determined that she had been murdered elsewhere and moved to the roadside, as her body suggested that she had died two days before. This first victim had not been sexually interfered with, but there were signs that she had been strangled or suffocated.  The age range of the victims placed the Wetzel Country victim on the higher end of the scale, as she was estimated to be between the ages of 35 to 45. She was five feet six inches tall (168cm) and weighed 135 pounds (61 kg). There were two distinct scars that were observed on her body after the autopsy, one of these being a scar on her abdomen from a Cesarean section and the other being on one of her index fingers. She was very well groomed and upset, causing police to think that she was not a hitchhiker or in the habit of moving around. The victim may have been seen in Wheeling, West Virginia as an employee or customer at a bar, but this lead was not certain enough to be confirmed. A man was seen near the place where the body was found, and suspicions arose that he was responsible for the murder of the woman and disposal of her body. He was a white male who was approximately five feet ten inches tall (178 cm) and weighed between 185 and 300 pounds (84-91kg). This sighting has shaped the claims against several suspects over the years after they have been involved in the kidnapping and rape of redheaded