Summary of Harold Schechter's Psycho USA

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The American public has always feared new types of killers: the family annihilator, the formerly loving father who, in a sudden fit of homicidal frenzy, hidously slaughtered his children and wife.

#2 The author, who was a serial killer, decided to kill himself and his family. He justified his intended atrocity as an act of love and kindness. He first procured a noble supper of oysters, then died.

#3 On December 11, 1782, Beadle murdered his family. He killed his wife, then his four children. He left a trail of bloody footprints on the stairs, and then went to the kitchen and killed himself.

#4 The funeral of Beadle and his victims was a ceremonious affair. The body of Beadle was exhumed and transferred to an obscure spot. His victims’ funeral was a solemn event, and their deaths were mourned by the community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822501478

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on Harold Schechter's Psycho USA

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The American public has always feared new types of killers: the family annihilator, the formerly loving father who, in a sudden fit of homicidal frenzy, hidously slaughtered his children and wife.

#2

The author, who was a serial killer, decided to kill himself and his family. He justified his intended atrocity as an act of love and kindness. He first procured a noble supper of oysters, then died.

#3

On December 11, 1782, Beadle murdered his family. He killed his wife, then his four children. He left a trail of bloody footprints on the stairs, and then went to the kitchen and killed himself.

#4

The funeral of Beadle and his victims was a ceremonious affair. The body of Beadle was exhumed and transferred to an obscure spot. His victims’ funeral was a solemn event, and their deaths were mourned by the community.

#5

The rate of wife murder increased fivefold in the early nineteenth century, and moralists began to publish detailed descriptions of domestic butchery that sometimes bordered on the pornographic.

#6

The latest research into familicide confirms that modern-day perpetrators fit the same psychological profile as their early American counterparts. They are typically middle-aged men who are good providers, but who suffer financial setbacks that make them feel inadequate.

#7

The author, Caleb Carr, states that psychopathic killers are the result of severely abusive childhoods. Many forensic psychiatrists today agree with this theory.

#8

Green’s master, after having narrowly escaped death from his apprentice, rid himself of the boy, who returned to the home of his now aged parents. Green fell in with a local crook who became his mentor in vice.

#9

Green and his accomplice, Ash, began terrorizing the Northeast, becoming what crime historian Jay Robert Nash refers to as America’s first Public Enemy Number One.

#10

Samuel Green was a serial killer who traveled from Vermont to New York City, burglarizing stores and homes. He was arrested and sentenced to death, but his friend Ash helped him to escape. He returned to the remote mountains of New Hampshire, where he hid for some months. He then went on another crime spree, burglarizing stores and homes in Albany, New York and New York City.

#11

On April 25, 1822, Samuel Green was executed on Boston Common. He was just 25 years old. For his contemporaries, the young malefactor was a kind of prodigy, whose energies would have singled him out for high distinction had they been put to better use.

#12

The 1920s case of Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd Gray, who helped murder her husband, was seen as emblematic of the anything goes ethos of the Roaring Twenties. However, a similar crime had occurred a century earlier in America, when Elsie Whipple and Jesse Strang eloped.

#13

Elsie suggested that Jesse forge a check on the bank in John Whipple’s name, which would allow them to travel to Vermont. When that didn’t work, she came up with another plan: to kill her husband.

#14

The story of Jesse and Elsie Strang is one of adultery and murder. They had pledged mutual loyalty to each other,