Harold Schechter

Then he walked the search party directly to the body.

Decades later, the biographer Harold Schechter wrote that Henry's clothes were covered in soot, but not burned, and that he had bruises on his head.

That last detail is Schechter's, and it actually doesn't appear anywhere else.

Ed was never charged in connection with his brother's death, but the question never went away, and investigators would come back to it 13 years later.

He said part of him knew it was wrong, but that didn't stop him.

and the first graves he opened were his mother's neighbors.

Harold Schechter, the biographer who wrote the definitive book on this case, has pointed out that the earliest ones formed a semicircle around Augusta's own plot.

Augusta's coffin itself was encased in a concrete vault.

I don't know whether Jesse was a bed wetter or was ever known for starting fires, and the idea of the McDonald triad wouldn't come around for over a century after this, but it's well known that many serial killers displayed intense violence towards animals in their early years.

There's a book by an author called Harold Schechter about Jesse Pomeroy.

It's entitled The Shocking Story of America's Youngest Serial Killer.

And it's pretty much the only extensive look at Jesse's story.

One is the first major book on H.H. Holmes to characterize him as a serial killer.

The title of the book, Depraved, The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer by Harold Schechter, which came out in 1994.

The 1974 novel American Gothic by horror writer Robert Bloch was a fictionalized version of the story of H.H. Holmes.

Interest in Holmes' crimes was revived in 2003 by Eric Larson's The Devil in the White City, Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.

although my sense is that Matt Kessler isn't convinced he is the murderer.

Anyway, speaking of murderers and murder, we're moving on to our guest today, Harold Schechter.

He's one of America's leading crime historians, the author of many books about one kind of murder or another.

His new book is called Murder by the Numbers, 199 Chilling Tales of True Crime.

Finally, I've got to ask this question, and Howard, again, excuse me for these rather dim-witted questions, but I saw a piece on you which said that You're a man with two unique personalities.

Now, I know you've never committed any murders, but you've spent your life studying them, writing about them, making television shows about them.

Could you ever imagine another version of Harold Schechter, who was a murderer? Do you sometimes have dreams or nightmares where you're the murderer rather than analyzing the murderer? Look, I

think the answer to the question, and I