Book published April 1, 2018
By America’s premier historical true crime writer, Harold Schechter.
In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn’t merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. They’d been butchered.
Hell’s Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter’s gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery—and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare.
[Publisher’s promotional text]
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One deatail: Gunness is America’s most prolific female serial killer of adults. But Georgia Tann is probably the most prolific American serial killer in actuality, but all her victims were children, most of them infants.
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The World’s First Serial Killer Movie: The Story of Belle Gunness, 1908
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1908 – Belle Gunness– LaPorte, Indiana, USA – Serial Killer, Swindler
1922 – Tillie Gbrurek Klimek– Chicago, Illinois, USA – Serial Killer, Swindler
1924 – Marie Krueger– Hammer, Germany – Serial Killer, Swindler
1930s – Grace Sims– Brickel Ridge, Tennessee, USA – Serial Killer, Swindler
1940 – Emma Heperman– Wentzville, Missouri, USA – Serial Killer
1949 – Inez Brennan– Dover, Delaware, USA – Serial Killer, Swindler
1949 – Martha Beck– USA – Serial Killer, Swindler
1954 – Nannie Doss– Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA – Serial Killer, Swindler
1954 – Nannie Doss– Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA – Serial Killer, Swindler
1984 – Ada Wittenmyer– Dickson, Tennessee, USA – Serial Killer, Swindler
1996 – Elfriede Blauensteiner– Vienna, Austria – Serial Killer, Swindler
2007 – Lydia L.– Gottingen, Germany – Serial Killer, Swindler
2009 – Kanae Kijima– Tokyo, Japan – Serial Killer, Swindler
2011 – “The Black widow Gang”– Medellin, Colombia – Yulima Emilsen Rojas Castaño & Suleyma Giraldo de Zapata – Serial Killers, Swindlers
1996 – Elfriede Blauensteiner– Vienna, Austria – Serial Killer, Swindler
2007 – Lydia L.– Gottingen, Germany – Serial Killer, Swindler
2009 – Kanae Kijima– Tokyo, Japan – Serial Killer, Swindler
2011 – “The Black widow Gang”– Medellin, Colombia – Yulima Emilsen Rojas Castaño & Suleyma Giraldo de Zapata – Serial Killers, Swindlers
2012 – Melissa Friedrich– Florida, USA & Nova Scotia, Canada – Serial Killer, Swindler
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