Harold Schechter

Harold Schechter is an American true crime writer whospecializes in serial killers. He attended the State Uni-versity of New York in Buffalo where his PhD directorwas Leslie Fiedler. He is professor of American litera-ture and popular culture at Queens College of the CityUniversity of New York.Schechter is married to poetKimiko Hahn. He has two daughters from a previousmarriage: the writer Lauren Oliver and professor of phi-losophy Elizabeth Schechter. His newest book, The MadSculptor, (about a sensational triple murder at BeekmanPlace in New York City in 1937) was published in Febru-ary 2014.[1]

1 Survey of Harold Schechter’s Ca-reer

Schechter is an Associate Professor of English at QueensCollege, New York and specializes in American truecrime, specifically serial murders of the 19th and early20th centuries. Using primary sources such as newspaperclippings and court records, he supplies thorough docu-mentation of every case he profiles, while still manag-ing to create compelling narratives and fully fleshed-outcharacters. In addition to his work as a crime historian,Schechter is the author of an acclaimed series of detectivenovels based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.[2]

In addition to his historical crime books and mystery fic-tion, Schechter has written extensively on American pop-ular culture. In The Bosom Serpent: Folklore and PopularArt, he explores the relationship between contemporarycommercial entertainment and the narrative archetypesof traditional folklore. Savage Pastimes: A Cultural His-tory of Violent Entertainment places the current contro-versy over media violence in a broad historical context.Examining everything from Victorian murder ballads tothe productions of the nineteenth-century Grand Guig-nol, the book makes the somewhat contrarian argumentthat today’s popular entertainment is actually less violentthan the gruesome diversions of the supposedly halcyonpast.[2][3]

Schechter’s essays have appeared in numerous publica-tions includingThe NewYork Times, TheWall Street Jour-nal, The Los Angeles Times, and the International HeraldTribune. He is the editor of The Library of America Vol-ume, True Crime: An American Anthology

2 Praise

Publishers Weekly has called Schechter a “serial killerexpert”, a “deft writer”, praising his ability to recre-ate “from documentation the thoughts and perspectivesof long-dead figures.” PW called Schechter’s book TheDevil’s Gentleman “a riveting tale of murder, seductionand tabloid journalism run rampant in New York not sodifferent from today”.[4]

Booklist called his book Depraved a “first-rate true crimeand first-rate popular history.” Writing in the New YorkTimes reviewer James Polk praised Nevermore, the firstin Schechter’s Poe mystery series for its “entertainingpremise...supported by rich period atmospherics.”

3 True crime

The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Mur-der That Shook the Nation, the story of Roger Irwin’s ob-session with model Veronica Gedeon and his subsequentdescent into madness. (Published in February 2014)

• Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America’sFirst Serial Killer, the story of Chicago serial mur-derer Herman Mudgett, alias Dr. H. H. Holmes

• Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America’sMost Fiendish Killer!, the story of New York serialmurderer Albert Fish

• Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’sYoungest Serial Killer, the story of Jesse Pomeroy,child murderer.

• Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Mon-ster, serial murderer Earle Leonard Nelson, whokilled in Canada and the United States.

• Deviant: The Shocking True Story of the Original“Psycho”, the story of Ed Gein, the killer who in-spired Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre andThe Silence of the Lambs

• Fatal : The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer,the story of 19th century murderess Jane Toppan

• A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (co-written withDavid Everitt)

1

2 8 EXTERNAL LINKS

• The Serial Killer Files : The Who, What, Where,How, and Why of the World’s Most Terrifying Mur-derers

• Panzram: A Journal of Murder (Introduction)• “The Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and theTrial that Ushered in the Twentieth Century,” NewYork: Random House/Ballantine Books, 2007.

• Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making ofan American Legend(2010), the story of 19th cen-tury murderer John C. Colt, brother of arms makerSamuel Colt, and the trial

• “Psycho USA: famous American Killers You NeverHeard of” (2012)

4 Mystery• Nevermore (1999) – Edgar Allan Poe joins DavyCrockett to solve a series of shocking murders inBaltimore in 1835.

• TheHumBug (2001) – Poe teamswith Showman PTBarnum to solve a series of murders in New York.

• Mask of the Red Death (2004) – Poe joins forceswith Kit Carson to track down a liver-eating mur-derer. Like the previous book, this one also takesplace in New York.

• The Tell-Tale Corpse (2006) – Poe groups with au-thor Louisa May Alcott to put down yet anothermurderer. This time, he takes his mystery to Mas-sachusetts.

• Outcry – A Novel based on the fictional son of EdGein, and his path of destruction

5 Popular culture• The Manly Movie Guide

• Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent En-tertainment

• Real to Reel

• Patterns in Popular Culture: A SourceBook for Writ-ers

• Film Tricks: Special Effects in the Movies

• The Manly Handbook

• Kidvid: A Parents’ Guide to Children’s Videos

• American Voices: A Thematic/Rhetorical Reader

• Start Collecting Comic Books

• “The Whole Death Catalog: A Lively Guide to theBitter End”

6 Academic works• Discoveries: Fifty Stories of the Quest

• Bosom Serpent: Folklore and Popular Art

• New Gods: Psyche and Symbol in Popular Art

• Original Sin: The Visionary Art of Joe Coleman

• “Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to OtherPoems,” editor with Kurt Brown, New York:Knopf/Everyman, 2007.

• “Killer Verse: Poems ofMurder andMayhem,” edi-tor with Kurt Brown, New York: Knopf/Everyman,2011.

7 References[1] Schechter, Harold (2014). The Mad Sculptor: The Ma-

niac, the Model, and the Murder That Shook the Nation.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-544-11431-9.

[2] Mahdi, Louise Carus; Foster, Steven; Little, Meredith (1January 1987). Betwixt & Between: Patterns of Masculineand Feminine Initiation. Open Court Publishing. p. 67.ISBN 978-0-8126-9048-4.

[3] Gilbert, Nathaniel (2006). Democracide: America on theRoad to Fascism and Bankruptcy. AuthorHouse. p. 153.ISBN 978-1-4259-5922-7.

[4] “Nonfiction Book Review: The Devil’s Gentleman: Privi-lege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the TwentiethCentury”. Publisher’s Weekly.

8 External links• Harold Schechter’s website, http://www.haroldschechter.com

• “Harold Schechter’s Dangerous Pastime, “ byGary Shapiro, http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/harold-schechters-dangerous-pastime/13904/

• “Murder by Mail:in gilded Age NewYork” book review by William Grimes,http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/books/24grim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

• Poison Served His Purpose: a murder in NewYork gives us a landmark case and one grippingstory,” book review by Nathan Ward, http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010807

• Harold Schechter’s “Five Best Killer Stories: sensa-tional murder trials…,” http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/fivebest/?id=110010848

• Review of Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History ofViolent Entertainment at Reason magazine

3

9 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1 Text• Harold Schechter Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Schechter?oldid=645999780 Contributors: Someone else, Xezbeth,MBisanz, DreamGuy, SteinbDJ, The JPS, Georgia guy, Tony1, Pope phred, Pegship, SmackBot, Wje, Betacommand, Bluebot, Vbigdeli,Wizardman, Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Redeagle688, Nekohakase, CmdrObot, Treybien, Aristophanes68, Wlmh65, Waacstats, KConWiki,Mike Searson, KylieTastic, Schickaneder, Henry Merrivale, All Hallow’s Wraith, Addbot, Lightbot, Yobot, Momoricks, Brokennews,Erik9bot, N0cturnalsweety, Mariavirgo914, ChrisGualtieri, Tarasonin23, 60pamela and Anonymous: 20

9.2 Images• File:Books-aj.svg_aj_ashton_01.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Books-aj.svg_aj_ashton_01.svgLicense: CC0 Contributors: http://www.openclipart.org/cgi-bin/navigate/education/books (note: the link no longer works since reorga-nization of the OpenClipArt website). Original artist: Original author: AJ Ashton (on OpenClipArt). Code fixed by verdy_p for XMLconformance, and MediaWiki compatibility, using a stricter subset of SVG without the extensions of SVG editors, also cleaned up manyunnecessary CSS attributes, or factorized them for faster performance and smaller size. All the variants linked below are based on thisimage.

9.3 Content license• Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0