Encyclopedia Of Serial Killers by Nigel BlundellMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this murder-opedia is that it feels like it has a British focus, so there is more detail on European and English murderers, like Fred West, who was apprehended and charged in 1994, apparently when this text was authored. However, the material, already burdened by excessive grammatical errors, feels more dated than it should be, as if Blundell pasted in notes or material a decade or so older in many cases. When this jumps out in the cases I know, it makes me doubt what I am reading about killers I am not as familiar with. For instance, the 1996 book The Boston Stranglers based on the files of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts "Strangler Bureau" argues that those stranglings were the work of several killers rather than solely Albert DeSalvo as still suggested here. Similarly, the Atlanta murders of 1979–81 include only 2 killings for which Wayne Williams was convicted and criminal profiler John E. Douglas told us in 1998 in Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit cryptically: "It isn't a single offender and the truth isn't pleasant." No even real suggestion beyond Williams' protestations of that "truth" here. Also, In May 1996, Chicago television news anchor Bill Kurtis received video tapes made at Stateville Correctional Center in 1988 from an anonymous attorney. Showing them publicly for the first time before the Illinois state legislature, Kurtis pointed out the explicit scenes of sex, drug use, and money being passed around by prisoners, who seemingly had no fear of being caught; in the center was Richard Speck, performing oral sex on another inmate, sharing a large quantity of cocaine with another inmate, parading in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts (allegedly grown using smuggled hormone treatments), and boasting, "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose." With no mention of that at all in Speck's entry, I believe the text in need of an editor was written in 1995 or earlier despite when the book was published.
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