Quotes by S. Schechter

“set off a marketing frenzy, during which the heroine’s name was bestowed upon a hat, several shoe designs, candy, toothpaste, soap, a brand of sausage, and even a town in Florida.””

“In the incident of her husband’s death, her temptation to commit the alleged atrocities may have had its birth.”[””

“In our nation’s popular culture, country life in the 1800s has often been portrayed as an idyllic experience, one that cultivated such quintessentially American values as self-reliance, rugged independence, a reverence for the land, a belief in the importance of hard work and self-sacrifice, and a willingness to fight when necessary for home, family, and community.””

“the worst rioting in the city’s history when a mob of ten thousand citizens, outraged over the lenient sentence given to one of the killers, ransacked the courthouse and set it on fire in March 1884.””

“Only the technology has changed. The public’s appetite for sensational true-crime stories has remained exactly the same.””

“Such was Frémont’s fame that, in 1856, he was nominated as the Republican Party’s first presidential candidate. The ensuing campaign was “one of the nastiest in the nation’s history.” Indulging in the kind of unbridled calumny that makes modern-day mudslinging seem like the height of civility, Frémont’s adversaries branded him “a secret papist” (a harsh accusation in an era of virulent anti-Catholic bigotry), a bastard, an adulterer, a native-born Frenchman, and the son of a prostitute.””

“One would think there was enough unavoidable tragedy in everyone’s existence to keep him from seeking the hideous and unsightly,” he mused. “And yet it may be the fact that each has his cross to bear that leads him to come in contact with the world’s wretchedness as a sort of palliative to his own.”[11]””

“the rest began looking at each other with hungry glances, wondering which would be so kind as to die next. As no one of them proved to be accommodating enough in this particular, Noon made a virtue of necessity and, some ten days afterwards, shot Miller. His two remaining companions condoned the offense by accepting the invitation to dine on Miller, but, after all that was eatable about Miller had been eaten, it occurred to Bell that “he that sheddeth man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed,” and accordingly he shot Noon and shared him at the Noon-day meal with Packer. By the time Noon was digested, Bell became convinced of the truth of the apothegm that self-preservation is the first law of nature, and, not having any powder, he made for Packer with the butt of his gun.””

“I referred to the innate human need for what psychologist Arie Kruglanski was the first to label “cognitive closure,” which he defined as “the individual’s need for a firm answer to a question and aversion to ambiguity.”[ 3]””

“In attempting to create a psychological profile of an unknown serial killer, investigators try to distinguish between the perpetrator’s “signature””

“In the strict, psychoanalytic sense of the term, fetishism is a disorder in which a person, usually a man, can only be turned on by an object associated with the opposite sex, generally either an intimate article of clothing”

“According to the FBI, there are two categories of serial killer keepsakes: the “souvenir” and the “trophy.” The first presumably serves the same function that a statuette of the Eiffel Tower does for a tourist who has just vacationed in Paris”

“By all accounts, Kehoe displayed a marked mechanical bent in his earliest years. Like countless boys his age, he seemed particularly fascinated with electricity. One neighbor would recall the young Kehoe as an inveterate tinkerer who “devoted his talents to constructing electrical devices which he installed on his father’s farm.””

“On May 14, 1912”