A Gilded-Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind
August 1, 2022
In this meandering account, Dawson (American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI) expands on a true-crime podcast to examine the life of psychopath Edward Rulloff. Born in Canada in 1819 and raised in upstate New York, Rulloff killed at least seven people, including four family members, before he was arrested and sentenced to hang in 1871 for only the last murder, that of a clerk in a warehouse he and two others were robbing. Rulloff was in love with learning, particularly languages, but given his impoverished upbringing he was mostly self-taught. Over the decades, his one passion was writing a book on the beginnings of language, which he completed while waiting for the gallows and was later ridiculed by scholars and the media. Rulloff’s real claim to fame is that he was the first high-profile killer to inspire neuroscientists to dig into the criminal mind. While in prison, he was visited by alienists, phrenologists, psychologists, and journalists, all trying to reconcile his intellect with his amoral actions. After his execution, his abnormally large brain was placed in a collection at Cornell University, where it’s still studied. This is a fascinating subject, but Dawson’s drawn-out style is more suited to podcasting. True-crime buffs interested in early mind hunters, though, should have a look. Agent: Jessica Papin, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.
August 15, 2022
A crime historian's account of a Jekyll-and-Hyde savant who stunned 19th-century America with a series of murders. By all outward appearances, Edward Rulloff (1819-1871) was highly intelligent and cultured. When he died, his enormous brain--which scientists preserved for study--earned notoriety as belonging to a killer whose gruesome exploits put him in the same league as Jack the Ripper. In her latest page-turning book of historical true crime, Dawson, the author of American Sherlock and Death Is in the Air, examines the life of this "once-lauded scholar, a nineteenth-century polymath who charmed his way to the upper echelons of intellectual society," all while living the secret, violent life of a serial murderer. After an introductory section, the author begins in 1871, a few weeks before Rulloff's death, which found him in jail awaiting final word on his proposed execution. Writers, scholars, and alienists (psychiatrists) fascinated with the murderer's story came to visit him, each for different reasons. "After his past was unmasked," writes the author, "Rulloff was tantalizing fodder for journalists--a murderer cloaked as an intellectual savant anonymously roaming the streets of 1800s Manhattan." Journalist Ham Freeman empathized with Rulloff's hardscrabble past and approached the killer with hopes of gaining "a career-making opportunity" for himself. Greek and Latin scholar George Sawyer sought to disprove Rulloff's work as a philologist and reveal the killer as nothing more than a clever phony. Many experts believe Rulloff was a high-level psychopath like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. As Dawson chillingly demonstrates, he was remarkably skilled at manipulating people into getting what he wanted; he was able to convince many scholars, for example, that he was completely innocent of his crimes. As the author memorably portrays an unrepentant killer, she engagingly grapples with the still-unresolved question of whether psychopathic evil emerges from brain anomalies or nurture and the environment--or some combination thereof. Another darkly compelling work from an engrossing storyteller.
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September 1, 2022
Edward Rulloff's claim to fame is an unusual one; he had one of the largest brains on record. Rulloff was a brilliant teacher and academic, a smooth-talking con man, an armed robber, and above all else, a serial killer in Gilded-Age New York City who captivated everyone around him. Dawson (journalism, Univ. of Texas, Austin; American Sherlock) seeks to answer how such an intelligent man could commit such heinous crimes. She takes readers from Rulloff's childhood through his death, filling up the middle with every act Rulloff was known to have committed. Well-researched and executed and engaging, this book gives readers details of his past through the people that knew him best, including his in-laws and friends, and also through the reporters and scientists who were doing what they could to learn about the psychopathic mind and evil. Lovers of true crime and its history will likely find this read engrossing and shocking. VERDICT With every twist it takes, this true-crime tale remains riveting to the very end.--Leah Fitzgerald
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 1, 2022
Historian and podcaster Dawson (American Sherlock, 2020) presents a thoroughly researched true crime story that not only presents the case of serial killer Edward Rulloff, but also documents the early stages of criminal psychology. Throughout his life, Rulloff was suspected of killing at least five individuals. To his wife and her family, he was a jealous and controlling man, but to the rest of the world, he was a brilliant and charismatic scholar. Ruloff's scholarship spurred debate among nineteenth-century public intellectuals, some of whom believed that he was too intelligent to be put to death for his crimes. In the end, Dr. Daniel Burr took possession of Rulloff's body, hoping that studying his brain would provide scientific insight into the mind of a violent killer. Dawson seamlessly weaves in examples from the lives of more famous killers, like Ted Bundy, to draw parallels about what makes a serial killer tick. Meticulously researched and incredibly fascinating, true-crime fans will enjoy this look into a lesser-known killer and the men who studied him.
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