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The midnight assassin : panic, scandal, and the hunt for America's first serial killer / Skip Hollandsworth.

by Hollandsworth, Skip, author.

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New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2016.

Serial murders -- Texas -- Austin -- History -- 19th century.

Serial murderers -- Texas -- Austin -- History -- 19th century.

9780805097672 (hardback) :

0805097678 (hardback) :

xii, 321 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 25 cm

"A killer who gives to history a new story of crime" -- December 1884-April 1885. "Doctor Steiner reports a woman lying near Ravy's" -- April 1885-August 1885. "Who was it? Who did this to you?" -- September 1885-Christmas Day 1885. "A woman has been chopped to pieces! It's Mrs. Hancock! On Water Street!" -- December 26, 1885-January 1886. "The whole city is arming. If this thing is not stopped soon, several corpses will be swinging from the tree limbs" -- February 1886-May 1888. "A prominent State officer and an active candidate for the Governorship of Texas ... knows something about Eula Phillips' murder" -- September 1888-August 1996. "I would suggest that the same hand that committed the Whitechapel murders committed to Texas murders" -- "If no one could catch the killer back when he was alive, what makes you think you can catch him now?"

"In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated Western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders. Along the way, the murders would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life"--

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