Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster

by Harold Schechter

Book Overview

FROM SOCIAL OUTCAST TO NECROPHILE AND MURDERER -- HIS APPALLING CRIMES STUNNED AN ERA. San Francisco, the 1920s. In an age when nightmares were relegated to the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and distant... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743483359
• ISBN13: 9780743483353
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Pocket Star Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

One of true crime's best

This is one of Schechter's best, and IMHO, one of the best true crime novels I have read. It is about a murderer/rapist nicknamed the Gorilla Man, who seemed to be "cursed" from birth. He was abnormal from the beginning and lived a bizarre lifestyle his whole life. Both of his parents had and died of syphillis--it makes you wonder if this disease somehow affected this child's brain and warped him. Even his eating habits were more than strange. He later takes to killing and raping landladies while posing as a potential or actual tenant. He manages to get married--to a woman more than 30 years older than him and proceeds to make her miserable--and scared. This was a riveting read. I could hardly put it down.

Another Good One from Schechter

A very well documented account of the "Dark Strangler's" life. This book brings together everything that makes a typical great Schechter book: a very well documented research, an excellent work of putting things into perspective (history, popular culture, etc), a gripping writing style, etc. It's true that this killer may not be the most astounding killer in history (but still... he strangled women to death and then raped their dead bodies, and afterwards he concealed them under beds, in closets, behind furnaces, etc) but this isn't a good parametre to judge by, at any rate. Sure, his modus operandi is consistently the same, but I don't think this changes anything really. Moreover, that is the killer's deeds, not the author, so it would be slightly ridiculous (perhaps even immoral) to blame Schechter for the killer's "unoriginal" acts; also, it's a bit strange a complaint to make: "I wish that killer did more gruesome things for my personal pleasure as a reader." But anyway... Harold Schechter's work is impressive because of his documentation and the manner with which he leads the whole thing. As usual, I appreciate it very much when the author quotes newspapers and gives the reader some insight in those times. It's truly a work of History that Schechter offers us here. And that's something I really like about this author: you never fall into the merely morbid curiosity and always benefit from the historical perspective on violence in popular culture, as well as other matters worthy of one's interest. Excellent book.

Bestial Bliss

Earle Leonard Nelson had a really sucky press officer. How else to explain the sheer anonymity of this compelling thug? Known as the "Gorilla Killer" for his cruel deeds which obviously were accomplished with great strength and savagery, Nelson traveled the West Coast starting in 1926, beginning in San Francisco and working his way north, raping and murdering landladies along the way. His modus operandi was to pretend to be a prospective tenant in order to gain access to the house, and used his incredibly strong hands to strangle the poor woman to death before raping her corpse. In all, Nelson murdered more than 20 people, and his life story - the chronicle of an eccentric simpleton who grew into a monstrous married oaf - is as compelling as his crimes. Wonderful reading!

More than muder and rape... in that order

Schechter's book is a great read. It is a well written account of an American serial killer from a time before the term serial killer had been invented. The pleasant surprize of "Beastial" is the excellent treatment he gives the Social environment of America during the 1920s. The result is a greater understanding of the mind set of a country that was terrified by the sick twisted, corpse raping, body concealing "Gorilla" of a man known as Earle Leonard Nelson. I absolutely could not put this one down!