Killer: A Journal of a Murderer
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970.
First edition, first printing. Signed by co-author James O. Long on the title page. [7], 12-388 pp. Bound in publisher's brown cloth lettered in gilt on spine, printed endpapers. Very Good with light fading to extremities and rubbing to spine, faint staining to upper edge of textblock, slight lean; binding exposed at p. 101. In a Very Good+ unclipped dust jacket with light wear, flaps creased, and faint foxing to verso.
When the serial killer Carl Panzram (1891-1930) was on death row, a young guard befriended him and convinced him to write his autobiography. He was unable to get Panzram's graphic and unrepentant account published, but 40 years later he allowed the journalists Thomas E. Gaddis and James O. Long to draw on the manuscript for this biography, a minor classic of the serial killer subgenre of true crime. Long and Gaddis later collaborated with director Tim Metcalfe on a film adaptation starring James Woods, released in 1996. Panzram is suspected of having killed over a hundred boys and men amongst his other crimes in the US and abroad, but formally confessed to only 21 of the murders.
Price: $500