Wednesday, February 17, 2016

BOOK REVIEW # 2016-029 - WILLIAM HEIRENS: THE TRUE STORY OF THE LIPSTICK KILLER

I love reading Jack Rosewood’s series of book of true crime stories which is why I’m always entering the giveaways he has on LibraryThing which is how I came to receive a mobi.file copy of this book and the following is my honest opinion.

William Heiren’s is unlike any criminal or mass murder Mr. Jackson has written about before.  Even though he had been born during the Great Depression, neither he; nor his younger or older brothers ever suffered from want. They always had food to eat, clothes to wear, and had been brought up in a religious manner; knowing what right from wrong, and sex being a dirty word.

Heiren’s major problem growing up is of being a loner who had been unable to connect to anyone even his own parents. All this resulted in a repressed sexual behavior which involved women’s underwear which he routinely would steal from basement laundry rooms, etc. He knew what he was doing was totally wrong but he also knew he just couldn’t stop himself.  This is why he cried out for help after having taken the life of his second victim by writing a message on a wall using her lipstick. Further, the victim herself didn’t match the usual profile of other victims, no drug/alcohol use, no sexual involvement with men, in short, she was an All American Girl.

Using methods which by today’s standards would be consider illegal, the Chicago detectives brought Heiren’s reign of terror to a relatively quick conclusion. While the number of victims who died in low in comparison to other serial murderers is low, he only killed three; the total number of burglaries he committed made for a one-man crime wave in Chicago.

Mr. Rosewood also, as usual, gives his readers a thorough psychological picture of Heiren, which when taken with the rest of the book, is the reason I’ve given this book 5 STARS.             




No comments:

Post a Comment