When the masters of their trade try their hands on heinous crimes the evillness surpass the ordinary sins and we witness horrible misdeeds taking place on helpless victims.
Jonathan Goodman has portrayed some such incidences in this book where all the criminals have background of medical education.
The content is as:
1. The Jigsaw Murder Case by Jonathan Goodman
Here we find Dr. Buck Ruxton who killed his wife and her nursemaid (assumed to be the witness to the murder) and cut up both their bodies to pieces and bundled them away from home.
It was probably the first time that an anatomist was brought in the murder case whose ingenious method of superimposing the X-ray images of the deadbody parts on a lifelike image of an actual photograph of the supposed victim identified the corpses.
2. The Wives of Dr. Bowers by Edward H. Smith
Dr. J. Milton Bowers poisoned his wives for the sake of money though some curious happenings forced the law to release him after more than three years of legal battle.
3. Poison of One Kind or Another by Harold Eaton
Dr. George Henry Lamson administered aconitine to get rid of his immediate crippled in-law to pave his way to his wife’s fortune but could not escape justice and was dragged to the gallows after being caught.
4. The Murder of Marilyn by Joan Lock
Dr. Sam Sheppard was held responsible for the murder of his wife who was battered to death by thirty-five blows to the head. Though it could not be proved but the various indirect evidences that had been put forward shows his participation in the crime. He got a release after serving ten years and died a natural death.
The mystery still remains unsolved as to who was the actual perpetrator of the crime.
5. The Fatal Gambles of William Palmer by The Reverend Evelyn Burnaby
William Palmer was brought to trial for the murder of John Parsons Cook, a racehorse owner. Though the court verdict in his case was murder by administration of strychnine but the murderer, just before his execution, on his reply to the Governor, denied that he used strychnine and never revealed the actual truth. As a background it may be noted that in his early life Palmer had forged his mother’s signature to get hold of her money in the bank.
6. The Smethurst Case by Richard D. Altick
Dr. Thomas Smethurst, a retired medical man and a beneficiar to his late wife’s newly made will, was charged with the willful murder of his wife by poisoning. Though his trial was full of obstacles including the fall from grace of a renowned medical expert, but ultimately he was proven guilty of the grave crime.
7. Dentist in the Chair by Richard Whittington-Egan
The story of a psychopath, Arthur William Waite, a dentist by profession and a charmer by every other inches who poisoned his parents-in-law and cleverly managed to convince his wife of her mother’s apparent last wishes to be cremated instead of being buried. But he was not so successful after he murdered her father and was arrested and was directed to the electric chair at the age of 29.
8. Murder for Lust of Killing by F. Tennyson Jesse
The author here describes a typical class of murderers, those who loves to kill like Neil Cream who chose his victims among prostitutes and was caught due to his clumsy blabbering and his nature of sending letters to people at random accusing them of the murders he committed. In these letters he usually chose some random names and never followed them up. He was found guilty and was executed though he never confessed.
9. Doctor Satan by Rayne Heppenstall
Dr. Marcel Petiot was charged for the murder of 27 persons most of which he concurred by saying that he and his acquaintances, whose name he never mentioned, executed them in the name of the Resistance. He was found guilty and also he never could prove his alleged involvement to the Resistance.
10. The Polite Dr. Pritchard by H.M. Walbrook
Once again the case of poisoning, this time it was Dr. Edward William Pritchard who poisoned his mother-in-law and his wife to get hold of the former’s possessions. But he too was caught and hanged to death in the last public hanging at Glasgow. The author adds that even though Palmer was a murderer but his public image that he showed in court and during his execution was that of a philanthropist.
11. Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde by Thomas M. Mcdade
Dr. Bennet Clark Hyde got the benefit of doubt after series of mistrials following the charge against him of killing two of the family members on his wife’s side and planning to take over three million dollar estate by inoculating the whole family with germs of the typhoid.
But he was set free and was stricken with cerebral haemorrhage and died in 1934.
12. Suddenly at a Nursing Home… by Fenton Bresler
Nurse Dorothea Waddingham and her lover Ronald Sullivan killed an aged lady and her spinster daughter who were kept under their care in their apparent ‘nursing home for the aged’ after the victims were manipulated to leave their property to them in their will. Waddingham got the death sentence but Sullivan was acquitted. He shared the property with the victims’ next-of-kin.
13. The Janitor’s Story by Albert Borowitz
Dr. John White Webster was charged with the willful murder of Dr. George Parkman over the issue
of a loan that the latter had advanced to the former and was found guilty mainly on the evidences brought to light by the discovery of the body by the college janitor Ephraim Littlefield. Controversies still rage at large of the correctness of the verdict and the janitor's story but now they seem pointless as the convict got a death sentence though he never confessed of the crime.
