Serial Killer No. 1
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 1/27/2003
The man who was almost certainly the first serial killer in American history is the subject of a book just won at auction for a "significant" six figures by executive editor Mark Bryant at HarperCollins. It's tentatively titled The Midnight Assassin, the name by which the murderer who slew seven women in Austin, Tex., in the course of 1885 was known. It's by Skip Hollandsworth, a writer at Texas Monthly magazine, who has been researching the story for a long time. The Austin killer's crimes were so notorious in his day that when Jack the Ripper terrorized London three years later, it was believed he might have moved there. Hollandsworth even comes up with a possible culprit, though the killer was never caught: a member of Austin society, protected by the local establishment (shades of the Ripper once again!). Bryant bought the book from Dallas agent David Hale Smith for North American rights over offers from eight other publishers.
