Paperback: A silent, simmering killer terrorized New England in 1911. A heat wave unlike any that had come before killed people in the streets, caused others to drown in the waters where they sought relief and drove still others to suicide. As more than 2 000 people died during the natural disaster, another silent killer began her own murderous spree.
Amy Archer-Gilligan operated the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids in Windsor, Connecticut. What was thought to be a respectable business run by a pioneering woman was exposed as little more than a murder factory. Amy would be accused of murdering both her husbands and dozens (as many as sixty) of her elderly patients with cocktails of lemonade and arsenic - all for money. Because of her friendships with local bigwigs, including the coroner, nobody noticed the rather high death rate among her patients until local newspaper stringer and jack-of-all-trades Carlan Hollister Goslee started poking around. Discovering the large quantities of arsenic Sister Amy had been purchasing, ostensibly to control rodents, he pressed his findings on authorities who eventually responded by exhuming bodies.
At first it was just a nagging tickle in his throat; later a "pit" in his sour stomach that wouldn't go away. Then something completely profound and material happened, bringing into focus his own mortality. Confined to bed, as his mind raced with thoughts of death, he began to feel he knew how his life would end and even had an idea when. It was that strange look the matron of the house gave him. She brought him up a glass of lemonade and, without a word, exited the room and walked down the stairs; and he considered that silence, ambiguous as it was, to be the impetus for his demise.
Her sensational trial attracted great interest. She would be convicted and sentenced to hang and her story would shock turn-of-the-century America and provide the inspiration for the Broadway sensation and classic film Arsenic and Old Lace.
Readers will enter a kind of Twilight Zone where a Bible-thumping caretaker and entrepreneur of the nursing home industry became one of history’s most evil female serial killers. With first-hand accounts from Amy’s "inmates", riveting trial transcripts and accounts from the investigative journalists who covered the case, acclaimed crime writer and New York Times bestselling author M. William Phelps has written the first book to tell the true story of greed and murder even more shocking than its fictional counterpart. Phelps puts readers face-to-face with a woman who was both a Black Widow and an Angel of Death and paints a vivid, spine-chilling portrait of turn-of-the-century New England.
The Devil's Rooming House (2010) - about the true story of America's deadliest female serial killer - is historical true crime at its best.
About the author: Crime, murder and serial killer expert, creator/producer/writer and former host of the Investigation Discovery series Dark Minds, acclaimed, award-winning investigative journalist M William Phelps is the New York Times best-selling author of thirty books and winner of the 2013 Excellence in (Investigative) Journalism Award and the 2008 New England Book Festival Award.
A highly sought-after pundit, Phelps has made over 100 media-related television appearances: Early Show, The Today Show, The View, Fox & Friends, truTV, Discovery Channel, Fox News Channel, Good Morning America, TLC, BIO, History, Oxygen, OWN, on top of over 100 additional media appearances: USA Radio Network, Catholic Radio, Mancow, Wall Street Journal Radio, Zac Daniel, Ave Maria Radio, Catholic Channel, EWTN Radio, ABC News Radio, and many more.
Phelps is one of the regular and recurring experts frequently appearing on two long-running series, Deadly Women and Snapped. Radio America calls Phelps “the nation’s leading authority on the mind of the female murderer,” and TV Rage says, “M. William Phelps dares to tread where few others will: into the mind of a killer.” A respected journalist, beyond his book writing Phelps has written for numerous publications - including the Providence Journal, Connecticut Magazine and Hartford Courant - and consulted on the first season of the hit Showtime cable television series Dexter.
Phelps grew up in East Hartford, CT, moved to Vernon, CT, at age 12, where he lived for 25 years. He now lives in a reclusive Connecticut farming community north of Hartford.
Beyond crime, Phelps has also written several history books, including the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy, The Devil's Rooming House, The Devil's Right Hand, Murder, New England, and more.
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