Paperback: "In my lifetime, I have murdered 21 human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1000 male human beings. For all of these things, I am not the least bit sorry. I have no conscience so that does not worry me. I don't believe in man. God nor Devil. I hate the whole damn human race including myself."
Carl Panzram, who called himself the "world's worst murderer," wrote these words in a full autobiography and confession he prepared for the one friend in his life - a young prison guard named Henry Lesser.
Panzram: A Journal of Murder (1970) combines these brutally forthright memoirs with the perspective of authors Thomas E Gaddis and James O Long in a compelling chronicle of the forces that engender hate.
The authors provided a historical and sociological framework for Panzram's own words, using this uniquely detailed self-analysis by a mass murderer to depict what happens when an intelligent and unbreakable personality that has been interminably and unmercifully abused strikes back in vengeance.
Panzram arrives as a gripping warning from America's recent past to our current repressive era of prison-industrial complex, death penalty abuse and unprecedentedly high rates of incarceration from a man who walked the halls of Death Row with a blindingly clear vision.
About the authors: The late Thomas E Gaddis wrote Birdman of Alcatraz and was technical director of the classic movie starring Burt Lancaster and Karl Malden. A former California probation officer, Gaddis later became a professor at Red College in Portland, Oregon, and a practicing psychologist. While working on the Panzram book, he founded Project Newgate to establish accredited college programs inside some of the country's toughest prisons. It was a revolutionary idea for its time, helping fuel the great expansion of American civil rights under the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty in the 1960s.
James O Long is a reporter for The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, where, in the past, he covered the Oregon prison system and wrote extensively about prisoners and the death penalty. His journalism honours include the coved Investigative Reporters and Editors award. He received a degree in philosophy from the University of Portland, and lives in Portland with his wife, Ruby.
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