Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-270).

"A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age "Bluebeard" who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America. While other infamous homicides from the same eras--the Lizzie Borden slayings, for example, or the "thrill killing" committed by Leopold and Loeb--have entered into our cultural mythology, these four, equally sensational crimes have largely faded from public memory. A quartet of gripping historical true-crime narratives, Butcher's Work restores these once-notorious cases to vivid, dramatic life"--,Provided by publisher.