"...Local police discovered the bodies of eight women stashed in the attic and basement of the small colonial home that Kendall Francois, a painfully polite twenty-seven-year-old community college student, shared with his parents and sister...[the author] had always been secretly fascinated by the darkness, and soon became obsessed with the story and with Francois. She was consumed with the desire to understand just how a man could abduct and strangle...

"For 141 years, Hudson River State Hospital was home to tens of thousands of individuals suffering from mental illness. The facility grew from a 208-acre parcel in 1871 with seven patients to 752 acres with five dozen separate buildings containing nearly 6,000 patients in 1954. The main building was constructed on a Kirkbride plan, a treating philosophy centered around an ornate building of equal proportions staffed by employees who integrated dignity...