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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
'A master-class in bringing history to life, in all its creepy, twisted glory' - Karen Kilgariff, co-host of My Favorite Murder podcast 'Every true crime fan will be riveted by Kate's master story-telling of this unforgettable tale' - Paul Holes, author of Unmasked: Crime Scenes, Cold Cases and My Hunt for the Golden State Killer The thrilling story of Edward Rulloff - a serial murderer who was called 'too intelligent to be killed' - and the array of 19th-century investigators who were convinced his brain held the key to finally understanding the criminal mind. Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer - some have called him a 'Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter' - whose crimes spanned decades, but by 1871 he was captured, chained in a cell - a psychopath holding court while curious 19th-century 'mindhunters' got to work. From alienists to neurologists to phrenologists, each one thought he held the key to understanding the essential question: is evil born or made? Acclaimed crime historian and podcaster Kate Winkler Dawson draws on hundreds of source materials and never-before-shared historical documents to present one of the first glimpses into the mind of a serial killer - a century before the term was coined - through the scientists whose work would come to influence criminal justice for decades to come.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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To JWD, who deserves the dedication in every book I writevi
Contents
Author’s Note
As I began researching All That Is Wicked, I realized that this story would be a wonderful tale to use for the debut season of my new historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked (on the Exactly Right network). You might have heard Edward Rulloff’s story during the first season, but this story is very different. All That Is Wicked is a deep dive into Rulloff’s motivations, his controversial brain, and how it changed history. Through Rulloff’s story, we’ll meet the first generation of what would one day come to be known as mindhunters—men who hoped to pick apart Rulloff’s psyche to discover why he killed … and how to prevent others from murdering in the future.xii
PROLOGUE
A Criminal Mind
All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil.
—Robert Louis Stevenson,Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886
It’s strenuous work to saw through a skull.
The job demands an anatomist with dexterity, diligence, physical strength, and a sharpened blade. But the rewards of such physical exertion are great: the brain uncovered beneath the thick layer of bone might prove invaluable to science. This one certainly did.
Tucked deep inside a steel-clad, brown building at one of the most respected universities in the United States sits the brain of a brilliant killer: Edward Rulloff. Curious visitors to Cornell University’s psychology department in Ithaca, New York, marvel at the brain’s massive frontal lobe. It’s been on display for more than one hundred years—so long that small pieces have begun chunking off, dissolving slowly in the murky formaldehyde. Though few students ever see the brain itself, its reputation is hinted at across the campus in several small, almost invisible ways. In a whisper 2from an upperclassman about the university’s macabre history. Or in the name of the popular Ithaca eatery, Rulloff’s Restaurant.
There are seven other brains inside that glass display, each one claimed by an owner who earned a place in history. One was a noted naturalist, another was a groundbreaking scientist, and one was an influential political activist … but Rulloff’s brain is overwhelmingly the biggest of them all; you can see that right away. It is in fact one of the largest brains studied in the world—easily among the top 1 percent in size, a ghastly and strange statistic that leads to other, darker questions. (How do scientists know this? How many other brains are out there, waiting to be weighed and examined?) While Rulloff ended his life in ignominy, this brain in a dusty glass jar is in fact an artifact of a once-lauded scholar, a nineteenth-century polymath who charmed his way to the upper echelons of intellectual society. The amiable academic deceived almost everyone he met (at least for a little while), pairing a clever remark with a wink and a grin. But the brilliant Rulloff also had a dark side. He confessed to murdering his wife, though he likely killed his infant daughter, too. His sister-in-law and his infant niece were poisoned while under his care as a doctor in upstate New York … and then he killed again when he settled in Gilded-Age New York City.
After his past was unmasked, Rulloff was tantalizing fodder for journalists—a murderer cloaked as an intellectual savant anonymously roaming the streets of 1800s Manhattan. He might have strolled past the lavish mansions on Fifth Avenue or skirted the perilous alleys of Five Points. Edward Rulloff’s New York was a spellbinding world, one teeming with corrupt politicians, self-righteous academics, unscrupulous journalists, horrible poverty, and unimaginable wealth. In the den of iniquity that was much of 3Manhattan in the late nineteenth century, Edward Rulloff presented himself as New York City’s own Dr. Jekyll—fifteen years before the character slunk across the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novella. But Rulloff’s adaptation of Mr. Hyde was more ghastly and more merciless than Stevenson could have imagined. Before America became transfixed by London’s Jack the Ripper in 1888 or by H. H. Holmes in 1894, it was riveted by Edward Howard Rulloff and his gruesome murders.
Almost thirty years after his initial crimes, Rulloff was finally captured and convicted of murder. And that was where the next phase of his story—the one that is still debated and discussed even today—began. As Rulloff sat shackled to the floor of a dismal jail cell, awaiting execution, he watched more than a dozen men in suits and hats come in turn to meet him. They each sat nervously, clutching their papers and pencils. An author. A newspaperman. A phrenologist. An alienist. A physician. And others. To them, he was a fascinating, unique specimen to study. They were each convinced that Rulloff’s mind—in all its twisty, enigmatic glory—was the key to unlocking the mysteries of psychology and the human brain.
One by one these experts stared as the charming academic unspooled his life story. If he were truly evil, they each thought, shouldn’t it be evident somewhere on his face, in his speech, in his mind? People in the 1800s prayed for that sort of clue, but there were no such giveaways with Rulloff. He appeared intelligent. Cultured. Sane. So why did he do the crimes he was accused of committing? New modes of understanding the criminal mind would need to be developed to grapple with his contradictions, each man agreed.
Maybe Rulloff’s brain could point the way forward. 4
Rulloff’s case became one of the first “trials of the century” in 1800s America—he was the predecessor of the celebrity criminal, a bewhiskered forefather to Ted Bundy or Dennis Rader’s infamous BTK, both serial killers when such a concept was just being developed. The international press anointed Edward Rulloff with celebrity status—the killer became a presence so ubiquitous in newspapers around the world for his time that their copy referred to him by last name only. Rulloff’s notoriety earned him a place in history as one of the most intelligent killers in the annals of American crime, and his reputation for brilliance twice removed the noose from around his neck.
Journalists, the literati, and influence peddlers of various stripes in big cities across the land debated Rulloff’s case on the front pages of newspapers: Is a brilliant man’s life worth saving, even if he’s a wretched killer?
No, most of the country in the nineteenth century replied.
But what if his ideas could change the world for the better? Might he be allowed to live?
… Perhaps, replied some of the most powerful men in America.
But who would be trusted to make those decisions? And could Rulloff’s self-reflection, coupled with the analysis of experts like the ones assembled in his cell, help prevent more criminals from terrorizing the country? What might these experts learn from him?
A century later, the FBI would seek answers to those questions from other criminals. In the 1970s, agents with the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI spent hundreds of hours interviewing some of America’s most despised criminals to build profiles of the 5murderer and his victims. The list included notorious serial killers like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, David Berkowitz, and Edmund Kemper. The insights that came from studying the minds of these killers would provide invaluable intelligence for future investigations. Researchers learned that serial killers would often return to the scene of the murders, and that they might leave behind misleading clues to disrupt the investigation. They also discovered that many killers had troubled home lives but that few felt, or were even capable of, remorse. In total, thirty-six violent offenders offered FBI agents the clues to subtle patterns that investigators had missed in the past, opportunities to prevent more murders. Those data, collected decades ago, are still being leveraged as the FBI provides support and training to America’s law enforcement community to help identify killers and prevent future violence.
But the FBI agents weren’t the only experts who wanted to collect data from those criminals. Over the past fifty years, journalists, psychologists, and psychiatrists have also entered the jail cells of these same killers to glean information that might help the public protect itself from some of America’s cruelest murderers. These “mindhunters” came from various disciplines, each with their own strengths in understanding criminal behavior.
The investigators with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (now known as the Behavioral Analysis Unit) had backgrounds rooted in psychology, science, and police investigation. They delved into the minds of criminals and mined them for useful information. These investigators and their subjects, the serial killers, were part of a unique, nascent experiment never conducted before—we thought.
In fact, I’ve found that a previously forgotten group of experts in the 1800s preceded the work of the twentieth-century FBI 6agents by almost a century. The Gilded-Age investigators you’ll read about in this book—Hamilton Freeman, Dr. John Gray, and Dr. George Sawyer, among others—were nineteenth-century mindhunters, plumbing the depths of the criminal brain for insights about the nature of evil and what leads a man to kill. These investigators were given a daunting task: evaluate what went wrong with Edward Rulloff and whether to end his life.
In this book, we’ll find out what they uncovered.
The men brought to investigate Edward Rulloff were some of the most respected in their fields, and their evaluations of the most curious criminal mind in American history might sway public opinion and spark an outcry that could influence Rulloff’s fate. They could send him to an insane asylum, doom him to the gallows … or perhaps set him free. They could even determine his academic reputation by legitimizing his self-led, “gonzo” scholarship and absolve him from being labeled a fraud. For the first time in his academic career, Rulloff enjoyed an audience with the kinds of esteemed scholars he dreamed of—men who could secure his legacy and profess his intelligence to the world. It was ironic, of course, that this court of intellectual examination was held as he sat in a dank jail in upstate New York.
The journalists, alienists, psychologists, scientists, and academics held immense power over Edward Rulloff’s life as they squabbled over his mind. Each agreed that he was, perhaps, the most intelligent killer in American history. They were fascinated … but cautious. The wisest of them realized that with the right words, the right interactions, Rulloff might fool them, too, as he had fooled others so many times before.
In 1871, the mindhunters pondered many questions that were 7required to make the right decision about Edward Rulloff. Was he born wicked, an offspring of the devil? asked the theologians. Was he insane or a gifted actor? wondered the alienists. Were his ideas worth killing over? pondered the academics. Or perhaps he was simply misunderstood, a genius triggered by a raft of hardships, suggested the journalists.
Edward Rulloff might have been something else entirely—a callous, coldhearted killer with a diagnosis that wouldn’t have a formal designation for decades. These experts lacked our current tools to assign Rulloff an accurate assessment; they were fumbling as they tried to understand the malevolent enigma sitting cross-legged atop a shabby pallet on the jail cell’s stone floor. The men prayed that their insights, gleaned from these in-depth interviews, might help identify more monsters like Edward Rulloff, even prevent them from killing.
As I researched Rulloff’s family history and pored over his letters, I began to suspect that his actions were not governed by a mental illness and certainly not by the devil; in fact, he appeared to show the hallmarks of antisocial personality disorder. Edward Rulloff was very likely a nineteenth-century psychopath.
I asked several modern experts to offer an opinion on Rulloff based on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, a diagnostic tool used to rate a person’s psychopathic or antisocial tendencies, and currently the only scientific way to diagnose a psychopathic individual based on his or her behavior. Hare’s checklist contains twenty descriptors: traits like grandiose estimation of self, pathological lying, cunning and manipulativeness, lack of remorse or guilt, and parasitic lifestyle. The subject is ranked on a scale of 0–2 for each item: 0 for neurotypicals (non-psychopaths). The higher the score, 8the higher the level of psychopathy (40 is the maximum total). Ideally a qualified, modern-day psychiatrist would have conducted a formal exam on Edward Rulloff; because that wasn’t possible, the assessment for this book was based on extensive biographical documentation about Rulloff’s life, including his many detailed interviews with contemporary experts, along with hundreds of his personal letters.
A very clear picture emerged about why this killer had led such a troubled life, as well as why he left behind a wake of agony for decades. Edward Rulloff would likely have scored in the mid-30s on the checklist, indicating a high level of psychopathy. As I uncovered details about his life and reviewed his reactions, I discovered that virtually every trait on Hare’s list emerged.
Edward Rulloff’s story resonates with us today because it is crucial to study the criminal mind, specifically the mind of a psychopathic individual. A disproportionate number of incarcerated men suffer from psychopathy—as much as 25 percent—while only 1 to 2 percent of the general male population do. Psychopathic individuals rarely respond to traditional methods of rehabilitation like medicine or therapy, yet they are responsible for a prevalence of violent crime. Researchers believe that intervening early in the life of child who displays traits of psychopathy can eventually save lives.
“These kids are more aggressive,” psychopathy expert Dr. Craig Neumann told me. “These kids are more likely to be delinquents as they grow up, more likely to offend as they grow up now. The key with psychopathology or with medical disorders is the earlier you identify some form of pathology … the more likely you can provide some sort of treatment and be of help.” 9
If psychopathy and its treatments go back to childhood, we also must return to the early days of Rulloff’s story—or at least as far back as the historical record allows.
I tripped over tree branches and cracked stones lying just beneath a layer of snow as I struggled to safely arrive at the centuries-old farmhouse. It was February 2017 when I first arrived in Dryden, New York—a village less than fifteen miles from Ithaca and Cornell University.
It was very disconcerting, and a bit exhilarating, to walk across the ground that a multiple murderer stood on more than 175 years ago. As I approached Kathy Chadwick’s home, I glanced up at the massive maple tree just feet from an old slate well. Edward Rulloff certainly peered up at this same tree so long ago, perhaps drinking from this same well. Trips like these are a visceral experience for an author, and I relish them. In some cases, nothing can supersede the value of being at a pivotal location you intend to write about. It was certainly a riveting, and sobering, experience for me.
Six Mile Creek was less than a hundred feet from the rear windows of the modest wooden house, but it was no more than a skinny trickle in the deep snow during my visit. Rulloff walked along that same creek as an ambitious young man married to the lovely daughter of the couple who once owned this house. I had hoped to trudge along the creek, too, once it thawed.
Ms. Chadwick greeted me as I was climbing the stairs of the front porch, slipping on ice along the way. This house is the origin 10of the story because some descendants of Edward Rulloff’s former family still live here more than two centuries later. In fact, Rulloff was Chadwick’s great-great-granduncle. She warmly greeted me (as did her large dog, Hannah) and led me up a short flight of creaky, old wooden stairs to a small room where Rulloff and his seventeen-year-old wife, Harriet, once slept. Later that week, another descendant, Craig Schutt, would help me navigate up a steep, snowy hill of the ancient cemetery nearby, where Rulloff’s victims are buried. I met Craig Schutt three times, and he often remarked how I always insisted on visiting upstate New York during the worst part of winter.
It felt important to come here to walk in Rulloff’s footsteps and meet his surviving relatives because at the heart of this book is a family, one almost destroyed by a monster. The Schutts endured so much pain long ago because of this narcissistic, cruel, and violent man. It’s a reminder that every twisty true-crime story leaves behind real victims, real pain.
When I began this journey years ago, I tried to properly evaluate Edward Rulloff, to dissect his actions, assess his scholarship, and then present a comprehensive profile of this brilliant murderer—and I think that I have done it. None of the details of his case were very pleasant, but I found Rulloff simply beguiling as I struggled to untangle the complexities of his psyche. I joined the nineteenth-century mindhunters of Rulloff’s time as I hoped to discover how one brain could guide the actions of both a gifted scholar and a wicked killer. Rulloff was undoubtedly incredibly intelligent, yes. But ultimately, he was self-defeating, constantly sabotaging his own academic and intellectual ambitions. He stole from people—their trust, their goods, and their lives—and rarely offered anything 11in return, other than suffering. Rulloff spread misery through one family, like a contagion, for decades.
But in many ways, the Schutts were unyielding. He’s gone. They persist.
I’ve lingered four different times over the long wooden desks in the glass room of Cornell University’s vast archives in the Carl A. Kroch Library; I’ve photographed hundreds of unpublished pages in Rulloff’s collection containing his personal correspondence and scholarship. I thumbed through the journals of his confidants and his legal advisers. I gently touched his death mask at the History Center in Tompkins County, and I even hoisted the glass jar holding his degrading brain.
I strolled through the town square in Binghamton, New York, that once hosted thousands of people, all gleefully praying to see the murderer hang, only to be turned away in dismay. I walked past the store that Rulloff had looted—and where he murdered an innocent man. I touched the trees of the backwoods where men hunted him. I stood in front of the old jail in Binghamton, where officers in the 1800s had unceremoniously shackled him to his desk as he scribbled his deeply researched theories on the origins of language. I located his apartment near Irving Place in New York City, a two-room flat along Third Avenue between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets.
The goal of these journeys was to offer more insight into the man at the epicenter of this story. Edward Rulloff captivated international readers for decades in the 1800s, and then his legacy simply vanished from history. Now I might be able to finally offer answers, some commentary about why Rulloff’s criminal mind has entranced readers, scholars, and me for so long. Perhaps I can also 12explain how current researchers are hoping to prevent more psychopathic individuals and multiple murderers, like Edward Rulloff, from hurting innocent people.
Rulloff was recorded in the annals of history for his remarkable brain … but not in the way he had hoped. To understand Edward Rulloff’s influence on neuroscience and how we now examine the criminal mind, it’s important to first meet him inside his jail cell in 1871, just weeks before his scheduled execution.
1
The Author
My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886
On Tuesday, January 10, 1871, the journalist shuddered from the briskness of the air. Edward Hamilton “Ham” Freeman peered down the corridor of the jail, a white two-story building with less than a dozen cells, in Binghamton, New York (a town about two hundred miles northwest of Manhattan). The sheriff escorted him through the darkness with only the feeble light of a kerosene lamp to guide their way. The stone walls smelled stale, like yeast in a wooden bucket that had molded after weeks of neglect, and the building was damp and cold even by the frigid norms of deep winter in upstate New York. The heels of Ham’s smart leather shoes clicked along the floor. In just a few months he would turn twenty-nine years old.
The guard directed Ham to a cell and slipped a key into the lock on an iron door. It swung open and there sat the journalist’s 14subject, the infamous killer. Ham had been a small-town newspaper reporter for much of his career, and he was always on the hunt for a prominent story, one that might showcase his writing chops. This meeting would provide him with a unique opportunity.
Condensation dripped down the jail cell’s walls as the cold outside air blew through the cracks. When Ham offered the prisoner a handshake, his nervous voice echoed down the miserable halls. The criminal offered his own greeting: Edward Howard Rulloff. Despite the cheerless surroundings, Edward’s voice boomed with confidence.
Ham stood just feet from the murderer in the tiny cell. The newspaperman felt some measure of fear now that he was finally alone with Edward, face-to-face, locked in a room with this infamous man. Ham squinted at the fifty-one-year-old criminal’s dark hazel eyes, which were bloodshot from reading all night by inadequate light. But Ham also couldn’t help feeling giddy at the opportunity ahead. Despite all that had been written about Edward—his mysterious past, his academic feats, even the murder of which he was now accused—the killer had never told his own story. Now the notorious Edward Rulloff had selected Ham to record his intimate, personal history. It was a career-making opportunity.
It was also terrifying.
Ham had become intensely interested in Edward Rulloff—an enigma of a man described by some as “a monster imbued by the spirit of the devil”—as he’d observed the first few days of Edward’s criminal trial in 1871. At first, of course, his curiosity was merely for the scintillating story at hand. And it was very scintillating. Ham jotted down every detail of the case, each fact about how Edward had murdered a man during a botched robbery. It was a dreadful crime, and just one of many of which Edward was guilty.15
Yet as the trial progressed, Ham began to feel some shred of empathy for the defendant. Maybe it was the way the beleaguered man continually leapt from his wooden chair after a particularly damning accusation, only to be reprimanded by his attorneys. There was something indignant, almost plaintive, about his presence. Edward seemed utterly sure of himself, even in these dire circumstances. Ham was fascinated.
“I watched intensely every expression and every movement of the prisoner,” Ham would later write for the biography. “I did not, could not, keep my eyes off from him.”
With each day that had passed during the trial, Ham had felt more and more sorrow for the maligned genius who stewed just feet away from him.
“I took a painful, and melancholy interest in the trial, which increased as it progressed,” said Ham. “I listened intently to every word he uttered when he rose oftentimes, despite the efforts of this counsel to keep him still, to speak on his own behalf.”
Ham would shift uncomfortably on the wooden bench in the courtroom as rounds of applause erupted from hundreds of trial watchers both inside and outside. Edward Rulloff’s trial was becoming a spectacle, and for days the throng challenged local sheriff’s deputies to keep order. Ham described the audience’s outbursts as “crude” to his friends. Throughout the trial, the author sat directly behind Edward, and the man on trial seemed to take a particular interest in him. However, Ham wasn’t the only observer who was intrigued by the accused murderer.
“A large portion of the audience was composed of ladies, hundreds of whom stood patiently for hours listening with seemingly unwearied interest to the details of evidence, with the outlines of which they had long been familiar,” wrote New York Times 16reporter Edward Crapsey. Ham, too, observed the women in modest country dresses who crowded the courtroom.*
“Crowds attended the trial,” wrote Ham, “a great portion of them being women, many of whom would early in the morning make their appearance before the closed doors of the court room, bringing their dinners that they might not, by their absence, lose their place.”
For generations, women have been the dominant consumers of true crime; in current times, most readers, listeners, or viewers of these crime stories are female. Experts say many women hope to learn from the mistakes of victims, to absorb themselves in a world they hope to never enter. In some cases, they change their behavior based on that knowledge—they’re more skeptical of male suitors and more cautious about venturing out alone. This was certainly the case with the audience of mostly proper ladies in Binghamton in 1871.
Edward Rulloff certainly wouldn’t be described as “plain” in looks, but he fell slightly short of “striking” or “devilishly handsome.” Yet there was an element of danger that drew these women to his trial every day. To them, Rulloff was irresistible—a riddle that might never be solved, a threat kept just out of reach. They flocked to the courtroom each day, sitting with legs politely crossed at the ankles as the gruesome details of the trial unfolded.†
17Hamilton Freeman certainly understood the allure of Edward Rulloff. The author was himself quite handsome, with short brown hair parted on the right; a long, pointed nose; and a brow and a mouth that seemed to always remain in a grimace. Ham was the archetype of a small-town newspaper owner and editor—a hardworking local man who also secretly craved national recognition. His weekly paper, the Democratic Leader, was considered the leading source of local information in Broome County, New York; it covered everything from politics to gossip to crop prices. Ham Freeman was considered a capable, if somewhat unremarkable (and occasionally politically biased), journalist.
“He was a good writer, strongly partisan, perhaps, at times, yet his leaders were always interesting and refreshing,” read a journal in 1900 about Binghamton’s history. “(Hamilton) was (and still is) well informed on all subjects pertaining to Binghamton history, for he came from one of our respected old families.”
Ham’s family was prominent in nearby Lisle, New York, a village just twenty miles from Binghamton. His father was a successful lumber merchant, and after his death, young Hamilton moved to Binghamton for school. With his bright, active mind (and respectable pedigree), Ham quickly earned a reputation as a critical thinker with intellectual capabilities and education far beyond most of the folks in that small village. Ham’s penchant for scholarship and family connections led him into the newspaper business where, at a relatively young age, Hamilton Freeman found himself with a front-row seat to the trial of the century—the case of the killer-savant that had captivated American readers and horrified fundamentalist Christians across upstate New York.
And now Edward Rulloff wanted to talk. To him.
Ham glanced around the cell as Edward settled himself. The 18room was surprisingly well appointed with dim oil lamps, stacks of books, and an old wooden desk with paper lying to the side. Atop that desk was a pen leaning inside its inkwell. Edward had a creaky chair pulled close to his desk.
The writer surveyed his interviewee. Edward was well-dressed for a man who had been relegated to this dank jail for five months. His dark brown hair was short; he’d once boasted a long, scraggly beard, but the sheriff now insisted that it stayed trimmed to his cheeks. He was fully clothed, though according to the guards, Edward often preferred to sprawl in the nude on the cell’s worn pallet. Edward’s overall countenance was that of a respected college professor, a scholar accustomed to being adored by overzealous students. Was this bookish, slightly eccentric, eminently respectable-looking man really a murderer?
Ham was like a lot of men of his class and background at that point in the nineteenth century. He subscribed to the belief that a killer would look like … a killer. And what was that, exactly? Of course, any keen person would spot one immediately—a man (almost always a man) with a disheveled appearance and wild-eyed, almost rabid features. The evil in his heart and mind couldn’t help but be evident on his person. But Ham noted that Edward Rulloff seemed calm, poised, and sophisticated. He spoke with grace, even eloquence. He showed flashes of intelligence and humor. Edward had a long track record of academic accomplishment (or, at least, academic pursuits) that showed him to possess a first-rate mind.
Simply put: Edward Rulloff didn’t look or sound like a killer to Ham Freeman. But the newspaperman needed more data. The journalist considered whether Edward could be innocent, as he had claimed. And if he wasn’t innocent, why was he guilty? Was 19Edward Rulloff insane or born evil? Or was he something else entirely?
Hamilton Freeman would be just the first inquisitor in a long list of men seemingly besotted with the killer’s mind, despite the malevolent character grafted to it.‡ In effect, he was the first mindhunter to try to plumb the depths of Edward’s psyche—but he wouldn’t be the last. Ham requested that Edward Rulloff detail his personal history—his family, his boyhood, and his development into a troubled young man. Did something in Edward’s background predestine him to a life of crime and violence?
This interview was Ham’s chance to find out.
It was also Edward’s chance to control the narrative. Sitting before Edward was a journalist pledging to chronicle his life story for thousands of readers. Ham had no interest in interviewing anyone else for the book—just Edward. Edward’s own story would be the definitive account … if the killer could convince Ham that he could be trusted to tell the truth. But Edward Rulloff could never be trusted.
During their first conversation, one of many that took place over six months, Edward revealed something to Ham. He could identify exactly when his life seemed to unravel—his ruin began with an encounter in early 1842 after he stepped off a packet boat and shook the hand of Henry Schutt.
20America in the 1840s was a country striving to progress. Out west, the Oregon Trail guided settlers along more than two thousand miles of harsh land stretching from Missouri through Idaho. Travelers were inspired by dreams of gold and rich farmlands, but they also hoped to escape economic struggles in the east and deadly diseases in the Midwest.
But even as the country stretched and expanded its borders westward (and even as big cities like New York City and Baltimore exploded in size), the landscape of America was still primarily rural. Farm life was the heart of American culture—in the countryside, families relied on their faith in God, their allegiance to their communities, and their devotion to one another to survive.
Indeed, hospitality (even hospitality extended to itinerant strangers) was a way of life in many of the villages and towns that dotted New England and the Northeast. It was normal and expected to offer a traveler who knocked on your door a night’s rest or a warm meal. Rural families would set a place at their table for drifters and offer them a warm seat by the hearth. They trusted these itinerant men (and occasionally women) as they warmed themselves by the hearth; much of the time, that trust was offered on the basis of nothing more substantial than a simple handshake. Sometimes the townspeople offered the visitors work in the wheat fields, in cigar shops in town, or on boats that traveled up and down the canals in upstate New York. Good, honest men might volunteer to carry the transients on horseback to another village that might offer better opportunities. All this fellowship might have seemed naïve to someone reared in a big city, but generosity was a trademark of the countryside.
In the quaint towns that peppered the Ithaca area’s landscape, the sunset highlighted their most appealing traits—the silhouette 21of cornfields lined by spiky pine trees; a coral sunset reflected from the surface of a small pond; hundreds of cornstalks gently swaying during a light breeze. The hamlets were charming, unpretentious; they held a type of innocence and optimism that simply couldn’t survive in metropolises like Manhattan or Philadelphia, residents agreed. Their produce and meats were unspoiled, and their drinking water was pure; crime was low and educational opportunities were on the rise, even among young women. These country towns seemed idyllic, as if the devil had never paid them a visit—not even once.
But the country was changing, especially in quiet upstate New York. The nearby Erie Canal had been completed just seventeen years earlier, in 1825, a marvel of engineering and a savior to the region’s (and the country’s) economy. The longest canal in the world at more than 350 miles, the waterway connected the pristine Great Lakes and mighty Hudson River, offering a direct route to the bustle and commerce of New York City. In effect, the Erie Canal unlocked trade between the fertile Midwest and the commercial ports of the Northeast. Each shallow canal boat could carry as many as thirty tons of produce into New York City from farms as far away as Ohio, Michigan, and even Canada, dramatically lowering the costs (and increasing the speed) of transporting products.
The boats crept along the canal in 1842, moving so slowly that a waddling duck on land scooted along at a quicker pace. A mule trudged down the towpath nearby, lugging a boat behind with a rope. The boatman could peer out, his thoughts lost in the cloudy water as his barge slogged along. The water seemed yawning, intimidating, even though the captain knew perfectly well it was only four feet deep. Still, in the night, the waterway was like a 22black abyss, an “interminable mud puddle,” wrote author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The canal delivered so many wonderful things to the people of New York: fresh produce and meats, essential building materials like lumber and gravel, and immense prosperity—for some. But not all the cargo it transported was wanted. People, too, traveled across New York State via the Erie Canal—and sometimes, those people could be treacherous.
Henry Schutt wasn’t inherently a distrustful man, even as the second-eldest sibling of a very large family. He might have been a little naïve. His mother and father had raised their brood of twelve (five girls and seven boys) to always welcome the wayfaring men who stumbled onto their sprawling homestead, Brookfield Farm. The farm consisted of a farmhouse and a barn sitting atop acres of land in Dryden, a village in upstate New York. Henry was accustomed to wandering laborers searching for work. He had always assumed that they had honest intentions—and his family hadn’t been swindled in the past.
In the summer of 1842, the twenty-seven-year-old worked on a passenger boat called a packet—a small, shallow canal vessel that carted riders between stops along the waterway. Off and on they stepped at destinations between Albany on the Hudson River and Buffalo at Lake Erie. As Henry Schutt docked briefly in Syracuse, a man strolled down the towpath.
The stranger seemed about Henry’s age, or just a bit younger. With gleaming, dark gray eyes and a ready smile, he was an engaging presence. Henry gave him a quick, silent evaluation. The man wasn’t particularly tall, just about five foot eight inches, but he was solid, with broad shoulders and a compact frame. Canal 23work required a strong body, but the man also seemed well groomed, not messy like other men in need of work. The man’s face had a flushed, ruddy complexion, as if he were perpetually abashed, even while wearing a grin.
“He said he came from New Brunswick [Canada],” said Ephraim Schutt, Henry’s older brother. “He said he was German.”
That was about all the information the boatman gleaned from the man, except Henry did learn his name: Edward Howard Rulloff. Edward told Henry Schutt that he didn’t have proper employment and his savings were spent. Edward hoped to earn a living on the canal and then transition to a teaching career in a country village. He assured Henry and the captain who owned the boat that he possessed good moral character with industrious habits—he’d be a reliable deckhand. Can I come aboard?
Henry warmed to him almost immediately. He’d always admired hard workers; his father toiled daily and so did he. He watched Edward scurry around the boat, assisting passengers, helping secure the ropes as it approached the towpaths. Edward would even leap right into the murky water, wading toward the pathways with the boat not far behind. He was enthusiastic, effusive, and clearly very bright. He reminisced with Henry about his days as a schoolboy in Germany. Edward spoke eloquently, especially for a canal worker in rural New York. His voice was mellow and calm.
Soon, Henry Schutt and Edward Rulloff became good friends. When it was time for Henry to return to his family’s home, the boatman asked his assistant to join him, to stay at Brookfield Farm and meet the rest of the Schutts. Henry wanted to help his new worker … and he thought the family might eventually endorse 24Edward in his quest to teach. Henry Schutt was supremely optimistic.
Edward eagerly accepted the offer and they set out toward Dryden, about forty-five miles south of Syracuse.
The month of May in rural upstate New York can be glorious, and in that year of 1842, it was particularly beguiling. In late evening, the clear sky slowly faded from cobalt blue to black. Fireflies created funny little blips in the air as they floated past the willow trees. Constellations spread across the sky. Owls perched on branches of green-leafed maple trees, awaiting their fall transition to orange, yellow, and red.
But nighttime in the country could also be disconcerting, even when traveling alongside a (supposedly) friendly companion. There were few lights—just starlight and moonlight—fewer visitors to encounter, and many strange sounds echoing through the forests lining the grassy trails. It might make a man wonder, as he sat near a total stranger whom he’d suddenly invited into his life and home … What do I really know about this Edward Rulloff, anyway?
But for now, the pair traveled happily together toward Dryden and Brookfield Farm. No one in that small village could have known how much misery one man would soon cause them.
Six Mile Creek is actually twenty miles long, but the people in Dryden didn’t quibble over the inaccuracy—it was just another quirky detail about their beloved home. The country village was settled in 1797 and named after English poet John Dryden. After the American Revolution, Dryden became part of the Military 25Tract of Central New York—a government program that offered New York soldiers land as a reward for participating in the war. Commissioned and noncommissioned officers each received one lot. Still more veterans qualified for these lots after the War of 1812 and made their way to the small rural village, which was proud of the fact that “battlefield heroes” built the village of Dryden. Among the town’s most notable families were the Schutts.
Descended from natives of Holland, the Schutts owned numerous properties in this agricultural community. Dozens of Schutts made Dryden home—they owned lumber mills, clothing mills, and farmland. The family’s patriarch, John, the father of riverman Henry, was a pillar of the community. John Schutt co-owned several businesses with his brother, James, who had been a lieutenant during the American Revolutionary War.
John Schutt had himself been a sergeant with the New York militia during the War of 1812; afterward, he became a schoolteacher in Dryden, well known for his wide-ranging intellectual arguments over politics or religion. The Schutt brothers had merged their acreage so they could remain neighbors, and by the mid-1800s, there were at least six families of Schutts living just miles from each other in Dryden. They were a convivial, close-knit clan: During the wintertime, they rode horse-drawn sleighs through the town for family visits. They named their children after one another. John’s homestead, Brookfield Farm, was a focal point for family dinners, weddings, and funerals. The younger cousins nicknamed John “Uncle Jack” and called his wife, Hannah Krum, “Aunt Netche.”
When winter arrived, the snow in rural New York State was spectacular. Bright white flurries covered wooden wagons parked 26outside bucolic farmhouses in tiny villages like Watkins Glen, Trumansburg, and Lansing. Religion, family, and hard work were the principles that rooted families in those communities. Just about everyone toiled from sunrise to early evening—they farmed wheat and corn, raised cows and sheep, worked inside factories and mills that produced everything from machinery and tobacco to paper and flour.
Men grew rich in the countryside, but it was still a hard life of daily toil. Servants were rare, mostly found only in the upscale homes downstate in Manhattan. Instead, farm families used homegrown labor to keep things running smoothly. Children born on a farm worked from the time they could lug a water bucket. Women were tough and steely, keeping their families fed and their homes in good working order. The Schutts had learned to lean on one another, and the way they saw it, there was no need to move from Dryden—everything they required was there. There were loads of Schutts in the small village, each faithful to the others and fiercely proud of their heritage and accomplishments.
“You see, my dears,” patriarch John Schutt would tell his twelve children, “you descended from the moon.”
When Edward Rulloff arrived at Brookfield Farm in May 1842 with their son Henry, John and Hannah Schutt welcomed him into their home. They could always use an extra hand around the farm. Rulloff was intelligent, they observed—he had hauled along hefty books on languages and philosophy. As the large Schutt family came to know Edward, they grew fonder of him. They were impressed with the twenty-three-year-old’s accomplishments: Edward was well versed in Latin, Greek, Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese; he was even familiar with Hebrew and Sanskrit. His penmanship was also gorgeous, and he was proficient 27in belles-lettres, a category of writing that described literature written creatively, instead of being technical or informative. He could recall the Latin names for all the flora and fauna in the county.
But was clever Edward Rulloff perhaps too intellectually curious and scholarly to be satisfied by simple farmwork? John Schutt treated Edward cordially, but with some reservations. Where was he from again … Germany? Could this foreigner really become a reliable farmhand? Edward explained that he eventually hoped to earn a position as an educator in their village. Despite his reservations, John allowed Edward to work on the farm over the summer of 1842. It must have gone well, because that winter, the family introduced the young man to a neighbor who was willing to rent out one of the rooms of his house to Edward so he could run a small private school, one modeled after the one-room schoolhouse that was gaining popularity in small towns and villages across the newly developing nation.
