During the Depression, economic anxieties found an outlet in a series of child murders that triggered an irrational nationwide hysteria: paedophiliac psychopaths were overrunning the country.
As America was brought to rage and fury by the press and the FBI, lynch mobs took to the streets, reason gave way to doomsday scenarios, and one father was even driven to murder his three daughters to "save them" from a degenerate crime wave. A terrifying cautionary essay, Panic explores the combustible mix of unfounded fears, moral crusades, and the dangers of collective thinking.
Panic is part of Bloodlands, a chilling collection of short page-turning historical narratives from bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter. Spanning a century in our nation's murderous past, Schechter resurrects nearly forgotten tales of madmen and thrill-killers that dominated the most sensational headlines of their day.
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[Following dinner on the evening of Friday, August 13, 1937, Michael Horbachewski - a thirty-one-year-old Polish immigrant and landscape gardener who lived with his wife and children in the village of Island Park, New York - took his two eldest daughters, three-year-old Nina and five-year-old Jane, to the neighbourhood candy store for ice-cream cones] ***(Amazon Original Stories, 28 June 2018, ebook, 88 pages, Prime Reading)
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Panic is the darkest and most disturbing true crime short yet. The narrative opens in dramatic fashion with a man shooting and killing his three daughters in a misguided attempt to save them from a paedophile crime wave. Panic recounts several cases where young children are brutally assaulted and murdered. The reading is unpleasant at times. The heart-breaking part is the reaction of the public, fury, blind rage and lynch mobs. The fear is completely understandable and heart-breaking.
