Execution Tales

Serial killing is far from a new phenomenon. In the mid-late 19th Century in the eastern part of the United States of America, after the end of the Civil War, Jane & Josiah Edwards, inspired by Chicago’s Doctor Herbert Holmes, who had turned his hotel into a human abattoir, set about their killing spree with meticulous organisation, obsessive determination & sadistic enjoyment.
The Edwards were sexually obsessed by the judicial executions of young women & girls, preferably by slow & agonising hanging. Initially they satiated their depraved desires by reading about these type of executions & then by attending the public hangings of amongst others Ann Bilansky, who had poisoned her husband, Mary Suratt one of the conspirators convicted of participating in the assassination of President Lincoln, Marie Manning & her husband in London who had killed their lodger & Bridget Durgan who had murdered her employer. Mr & Mrs Edwards decided to make their own entertainment after the abolition of public executions in the USA & in most developed European countries including the United Kingdom.
Three other young women, who like Mr & Mrs Edwards, were sexually obsessed by the preferably protracted & extremely painful hanging of young women decided to embark on their own campaign of murder when they learned about the activities of the Edwards.