From cold-blooded calculation to fiery vengeance—discover how history’s most notorious killers finally faced their fate!
Step into the chilling world of some of history’s most infamous killers and discover how their reigns of terror came to a brutal, often fitting end. Payback chronicles the lives, crimes, and ultimate fates of notorious figures like Harold Shipman, the most prolific serial killer in British history, whose meticulous plans for suicide were as calculated as his murders. From Bluebeard, the remorseless widow-killer, racing toward his guillotine, to Bonnie and Clyde meeting their demise in a hail of bullets, this collection dives deep into the justice—or vengeance—that ended their crimes.
Using historical accounts, trial transcripts, and psychological insights, Payback explores the depravity of these individuals, the lives they destroyed, and the punishments that await them. Readers will encounter chilling moments of calm calculation, like Percival William Budd’s emotionless murder of a taxi driver for a car, and horrifying spectacles of retribution, from botched executions to violent prison deaths.
This volume explores the psychology of killers, from early warning signs to the urges that drove them to kill. With gripping detail, Payback offers a haunting glimpse into the minds of killers and asks whether justice was truly served.
You decide: Did these killers get what they deserved.
Review by Nan van Dissel –
True Crime enthusiasts will find this engaging book gives not only an insight into the minds of some of the most debauched and evil criminals of the last two centuries but it also provides a detailed, but interesting and informative description of how they met their demise. The author has selected some of the foulest killers, who he considers some of the worst criminals to date; many of these are house hold names for true crime readers; Ted Bundy, Bonnie and Clyde, and Carl Williams. While others, particularly those from the nineteenth century are not as well-known but just as depraved.
The author while not only graphically relating the horrific crimes, which each of the criminals had committed, he has also provided an analysis of the actual method of execution and the perpetrator’s last day of life. He has mainly divided the method of their “execution” into four sections; by hanging, guillotine, the chair and the needle. By exploring each method in detail, the author has provided some fascinating factual information about each one.
This no holds barred look at ‘how the worst killers in history paid for their crimes’ is not for the faint hearted or squeamish reader. The author leaves little to the imagination with his graphic, grisly descriptions of some of the worst acts of violence, which were enacted upon their innocent victims.
Readers will come away with an unsettling feeling of how cruel some humans can be when inflicting pain on others in the most agonizing way.
There appears to be a Payback 2 in the pipeline.