Robert K., and Tom Shachtman. I Have Lived in the Monster: Inside the Minds of the World’s Most Notorious Serial Killers. New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1997. The murder cases and forensic adventures of VSM Ressler.
Ressler, Robert K., and Tom Shachtman. Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI. New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1992. More cases of VSM Ressler.
Stout, David. The Boy in the Box: The Unsolved Case of America’s Unknown Child. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2008. VSMs Bill Kelly, Joe McGillen, Fleisher, and others pursue the legendary child murder case.
The numerous murder cases described in The Murder Room are true stories, with only slight changes in names and circumstances in order to protect the privacy of various individuals. To avoid confusion by those readers interested in other books about Vidocq Society cases, I have used the same pseudonyms of some of the true-life characters in these books: The Girl with the Crooked Nose (Laura Shaughnessy); The Boy in the Box (John Stachowiak and Frank Guthrum); and Trail of Blood (“Jessica”).
Several other books were especially helpful, and I recommend them for readers interested respectively in the history of Philadelphia crime and the John List murders:
Avery, Ron. City of Brotherly Mayhem: Philadelphia Crimes & Criminals . Philadelphia: Otis Books, 1997.
Sharkey, Joe. Death Sentence: The Inside Story of the John List Murders . New York: Signet, 1990.
I also recommend the Philadelphia magazine investigative stories of author and National Magazine Award–winning journalist Stephen Fried, who broke open the Marie Noe case (see www.stephenfried.com). Fried’s reporting and personal recollections are reflected in the chapters about Marie Noe and in my understanding of the history of the Vidocq Society. The books and articles written by forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, especially in the Vidocq Society Journal and truTV Crime Library, also were very helpful.
I read hundreds of newspaper and magazine stories on Vidocq Society cases or the Vidocq Society itself. Most stories about the society are general histories with a smattering of case and character information, often based on a reporter spending a couple hours over lunch and being asked to leave before the investigation began. These include accounts in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Associated Press, Harper’s Magazine, Reader’s Digest, London Telegraph, Montreal Gazette, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Philadelphia magazine, The Pocono Record, and The Philadelphia Lawyer.
Important sources for major cases included: the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and Plainview (Texas) Daily Herald coverage of the police investigation of Scott Dunn’s murder and two trials, Dunn’s diary, travel itinerary, and other notes, tapes, photographs, and personal materials including the prepublished manuscript of his book; the Syracuse (New York) Post-Standard coverage of the Manlius murder, The Case of the Missing Face; articles in the Trentonian newspaper of Trenton, New Jersey, UPI, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Bucks County Courier Times on the murder of Terri Lee Brooks; the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, Boulder Daily Camera, North Platte Telegraph, USA Today, and Boulder County sheriff ’s office on the Colorado Jane Doe case; the Atlantic City Press and the CBS 48 Hours with Dan Rather documentary “Murder on the Menu” reported by Richard Schlesinger for the Zoia Assur case; AP, UPI, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Drexel University archives on the murder of Deborah Lynn Wilson; numerous sources on John List including the New York Times, Newark Star-Ledger, truTV Crime Library, and an America’s Most Wanted episode. Thank you to J. D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times for his excellent reporting and guidance on the Choir Loft Murder, based on his six-part series on the subject.
The Boy in the Box case has been extensively documented for more than half a century. The national coverage includes a July 1958 Saturday Evening Post story (“A Box, a Blanket, and a Small Body”), a 1957 Front Page Detective magazine story (“Who is the Boy in the Box?”), articles in American Way magazine, an October 1998 America’s Most Wanted episode, and a CBS 48 Hours transcript. While interviews with many Vidocq Society Members on the case were most helpful, I read more than a hundred articles dated from 1957 to the present in The Philadelphia Press—all that I could find—mostly in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News but also the Philadelphia City Paper, Northeast Times, and Frankford News Gleaner. Other sources included the Associated Press, KYW-TV Channel 3 Philadelphia, and Fleisher’s obituary of Detective Samuel Weinstein published in May 2004 by the Philadelphia area chapter