Women Who Love Men Who Kill
35 True Stories of Prison Passion
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
The “engrossing, thoroughly researched look at women who are in romantic relationships with incarcerated men”—fully updated with twenty-first-century cases (Publishers Weekly).
In 1991, Sheila Isenberg’s classic study Women Who Love Men Who Kill asked the provocative question, “Why do women fall in love with convicted murderers?” Now, Isenberg returns to the same question in the age of smart phones, social media, mass shootings, and modern prison dating. The result is a compelling psychological study of prison passion in the new millennium.
Isenberg conducts extensive interviews with women who seek relationships with convicted killers, as well as conversations with psychiatrists, social workers, and prison officials. She shows that many of these women know exactly what they are getting into—yet they are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of a love without hope, promise, or consummation.
This edition of Women Who Love Men Who Kill includes gripping new case studies and an absorbing look at how the digital age is revolutionizing this phenomenon. Meet the young women writing “fan fiction” featuring America’s most sadistic murderers; the killer serving consecutive life sentences for strangling his wife and smothering his toddler daughters—and the women who visit him in prison; the high-powered journalist who fell in love and risked it all for “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli; and many other women absorbed in online and real-life dalliances with their killer men.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Isenberg (Muriel's War: An American Heiress in the Nazi Resistance) updates her 1991 book of the same title with this engrossing, thoroughly researched look at women who are in romantic relationships with incarcerated men. While such arrangements are far from new, the author notes, the internet, social media, and smartphones have made them easier than ever. Websites such as writeaprisoner.com put finding a romantic link behind bars just a few clicks away, and apps like JPay, where women can send money, emails, and video visits, make keeping up the romance easy. But why do women do it? The author's interviews reveal that some are drawn to fame—it's easier to get a serial killer to answer your love letters than a movie star—and others because they crave a fictional romance and the safety of loving a man behind bars. (Interestingly, most of Isenberg's subjects suffered a childhood trauma and are Catholic.) Serial killer Ted Bundy had his groupies and even married one of them during his trial, and the Boston Marathon bomber inspires fan fiction on websites and thousands of #FreeJahar posts on the internet, mostly by teenage girls. Assured prose keeps the pages turning. True crime fans will find this a real eye-opener.
