Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of Read Online Free Page B

drinking himself into a stupor, consorting with “abandoned women,” or breaking into houses to steal silverware and jewelry, he was busily seducing young girls, including one “daughter of a poor widow” he ruined after arranging to rendezvous with her at church. “Thus,” intones Faxon, “even in the temple of the Almighty, his depravity was proved.”
    His sole redeeming feature was a small soft spot he harbored in his heart for hismother. After one particularly successful burglary—a break-in at a “wholesale store” that netted him enough money to treat himself to a fancy new set of clothes along with a “fine horse”—he displayed his filial devotion in the single act of generosity he is known to have performed. During a brief visit home to his mother, reports Faxon, “he gave her a cow.”
    Though “chiefly a burglar,” Green found ample opportunity to indulge his appetite for sociopathic violence. On one occasion, when a tavernkeeper caught Green and Ash trying to pass a bad five-dollar bill at his establishment and threatened to alert the authorities, they overpowered the man and attempted to throw him alive into the roaring fireplace. Only the timely “interference of his wife and servant maid,” who heard the commotion and raised the alarm, saved the man’s life. Not long afterward, the pair waylaid and robbed a traveling peddler, then—acting on Ash’s philosophy that “a dead cock never crows”—beat the man to death, “tied some large stones to the corpse and sunk it in a pond.”
    Over the next few years—sometimes assisted by Ash but more often operating on his own—Green terrorized the Northeast, becoming in the process what crime historian Jay Robert Nash calls “America’s first Public Enemy Number One”:
    He was arrested and jailed several times on suspicion, but evidence was lacking to indict him and he was routinely released. After looting a jewelry store in Montreal, Canada, Green was pursued by a posse. He fought his way out of a trap, shooting several men, but he was later apprehended and jailed. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death, but his friend Ash helped him to escape. Returning to the remote mountains of New Hampshire, Green hid for some months. He then went on another crime spree, burglarizing stores and homes in Albany, New York and New York City. In Middlebury, Vermont, he robbed and shot to death a French traveler. By this time, nothing was beyond the ambitions of Samuel Green. He left a trail of burglary, rape, horse-stealing, counterfeiting, and murder from Montpelier, Vermont to Schenectady, New York; from Saco, Maine to Barre, Vermont. Half the country was looking for him; the bounties to be paid for his capture were enormous.
    Exactly how many homicides Green committed during this period is unclear, though certainly enough to qualify him as one of our country’s earliest serial killers.There was one especially savage killing still to come. It would prove to be Green’s last.
    W HILE PASSING THROUGH the town of Danvers, Massachusetts—the site, a century earlier, of New England’s infamous witch hysteria—Green got drunk, broke into a general store, and stole $30 in cash, along with “goods of all description.” Pursued by a posse, he was apprehended soon afterward, promptly tried, and sentenced to thirty days in solitary confinement in the state prison followed by four years of hard labor. Like all new inmates, Green was scrubbed, shaved bald, and clothed in coarse prison garb upon admission. He was then tossed into a dark, cramped cell furnished with a narrow cot, two threadbare blankets, and a bucket. Three times a day, attendants came around to feed him his meals of bread and water.
    Emerging after thirty days, he was put to work breaking rocks in the prison yard. Before long, he made a failed escape attempt. For his trouble, he was outfitted with a heavy wooden clog shackled to his leg—a crude precursor of the ball and chain. He was