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Title: Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives
ISBN: 0787996394
Author:
Marilee Strong
Mark Powelson
Publicate Date: 2008-03-21
Publish: 2008-03-21
List Price: $27.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $11.95
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $11.95
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.52
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1: A true gem
The most enjoyable book I have read all year. Marilee Strong does not just report facts. She pulls situations and concepts from classic literature and current crimes and ties them all together. I now have several books to hunt down that I learned about after reading this book including the magnum opus "An American Tragedy" which apparently is 876 pages long, so I will write that review in about 6 months.
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2: Erased review
This book's strength in my opinion is that the author has an original idea (giving a name to a particular type of crime) and that it is well researched. The weakness is the somewhat choppy writing style. It follows the Laci Peterson story and weaves in other cases. I would have liked a little less weaving and more of a chronological approach.
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3: Men who want women erased from their lives
Strong believes she has found a new category of killers. That is not to suggest that eraser killers, like serial killers, another category lately described, didn't exist previously. Just that she can now find a pattern and has labeled it.
Eraser killers are men who want women gone from their lives. Erased, vanished, no longer a bother. Frequently, these wives or girlfriends are pregnant. "Recent studies from several states...have found homicide to be the number one cause of death among pregnant women and that women continue to be at increased risk for being murdered for usp to a year after giving birth...A 2005 study...found homicide to be the second leading cause of ...dead...behind in pregnant and postpartum women, being motor vehicle accidents" (p 28).
Essentially, as in the famous case of Scott Peterson, these men created forced abortions.
The cases are fascinating. And certainly the utter callousness of the men astonishes. Edward Kakas was "obsessed over his appearance, waring $1,000 suits" (p 154) and pleased with his pretty wife until she insisted, without his agreement, on getting pregnant and having the baby. He started to refer to her as "'the fat wop'". (p 155). He could have divorced her. But that would have meant money for her and the child. So, instead, he killed her.
Interesting but scary.
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4: I Could Have Been One Of the Missing or Murdered Wives
This book really hit home for me and I stayed awake all night to the point of exhaustion to finish it. I came very close, twice, to being a missing or murdered wife. My ex-husband finally served some jail time after kidnapping and attempting to murder me but when we were married the police acted as though my being beaten by him was a "domestic disturbance" and they refused to file a report.
I finally understand why my ex-husband acted the way he did and how he was able to screw everyone who ever cared for him without remorse.
This book should be required reading for every cop around the world and for every prosecuter who wants a better understanding of the "charming sociopath".
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5: An excellent contribution to the genre
I am really surprised by the review below that criticizes the prose in this book. I thought it of high quality and unobtrusive. Adjectives have not been eliminated from the language, and they were not inappropriately overused in this book. Curious.
Does the true crime genre really need a fifteenth book about the Scott and Laci Peterson case? One could reasonably conclude that the question answers itself. Then I read Erased.
Unlike the fourteen titles that preceded it -- including books by the jurors, the journalists, Laci's mother, Scott's sister and lover -- the latest title to delve into the most widely publicized U.S. case since OJ's acquittal stands alone. Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives [Amazon; B&N] by Marilee Strong (with Mark Powelson) is very well informed by history and psychology. The lead author has delved to the nth degree into the criminal history of the United States, and the result is a unique study of a certain type of uxorcide. I couldn't skim or skip a page of this book, which marries, if you will, two of my favorite subgenres: spousal murder stories and criminal psychology.
In developing a profile of what she terms "eraser" killers, the author recounts many cases that have remarkable parallels to the Peterson case, highlighting dozens already familiar to some of us: Chester Gillette, Carlyle Harris, Reverend Richeson, Robert Blake, Mark Hacking, Bartin Corbin, Michael Peterson, Father Hans Schmidt, and numerous other more obscure murders. In developing her profile, she comes to some strong conclusions while offering a depth of research to support them. For example, she points to the fact that Scott Peterson reported his wife missing on Christmas Eve. I had assumed that he was a psychopath who gave himself a Christmas present. Author Strong points out a more mundane possibility: that a disappearance on a holiday would not result in a vigorous investigation by experienced detectives. Just as Theodore Dreiser "profiled" Chester Gillette and his brothers in crime in fictional terms, this author does so in the language of clinical psychology.
I approached this book skeptically, frowning at the flap copy, groaning at the press release ("missing women cases ... have come to dominate the national print and broadcast media since the highly publicized disappearance of Laci Peterson," it says, when it should say such cases have always dominated the media). I've also grown more skeptical of the work of profilers and agree with the general prohibition against admitting their testimony in court, while at the same time I think they are useful to the general public. And crime encyclopedias usually disappoint this reader with numerous errors. Not this time. Erased is cogent and compelling.
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