On February 1, 1929, Carl Panzram, the self-described "meanest man who ever lived", stepped through the gates at the Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. Upon entering the penitentiary, Panzram mentioned to the Warden that he would kill the first person who bothered him. Keeping his word, Panzram murdered the civilian laundry foreman who was taunting Panzram about his past crimes. A life of torture and suffering led Panzram to hate the entire human race and himself. His only friend was Washington D.C. corrections officer Henry Lesser, who Panzram continued corresponding with while incarcerated at USP Leavenworth. Eventually, Panzram is placed in segregation across from another famous criminal, Robert Stroud, The Birdman of Alcatraz, who observes Panzram and writes about him. Panzram does not censor himself as he conveys his thoughts on murder, segregation, the death penalty, and his desire to die. Panzram at Leavenworth is the first book to accurately depict murderer Carl Panzram's time at the federal penitentiary. Presenting archival documents and photographs, a clear view of the events which transpired during Panzram's time at Leavenworth Penitentiary comes into focus.

In 1929, while serving a 25-year sentence for burglary, Carl Panzram bludgeoned a fellow inmate with an iron bar and was sentenced to death. On death row at Leavenworth Prison Panzram wrote his life story, or autobiography, through a series of letters to Henry Lesser, a guard he befriended. Here he sets down a detailed description of his criminal exploits, including 21 murders, his upbringing in correctional facilities for juvenile delinquents (where he was severely beat and tortured for petty infractions) and time as an adult incarcerated in places as varied as Leavenworth to county jails.

The brutally graphic memoirs of one of America's most notorious and urepentant murderers who killed 21 people and committed thousands of burglaries and numerous acts of vioence and sexual abuse. Born in 1891 in Minnesota, he died on the gallows in 1930 after having spent a large portion of his life within the penitentiary system. Includes 22 b/w illustrations. 'I enjoyed the real hell out of it. Panzram is one of those people who doesn't exist in your mind until you come across him in life or as here, in a book, and then he never leaves you' -Norman Mailer

Carl Panzram wrote his autobiography in 1928.

Leavenworth, located in the central Cascades of Washington state, was once known as Icicle, and has been home to Native Americans, settlers, miners, railroad workers, and loggers. The native tribes came to this pristine and bountiful area to hunt game and fish for salmon. The promise of gold brought miners to Leavenworth, and once the Great Northern Railroad laid down its tracks in the late 1800s, the town moved from Icicle to its present location. The Lamb-Davis Lumber Company also built a sawmill in town, but when the railroad relocated its tracks and moved its hub to Wenatchee, the sawmill closed in 1926. The little boomtown in the Cascades went bust, but it was reinvented by its residents in the early 1960s with a Bavarian theme. The Bavarian premise of Leavenworth is still intact, and today the city draws around 2.5 million visitors annually.

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley's spree of torture, sexual abuse, and murder of children in the 1960s was one of the most appalling series of crimes ever committed in England, and remains almost daily fixated upon by the tabloid press. In The Gates of Janus, Ian Brady himself allows us a glimpse into the mind of a murderer as he analyzes a dozen other serial crimes and killers. Criminal profiling by a criminal was not invented by the dramatists of Dexter. Novelist and true-crime writer Colin Wilson, author of the famous and influential book The Outsider, remarks in his introduction to Brady's book that one must first explore the depraved reaches of human consciousness to truly understand human character. When first released in 2001, The Gates of Janus sparked controversy attended by a huge media splash. The new edition, the first in paperback, provides the reader with a decade and a half of updates, including Brady's letters to the publisher, both providing information regarding his own demented history along with demands that Feral House remove its unflattering afterword written by author Peter Sotos.

Thomas Bruce White, law officer, son of Robert Emmet and Margaret (Campbell) White, was born at Oak Hill, Texas, on March 6, 1881. He attended public schools and, for two years, Southwestern University in Georgetown. He began his career with Company A of the Texas Rangersqv at Colorado City and married Bessie Patterson on October 17, 1909. From 1909 to 1917 he worked as special agent for the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads at Amarillo, San Antonio, and El Paso. While in El Paso he became an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he was soon promoted and placed in charge of the Houston office. He was one of the first FBI inspectors, with responsibility for inspecting the bureau's offices in all southern and western states. When crimes against Oklahoma's Osage Indians kept increasing, White was moved to Oklahoma City, where he solved the difficult case "of the Osage Indian murders." Afterward, the officials of the United States Bureau of Prisons persuaded him to transfer to that organization. The Whites and their two sons moved into the warden's residence of Leavenworth prison on October 1, 1926. For five years he ran the prison. In 1931 he was seriously wounded by gunfire in an escape attempt. When he recovered, officials of the bureau decided he should be given a less demanding assignment and transferred him to La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution, near El Paso, Texas. This institution was opened under his wardenship on April 29, 1932. White inaugurated programs that made La Tuna very well known, including, for instance, the growing and harvesting of food crops by inmates. On March 6, 1951, when White reached the mandatory civil service retirement age of seventy, he accepted a six-year appointment to the Board of Pardons and Paroles. In tendering the appointment, Chief Justice John E. Hickman said he had never seen better recommendations than those presented on White's behalf. Shortly before his death White stated, "I began by catching criminals and sending them to prison. Then I spent twenty-five years taking care of them while they were serving their time. Finally, I spent the last six years of my career deciding when they should be released. I had come the full circle." White was a devout Baptist. He died in El Paso on December 21, 1971.--Texas State Historical Association.