Author and Expert on Serial
Killers Who Relishes His Work
By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
There is little in Dr.
Harold Schechter's demeanor to suggest someone immersed in the subjects
of murder and gore, but his office decorations -- which include several
skeletons, a small corpse on a stretcher, a rubber version of a dismembered
foot and his complete collection of serial killer trading cards -- might
provide a hint.
Dr. Schechter, a soft-spoken
literature professor and author who lives with his wife and two daughters
on a quiet street here, is considered an expert on crime. His book,
''The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers'' (Pocketbooks), is in its
seventh printing.
Among his other 18 published
works are a series of nonfiction accounts of heinous crimes, titled
''Deviant,'' ''Deranged'' and ''Depraved,'' which Dr. Schechter conceded
sounded ''like a sick Cole Porter song.'' Recently he published a novel,
''Nevermore'' (Pocket Books), which imagines a meeting between Edgar
Allan Poe and Davy Crockett, who were contemporaries. In Dr. Schechter's
book, Poe writes a scathing review of Crockett's autobiography. An indignant
Crockett travels to confront Poe, but the two soon find themselves working
together to hunt down a particularly loathsome serial killer. Like some
of the killers he profiles, Dr. Schechter leads something of a double
life, although not one of a criminal nature. Instead, he finds himself
straddling a world in which he is a full professor specializing in 19th-century
American literature at Queens College of the City University of New
York and yet also makes appearances on television shows like ''The Jerry
Springer Show,'' most recently for a segment called, ''Women Who Fall
for Psychos.'' He makes no apologies for his fascination with horror
and tends to view the subject in both psychological and cultural terms.
Dr. Schechter said people are by nature violent and have an appetite
for bloodshed. But he also said that the public's preoccupation with
certain hideous crimes and the criminals who commit them reflects society's
own anxieties and that there is something almost comforting about putting
a face and name on fears that run so deep. ''I am very interested in
the way popular culture embodies or reflects its unconscious fears and
fantasies,'' Dr. Schechter said in an interview at his home. ''Popular
art, movies, best-selling books and television shows can function as
a kind of communal dream or nightmare, and you can read a lot into what's
going on in the back of culture's mind by analyzing that material.''
Particular killers who capture the attention of the public reflect the
fears of specific eras, Dr. Schechter said. For instance, Charles Manson
represented the ''perfect materialization of these 1960's fears of these
drug-crazed, sex-crazed, demon hippy types,'' he said. In the 1950's,
Edward Gein, a middle-age Western farmer and the prototype for Norman
Bates in ''Psycho,'' embodied the fear of the odd recluse -- seemingly
harmless, but a brutal and bizarre killer who, after digging up corpses
and dressing them up, moved on to murdering victims and engaging in
necrophilia. ''It's not just the gruesomeness of what they do, it's
that the lives they lead have some kind of symbolic meaning for us,''
Dr. Schechter said. ''The serial killer has become this mythic figure.
Our obsession with the serial killer is so out of proportion to the
actual chances of ever running into one. It is clear that the serial
killer has become the incarnation of all of our dreads and anxieties.''
The author has just completed a manuscript about a juvenile serial killer,
Jesse Pomeroy, who was known as Boston's ''boy-fiend'' for his torture
and murder of children in the 1870's. Dr. Schecter is now beginning
work on a book about a female serial killer, Jane Toppan, a nurse who
killed 31 people in Boston at the turn of the century. Dr. Schechter,
50, said he has occasionally been accused of ''pandering to psychos,''
but he responds by saying that that market is far too small to be lucrative.
He has corresponded with a handful of prison inmates, and he said one
prisoner once described his cellmate as ''America's most notorious Satanist''
as well as a fan of Dr. Schechter's books. That, Dr. Schechter said,
did not make him happy. He insisted that most of his readers are normal,
literate people who share his interest in the subjects of crime and
horror. Dr. Schechter said that the crowds that went to see ''The Silence
of the Lambs,'' a movie about a cannibalistic killer, were generally
law-abiding people who would never act out their violent impulses but
were instead able to ventilate taboo feelings toward violence and sex
by watching the movie. ''We do have a very, very dark and primitive
part of ourselves that has been superseded by this much more civilized
way of living but that continues to live on,'' Dr. Schechter said. ''That
part does require a certain amount of exercise, and I think our pop
culture is constructed to give that part some kind of gratification
so that it leaves us alone so we can go about our business, raise our
children and do our jobs.'' The author grew up in the Bronx in the 1950's,
during what he calls ''the golden age of horror.'' In his early years
he read comics like ''Vault of Horror'' and ''Tales From the Crypt.''
Then there were the horror movies and ''Fright Night'' on television.
He also immersed himself in violent television westerns. He graduated
from the Bronx High School of Science and City College of New York and
received a doctorate in American literature and analytic psychology
from SUNY Buffalo. If there is one thing that disgusts Dr. Schechter,
it is those who wring their hands and insist that American culture has
become too violent. He said that such an attitude reflects a misunderstanding
of the past. In the last 100 years in this country, families attended
hangings for entertainment, Dr. Schechter said. Whether it was the Aztecs'
tortures, or gladiatorial combat, ''there has never been a time or culture
where gore and violence haven't been a part of life and also served
as a kind of spectacle for people,'' he said. He said the earliest religious
paintings of martyrs and saints were gruesome. In the 19th century,
dime novels, which graphically described murders, were enormously popular
with children. During the Victorian era, The Illustrated Police News,
with detailed drawings of brutal murders, had the largest circulation
of any periodical of its time. The only thing that has changed, Dr.
Schechter said, is that technology has become more adept at realistically
representing brutality. ''Now it's video games and violent movies,''
he said. ''But we've actually gotten more civilized because we don't
allow ourselves the behavior. We don't attend public executions. Now
we're satisfied with a two-minute simulation, which is a real improvement.
The notion that we're getting more violent is completely wrong. It's
safer now than it ever has been in the past. As human beings, particularly
in our country, we have a better chance of dying quietly in bed than
human beings did at any other time or place.''