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The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery Hardcover – September 19, 2017

by Bill James (Author), Rachel McCarthy James (Author)

4.2 1,993 ratings

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An Edgar Award finalist for Best Fact Crime, this “impressive…open-eyed investigative inquiry wrapped within a cultural history of rural America” (The Wall Street Journal) shows legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applying his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history.

Between 1898 and 1912, families across the country were bludgeoned in their sleep with the blunt side of an axe. Jewelry and valuables were left in plain sight, bodies were piled together, faces covered with cloth. Some of these cases, like the infamous Villasca, Iowa, murders, received national attention. But few people believed the crimes were related. And fewer still would realize that all of these families lived within walking distance to a train station.

When celebrated baseball statistician and true crime expert Bill James first learned about these horrors, he began to investigate others that might fit the same pattern. Applying the same know-how he brings to his legendary baseball analysis, he empirically determined which crimes were committed by the same person. Then after sifting through thousands of local newspapers, court transcripts, and public records, he and his daughter Rachel made an astonishing discovery: they learned the true identity of this monstrous criminal. In turn, they uncovered one of the deadliest serial killers in America.

Riveting and immersive, with writing as sharp as the cold side of an axe, The Man from the Train paints a vivid, psychologically perceptive portrait of America at the dawn of the twentieth century, when crime was regarded as a local problem, and opportunistic private detectives exploited a dysfunctional judicial system. James shows how these cultural factors enabled such an unspeakable series of crimes to occur, and his groundbreaking approach to true crime will convince skeptics, amaze aficionados, and change the way we view criminal history.

Print length

480 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Scribner
Publication date

September 19, 2017
Dimensions

6 x 1.4 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1476796254
ISBN-13

978-1476796253
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Impressive . . . an open-eyed investigative inquiry wrapped within a cultural history of rural America.”
—Wall Street Journal

“[An] incredible book . . . one of the most readable works of non-fiction I’ve ever picked up . . . James has a conversational style of writing that draws the reader in, even when he departs from murders to offer short history lessons on 19th century detectives-for-hire (pretty bad), 19th century newspapers (not great) and mob justice (truly horrifying) . . . Even more remarkable than the exhaustive research and addictive narrative, the [authors] actually seem to solve the case and reveal the identity of The Man From the Train. Skeptics may balk, but I’m convinced.”
—Raleigh News & Observer

“Truly spectacular . . . The book shines when we get to see the Jameses’ thinking. Like the recent Netflix documentary ‘The Keepers,’ it’s fun to watch these amateur detectives solve a puzzle. And solve it they do — after 400 pages, when Rachel discovers the killer’s first crime way back in 1898. Did they get it right? I’m pretty sure they did. Either way, the final twist in the story—set 10 years after the Villisca murders on the other side of the Atlantic—gave me chills.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The Man from the Train is a beautifully written and extraordinarily researched narrative of a man who may have killed 95—or more—people, dating back more than a century, mostly in small-town Middle America . . . This is no pure whodunit, but rather a how-many-did-he-do.”
—Buffalo News

"[A] suspenseful historical account . . . The strength of the book hangs on [the authors'] diligent research and analysis connecting crimes into the closing years of the 19th century. Even those skeptical at the outset that one man was responsibile for so much bloodshed are likely to be convinced."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Bill James, with his daughter, Rachel, has done something truly extraordinary. Not only has he solved one of the most tantalizing mysteries in the annals of American crime--the sensational case of the 1912 “Villisca Axe Murders”--but he has tied it to a long string of equally savage, though completely obscure, atrocities. The result is his discovery of a previously unknown serial killer who roamed--and terrorized--the country a century ago. Brilliantly researched and written in James’ snappily conversational style, The Man From the Train is a stunning feat of detection, an un-put-downable read, and a major contribution to American criminal history.”—Harold Schechter, author of The Serial Killer Files and The Mad Sculptor

"I began The Man on the Train a skeptic. Could the notorious Villisca Murders of 1912, an unsolved crime so well-chronicled over the past century, really be the work of a killer whose victims numbered well into the dozens? But by the end, Bill James & Rachel McCarthy James totally sold me on their reasoning, exhaustive research, and their sly, sober portrait of a justice system totally overmatched by the techniques and monstrosities of a man fitting the serial killer prototype we know almost too well. That they also fingered the culprit and name him is an even more shocking bonus. Don't even think about missing out on this beautifully brilliant, bananas book."—Sarah Weinman, editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 1950s

About the Author

Bill James made his mark in the 1970s and 1980s with his Baseball Abstracts. He has been tearing down preconceived notions about America’s national pastime ever since. He is currently the Senior Advisor on Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox, as well as the author of The Man from the Train. James lives in Lawrence, Kansas, with his wife, Susan McCarthy, and three children.

Rachel McCarthy James lives in Lawrence, KS with her husband Jason. She studied creative writing at Hollins University, and her work has previously been featured in publications including Bitch, Broadly, and The New Inquiry. The Man from the Train is her first book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Man from the Train Preface
I have long been fascinated by the notion that knowledge can be created about the past. Dinosaurs are the easiest example. For tens of thousands of years, humans had no awareness that the world had once been inhabited by gigantic beasts. Now, we know not merely that these animals existed, but we have identified hundreds of species of them. We know what they looked like, generally, and what they ate. We know which type of dinosaur lived where, and in what era. We know what happened to them. We have not merely created this knowledge, we have disseminated it so widely across our culture that the average five-year-old now can name a dozen types of dinosaurs, and has a collection of little plastic models of them.

In my day job I am a baseball writer. We know many, many things now about the baseball players of the 1950s and 1960s, about Willie Mays and Bob Gibson and Stan Musial, that those men themselves did not know and could not possibly have known when they were playing. We have pieced together records of their careers that are far more complete than the records which were kept at the time. Modern historians know things about the Romans that the Romans themselves did not know and could not have known.

A hundred years ago and a little more, there were a series of terrible crimes that took place in the American Midwest (although it actually started in the Northeast and the South, the midwestern portion of the series is the well-known part). The most famous of these crimes are the murders in Villisca, Iowa, but it is apparent to anyone who will take the time to look that the Villisca murders were a part of a series of similar events. I was reading about that series of crimes and I had a thought. “I’ll bet there were others,” I thought, “that the contemporary authorities never linked to the same criminal.”

With modern computers, we can search tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of small-town newspapers, looking for reports of similar events.

And I found one.

And then I found another one, and another one, and another one. I hired my daughter as a researcher, and she started finding them. We had no idea what we were dealing with. And we never dreamed that we would actually be able to figure out who he was.

By the time he came to Villisca, The Man from the Train had been murdering randomly selected families for a decade and a half. People had been executed for his crimes; people had been lynched for his crimes; and people were rotting away in prison for his crimes.

Skeptical? Of course you’re skeptical. You’re either skeptical or you’re stupid, and you don’t look stupid. But hear me out. Have I got a story to tell you.

—Bill James

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; First Edition (September 19, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1476796254
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1476796253
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.42 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #546,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,182 in Serial Killers True Accounts
- #1,779 in Criminology (Books)
- #8,445 in U.S. State & Local History

Customer Reviews:
4.2 1,993 ratings

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OLD1mIKE

Interesting and informative

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2022

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Interesting book. Worth reading if your interested in history, murder and unsolved crime. Well written and easy to read. Does become a bit tedious by page 350, just from the amount of unrelenting murder and mayhem. Still a good Book.

The authors have done an incredible amount of research using old newspapers, research papers and whatever else that seemed pertinent. They created a list of 33 elements common to the Man on the Train murders. They also use deduction, speculation and a smidge of statistics to help exclude unrelated murders. They introduce you to long forgotten serial killers such as Clementine Barnabet, the Church of Sacrifice (Human Five Gang), the New Orleans Axeman, the Georgia “Before Day” club and a host of unsolved crime. They present a lot of historical and cultural information about the period. They introduce a massive list of historically unsolved murders, including some they believe are Man on the Train murders and some not. There is no DNA, finger prints, or security video etc to absolutely identify who did what, but they make a convincing argument of what crimes the Man on the Train did and didn’t do. They also make an interesting case for who they feel the Man on the Train is.

3 people found this helpful

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Marshwj

Fascinating but Flawed

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2018

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One of the most intriguing but seriously flawed books I’ve read in a long time. Other readers’ views that the book needed a better editor or editors is spot on: it suffers from a meandering, disjointed narrative flow and is marred by long and tedious digressions. It could have been considerably shorter, and more digestible.

Still, James and his daughter have created an unforgettable look into a long-forgotten American past and a history of macabre crimes that touches a host of problems that law enforcement faced more than a century ago. This included everything from poor communications to unorganized and poorly trained police forces to racial prejudice to an inability to think outside the box about potential suspects.

The authors’ conclusions make eminent sense, but as they note time and again, they are subject to doubt because the evidence simply isn’t there. Forensic science in those days was barely in its infancy. Forget DNA - even blood-typing and fingerprinting weren’t available to detectives. Records were poor, and journalists were often little more than gossip-mongers. Innocent people were convicted - and some executed - as a result of crimes they attribute to the killer. African-Americans were especially vulnerable to trumped-up or specious charges.

James, a legendary statistician, weighs the odds presented by each crime scene and makes a judgment - then will backtrack, and tell the reader to wait for information in a succeeding chapter. The presentation can be little short of maddening at times, and the occasional asides or exhortations to readers are off-putting. Slowly but surely, however, a pattern with enormous similarities begins to emerge, circumstantial but telling - though the authors hammer them over and over, ad nauseum.

Another major flaw in the book is the time spent looking at tangential information, especially that involving the fate of people suspected of the killer’s crimes. It’s as though the James, after digging up so much historical information, have to justify the research by getting it all down on the page. Some major winnowing of these digressions would have helped a great deal. The prose is mostly straightforward, without many stylistic flourishes, but that fits with the central concept, which is concerned with notating the facts and compiling the evidence.

The ax murders attributed the The Man from the Train are gruesome and almost unthinkable both in their frequency and savagery, and it’s amazing to read in the contemporary accounts that the James have dug up how poorly everyone - law enforcement, townspeople, reporters - put any pieces together until late in the murder spree. The focus usually fell on locals, often with solid alibis; after all, if a transient with no motive was to blame, how could they ever find or prosecute him?

In the end, the James come up with the identity of a man, Paul Mueller, they believe was the archfiend who killed entire families in the middle of the night. Much of their conclusion is informed speculation, but it’s certainly believable in the light of all the traits they’ve attributed to him. The ending, of course, is unsatisfying: not only is he never caught, but where he went when the murders stopped is only conjecture.

Perhaps the book’s best feature is its ability to illuminate a great deal about life in small towns and small farms at the turn of the century and show how a mass murderer was apparently able to kill time and again and to ride the rails to vanish into the wind. Mueller, if he was the killer, made Lizzie Borden look like a social worker. She’s celebrated in legend; he’s a ghost, and his place in the annals of crime, despite the James’ admirable research, remains uncertain.

20 people found this helpful

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Roberta (old lady)

This book has persuaded me not to live near a railroad track in a rural or semi-rural location.

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2020

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I read this book completely in 3days without taking many long breaks besides sleeping, so the book got read in 3 days and that was 3 days too soon, I found the book very interesting , very informative about the past, I think it is a plausible account of a serial killer that took advantage of a time in the last century when there was no national news (conveyed on a radio or tv or even newspapers ) to communicate to the unsuspecting public nationwide that whole families were being murdered in their beds at night in various places such as isolated rural homes or very small towns. Telegraph and telephones were available and newspapers of course but it took some time before it was realized a person hopping trains was most likely the killer and not long after that became known to the public via newspaper accounts the murderous home invasions stopped , at least those with his m.o. and specific identifying factors in the crimes attributed to the man from the train. I genuinely felt sorry that these folks died after laying down to sleep like in the child’s prayer , you know how it goes,” now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep and if I die before I wake , I pray the lord my soul to take” because I had parents who farmed and other relatives on farms years and years ago who never wanted city life ,that just makes me even sadder that whole families died , their fate decided only due to living close to a railroad track , who probably were basically happy living in those locations until the man from the train ended their lives in one night of ghoulish murder. Yes even today knowing how hard it was to catch the “Golden State Killer“ with technology , I know how easy in the last century (before my own parents were born in 1915) the man from the train escaped detection and got away with his crimes.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

rl2000

Exceptionally well researched

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2023

Verified Purchase

I liked the humour in amongst the gruesome story. Brilliantly written, a very memorable book. Difficult to sleep whilst reading it though!

Robin Lundenius

Extremely interesting!!

Reviewed in Sweden on April 18, 2023

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I havn't read much crue crime before but this one was really captivating and mind-opening! And it looks like they actually solved the crimes :D

James S. Mclean

A must read for true-crime fans.

Reviewed in Canada on July 4, 2019

Verified Purchase

A chilling tale of horror in years gone by by a man who researched it by old newspaper accounts, documents and with a fine analytical mind. The real-life application of Occam's Razor. You won't be abler to stop reading, and it's all true.

Anonyme

Well Done!

Reviewed in India on June 2, 2018

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A thoroughly absorbing read, and I found the case laid out for the identity of the killer convincingly argued.

Kindle Customer

A little strung out, but a goodread nonetheless!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 29, 2024

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The book most definitely could have been at least a hundred pages shorter than it was. The middle of the booking my opinion was strung out. Aside from this, it was a great and I really enjoyed it.

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