The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery

I started out reading this book because I like true crime books. At first I got into it but gradually I decided enough was enough. The frequent personal comments were the first thing that I hatted but now as he tells me about the fourth and fifth murders that aren't part of the Man from the Train I decided enough was enough. Why he chose to bring in murders that aren't part of the series is beyond me. It's distracting to the story and I've had it. Don't bother.

Fabulous but not perfect. A breezy and engaging narrative style and relentless, impressive research make this a fabulous book. It's astounding that the authors were able to plausibly identify the greatest serial killer in American history.

The book very much needs maps and a good summary timeline because of the large number of cases discussed. A chronological format would also make it less confusing to the reader. The authors jump around from year to year and frequently make reference to previous cases that tax the reader's memory.

One learns much about American society and the criminal justice system around the turn of the twentieth century -- and the news is not good. The murders led to several unwarranted executions of falsely accused individuals and to the atrocious lynchings of several falsely accused African Americans in the South. Attributing these deaths to the murderer puts his number of total victims at over one hundred. All this was happening when my grandparents were in their twenties.

After reading this, you will want to retire the term "the good old days."

A fascinating story marred by eccentric and amateurish writing. Bill James' detective work is meticulous and well-researched but his prose style is so elliptical, meandering, repetitious and disorganized that the reader quickly becomes disenchanted.

I downloaded this after picking up a used car; where I had to drive 1000 miles to be at work the next morning. I don't recommend this approach, but the book was enjoyable and engaging - I was wide awake the entire trip!

Many of the items that other reviewers found irritating were a plus in the audio version. The sarcastic asides and macabre jokes seemed to pop up right as the prose became tedious. The long place descriptions instead of maps helped create a visual in the mind; and the authors are outstanding at visual description. The repetition was helpful in a format where it is not easy to just go back to chapter three to recall a modus operandi. All of of this works in audiobook format; even as I wondered if it would in a printed format.

I agree that the book bounced around chronologically more than seemed necessary, but that was a structural decision by the authors. I imagine by the time an editor tried to change their minds they were committed. I was able to follow the theories so to mind it was not worth detracting a star.

All in all, even as a buff of US frontier social history I learned much about culture at the start of the 20th century. I hope the authors have another project soon.

I thought the topic was interesting and the book was entertaining to read. However, there was a lot of speculation involved and so I don't believe the authors' conclusions 100%. I also wished they had included a map of the railways, towns, dates and family names. The authors kept talking about the murders making "geographic" sense or having a "geographic" pattern, so why didn't they demonstrate this pattern clearly to the reader? The final murder which took place in Germany, I had heard of before and when the authors described it as being similar to those in America, I definitely felt a sense of familiarity with the methods the murderer there used. It was an interesting possible connection, but yet again, speculation.

I won't disagree with the comments about style and the need for better editing but I loved this book. I found it extremely interesting and I liked the little vignettes which the authors added to make a reader living in 2018 have a better understanding of how this kind of trail of crimes could have happened over a hundred years ago. I had read of the ax murders in Iowa years ago and I found it hard to understand why 8 people could have been killed in a house in a small town and no one ever knew who did it. This book explains how that could happen and why the staggering number of people who 'could' be attributed to this one man might actually be true. If you enjoy true crime novels I'd give it a try, be tolerant of the issues which others have pointed out and look at the story. What a story it is!

This is research and writing at its finest. Bill James offers a persuasive and gripping thesis about why a series of disparate murders that took place around the country in the early 1900s were committed by a single hand. The genius of James lies in exploring some of the more famous stories (such as the murders in Villesca, Iowa) to point out a pattern of how authorities invariably looked for local solutions for crimes that had no local connection. The killer followed specific railway lines and preyed on families that lived in isolated and rural conditions. James identifies the pattern and names the killer.

But in addition to the gripping storyline, James offers some great writing along the way. Explaining why a primary suspect in the Villesca murders is innocent, he gives us this little gem: "Regarding Reverend Kelly, I absolutely do not believe that he was capable of committing a crime of this nature—not that he was not morally capable of great depravity, perhaps, but that he was simply not capable of it in the sense that he was not capable of playing quarterback for the Green Bay Packers" (p. 173). Nice. Writing about another incident, he tells us about the primary suspect, who had the unfortunate name of Pfanschmidt. So in typical Bill James style, when he accounts for how this man became a suspect, he starts the paragraph with this phrase: "At the time the Schmidt hit the Pfan . . ."

The lesson from this book is still applicable today. In the absence of seeing larger patterns, it's human nature to want solutions and closure, even if it means manufacturing suspects and creating narratives that fit a preconceived opinion. A wonderful and timely book.

When I first started this book, I was apprehensive. I wondered if the authors would just describe in grisly detail this string of unsolved murders, and wondered how interesting or disturbing that would be. Well!......it was absolutely fascinating. With well-researched historical facts, they paint a portrait of an era, 1900 - 1915, which is poorly understood by most people. The sanitized version of history, presented through movies and television, and even books, has warped our vision of what life in small towns was like in those days.
I was surprised to learn how different law enforcement during that era was. Did you know that most small towns had no police presence at all? Police were brought in from outside the area. Crime investigation was rudimentary at best. The police tended to jump to conclusions and citizens often took punishment into their own hands. Lynchings were not unusual at that time.
Unfortunately, neither the police nor the townspeople imagined the truth, that a stranger passing through might be responsible for these murders of entire families, so they “rounded up the usual suspects”, so to speak, in order to calm the frightened townspeople. Many people were executed, lynched, or imprisoned for the crimes of this train-hopping drifter. Even those not convicted lost their reputations, merely by being accused. The police called in to investigate tended to haul in anyone even remotely connected to the murdered family and arrested many of them with no evidence at all. Of course, the first to be suspected were minorities, those with criminal pasts, and the poor. Then the police elicited...often brutally....false confessions and these often innocent people were sentenced to death or imprisonment. I got the impression that, when they had absolutely no leads or evidence, the police used this roundup to get rid of the more unsavory characters in town.
Because the murders were committed by the same man, they were remarkably similar and at times the authors referred to previously described murders that I couldn’t remember. Since one of the authors is a statistician, it’s not surprising that he overwhelmed with details at times. I just skimmed over those parts and happily continued on.
The authors very clearly make their case for the fact that this serial killer was responsible for about a hundred deaths, and got away with it for years. The murderer traveled all over the country to commit these grisly murders, riding the rails, killing entire families, then disappearing immediately afterwards by rail. He even made it all the way to Oregon, and I discovered that he was responsible for a mass murder in my neighborhood (Ardenwald), a mile or two from my house!
While researching these events, one of the authors happened upon a clue that brought to light the identity of this killer for the first time. The authors meticulously explain their reasoning in both assigning each murder to this “man in the train” or someone else, and in identifying the culprit. So... this was like a mystery thriller, except it really happened. How great is that?
I heartily recommend this book to almost anyone, but especially those interested in American history or law enforcement. If you like true crime novels, you will love this. I couldn’t put it down.

Note: I received an advance copy of the ebook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Chilling story. The number of entire families that were brutally killed in their beds all over the country is incredible - both if it was one murderer committing the crimes OR if there was more than one person out there committing similar murders. Written in a style that is sometimes a bit too casual. Worth reading.

I wanted to like this book and thought initially that it was going to be a good read as this small town boy was learning about small town murders. But it bogged down into 460 pages of sheer speculation and criticism by the author(s) regarding why or why not the crime scene fit their 'theory' (with mind-numbing repetition) and how the local police and private dicks didn't conduct a proper investigation. Whenever a reported fact didn't fit their narrative, it was thrown out, discredited or 'corrected' by the authors. I hung in there thinking there'd be a walk-off home run in the end but instead got just the umpteenth pitching change and was forced to watch another hundred times as the Velcro was released and re-secured on the batting gloves. Sadly, these crimes are NOT solved by the James gang. They have (to give them some credit) gathered a lot of details and printed a lot of reports from other unsophisticated media outlets. But no proof is offered. Nothing except their 'theory' connects the dots and not a single piece of physical evidence links their 'serial killer' to this series of murders. Not even a single personal sighting of a small man near the crime scene, or rail tickets, or train riders seeing a blood splattered man, or jobs he held in these numerous small communities (where everyone knows your name). It's all 'our theory is better than theirs' and if you don't agree, then you're statistically incompetent or an irrational skeptic. Duh!
A valid excuse may be that Bill and Rachel are producing their first crime novel. That is painfully true with this effort as it's rookie league, at best. Stick to baseball, Bill.

Amazing and frightening story set in a time when news was not "instant" as it is now and law investigation and enforcement was very much local. This allowed a criminal axe murderer to commit crimes around the country as he traveled by train from one job to another. He would break into a house and dispatch his victims quickly with an axe, then, if there was a young female, he would perform a sex act over the body. Thank God he must be dead by now. If you want to read something truly frightening, this is it.

This is a fantastic story about a very obscure series of brutal murders from the turn of the 20th Century. The crimes occurred mainly at a time when murders spread across different states and even though the MO was very consistent in each, they were not able to be linked by the police. The body count of this vicious killer, who appears to have murdered on two different continents, will stagger you. James leads us skillfully through this complex case. The only mildly-confusing part about the story is that the murders are not covered in chronological order. The author provides the reason for this in an early chapter. This is one of those rare true-crime books where the author actually presents a fascinating and convincing solution to the case at the end of the book. That conclusions are based on evidence that he and his co-author have researched themselves, instead of just summarizing a case that was solved by the police or FBI, etc. And for what its worth, if you like this type of approach to a story, there are two others I can recommend where the author presents exhaustive evidence based on his own investigation into a famous serial killer case. The first is "They All Love Jack" by Bruce Robinson. The other is "The Hunt for Zodiac" by Mike Rodelli. Both of these books present compelling facts and arguments that seem to solve the two cases (Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac killer, respectively). However, I must warn you that Robinson's angry, sarcastic writing style and disdain for both Victorian aristocracy and modern day "Ripperologists" makes for difficult reading. However, I advise that you put that consideration aside and stick with it because his research is so good.

I agree with another reviewer that this book is in desperate need of editing...a compelling story that has been made uncompelling by pages and pages of repetitive book-report-style drivel. The author's narrative, "voice" is similar to what you would hear if 7th graders were allowed to review literature... he is insulting, repetitive and full of pointless/arrogant author asides. I was quite engrossed for the first 50 pages, and would have been reasonalby happy with the book if it had been summarized better and ended in 200 pages instead of 400. I got terribly bored about 70% of the way through and started flipping the pages and realized that just about every third page is just a numbered list of what makes it a possible serial killer. What a lost opportunity.

The vivid picture of early 20th century state of criminal investigation is both compelling and depressing as innocent people are convicted or lynched. The impact of these grizzly mass murders on the community where they occurred are directly-proportional with the importance of those who perished and level of education of the surrounding county or state.
I found myself less interested in the identity of the "man on the train" as I wanted to understand how society acted to and assigned guilt. I was shocked to realize we live the consequences of these

While the research was thorough & the case intriguing, the lack of an editor seriously ruined this book for me! I got about 40 pages in, & just could no longer tolerate the amateurish writing style, the grammatical mistakes, & the overall flow of the narrative. In is Acknowledgements, the lead author notes that he was "hell on editors" at Scribner. He should have listened to them. I am a true crime aficionado, & can put up with most anything besides sloppiness. This book was just too bad to struggle through, which is a damned shame, 'cause the story was really riveting! SHAME on the Simon & Shuster editorial staff who eventually gave the green light to this mess!

Its a book about a brutal unbelievable serial killer that managed to stay free because noboby connected the dots...but going through the book you get much more than this, you get a deep view into the life of small town and rural America from 1898 to 1912.

I loved the book. Its a true pag turner. The authors lay out all the facts in a very detailed fashion and let you decide if they truly sloved a century old mystery. I believe they did. Highly recommended for Netflix to produce it in a series!

A huge amount of time and research went into this reenactment of a century-old crime. I read with fascination all of the gory details, however it was too much. I kept getting the crimes mixed up. I often needed to turn back and reread parts to try and separate the details. Due to the nature off the book it lacked character development. It moved from one episode to another. There was some character development in the portrayal of Wilkerson vs Jones.. This seemed to be a far fetched story except to show what a con man Wilkerson was and also to illustrate how inept detective work was at this time. This was Wilkerson's preconceived plot to frame Jones and it nearly worked. Perhaps due to no tv, radio, cell phones people latched on to these real life situations, and in some cases they let their imaginations run away and actually put themselves into the crime. I was as interested in the olden days as I was in any other aspect of this story. Coming up with the of solution and the one person responsible for the crime leaves a question in my mind.

Years ago, I read on a website listing top unsolved murders a report of the 1911 murders of six people in two adjacent houses on West Dale Street in Colorado Springs. These murders were of particular interest to me as I once lived on West Dale Street in Colorado Springs. Both families were apparently bludgeoned in their sleep in the middle of the night. Nothing was stolen and the houses were then closed up and the murder weapon, a bloody axe, was found leaning against the wall of one of the houses. Pretty hairy stuff to have happened just down the street from your house, even if it was seventy-odd years earlier.

So when Scribner announced recently that a book was soon to be released about a string of serial killings that occurred mostly between the years 1910 and 1912 in which an unknown person used an axe or similar item found at the scene to murder families in their beds in houses near railroad tracks (the 300 block of West Dale is less than three blocks from the D&RGW tracks), I knew this was a book I had to read.

Thank god I waited until a library copy was available.

While the book contains a lot of fascinating information about a truly horrific series of murders, the writing is wretched beyond words. Author Bill James began his career by self-publishing books on the statistical analytics of baseball, a springboard which secured him a job with the Boston Red Sox and a reputation that was said to influence Nate Silvers Fivethirtyeight.com and The Upshot at the New York Times. In 2011, though, he decided to change course and published Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence, a disjointed mishmash about a wide variety of notorious criminal cases. He does not shy away from unlikely theories, as indicated by his assertion that President Kennedy was killed by the accidental discharge of a Secret Service officer’s weapon.

James’ conversational tone may work well in writing about baseball games but when talking about murderers, or more importantly, their victims, folksy banter comes off as disrespectful and just plain weird.
“After their marriage they moved to Centerville, Ohio, where they boarded with Mr. and Mrs. George W. Coe. (We might say they coe-habited with them [you might, but you shouldn’t]...Anna's maiden name was—"Axxe"really—but we're going to let that pass without comment.”[You should have, but didn’t])

In other cases James’ tone is almost conspiratorial which make me feel in need of a shower.
Something in the room would later cause the chief detective to describe the perpetrator as a “moral pervert”; what that was was never revealed, but you and I know.
Shudder!

In one chapter he lists four reasons why a particular set of killings should not be considered as one of this series with the first reason being that there was insufficient information to include it. Then he immediately offers ten reasons why it should be included ending with "The absence of any factor that would make us think that it isn’t him." In short, he has two contradictory lists that each say that there is no data belonging in the other list. Go figure.

Bottom line: I’m torn on how to rank this as I’d like to give it five stars for the material but only one star for the writing which is abominable. The only thing that is keeping me reading it is the desire to find out what happens but the author's history of favoring unlikely conspiracy theories makes me wonder if I will be able to trust his conclusions. Additionally, the book is lacking an index, footnotes, pictures, or much in the way of maps that would help readers gain a better understanding of the case. While the material in this book is very interesting, the author makes enjoying the book all but impossible. The writing is disjointed. He regularly refers to cases which have yet to be mentioned in the book. At one point he admitted that newspaper accounts of a certain murder exist but admitted that he hadn’t bothered to read them. I can’t be sure what research he actually did and what material he lifted from the research of others. Sometimes I wonder why I keep reading this, and yet I do. It's like watching a car wreck. I can't turn away.

FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or even memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star – The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.

You'll need a rocking chair, a generous front porch, a warm summer's night and a lot of patience to appreciate this book. It meanders. It 'jaws.' It's folksy and sometimes the thread is hopelessly lost before reappearing several chapters down the line. There's a little of this and a little of that until finally, without annoying foreshadowing, it reaches its conclusion. If you enjoy chewing the fat about crimes that can never be solved, this is an enjoyable ramble. Not for forensic ideologists.

The Man from the Train
The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery
by Bill James; Rachel McCarthy James
Scribner
Pub Date 19 Sep 2017
Courtesy Netgalley

The Man from the Train is a non-fiction review of a series of murders starting in 1898 and not ending until 1912, if indeed they did end then. The authors are a father and daughter team, Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James. The authors make a case for a series of murders to be connected. They then connect them to one man. Looking at the information they present, it is possible but the storytelling is disorganized and lacks the punch of cohesive story.

This book really did not draw me in as much as I had hoped. I really enjoy non-fiction, especially historical events. Erik Larson, author of Isaac’s Storm and Dead Wake among others, is a writer who captures the reader’s attention and keeps it. I could not help but compare Larson’s style to the James’s style while reading The Man from the Train and found the James’s wanting.

I cannot include any quotes in this review because I only have the Advance Review Copy and not the final published copy. There may be differences which is why the publishers stipulates not quoting from the ARC. If I could include quotes, I could easily illustrate what I mean by the James’s style. What I can say is that several places the authors give information then immediately say it has no bearing and is included just to show the local gossip concerning the murders. In other places, information is teased and then the reader is told more on that topic will be found in a later chapter. I found these devices to distract from the follow of the narrative. I never found myself truly engaged in the storytelling.

I love Bill James' baseball writing, but this book needed a better editor. It just seemed disjointed throughout and tries far too hard to make you believe in a theory that is interesting, but that doesn't have a lot of proof. I found it to be a reach and overly redundant.

Bill James is famous in baseball circles and will no doubt go to the Hall of Fame as a founder and exceptional practitioner of sabermatrics. The baseball books go back to the 1970s and have always included page after page of analysis that seems so rational that you wonder why only Bill James thinks of these things. Bill is a mathematical thinker. Spreadsheets and statistics fill his brain where you and I keep our language skills.

Ten years ago he wrote Popular Crime which contained his theories on famous murders. Not being generally interested in crime, I still loved the book because his thought process is so spectacular. The highlight for me was his solution to the JFK murder. He doesn't claim it to be original. His contribution is wrapping his massive IQ around the topic and spitting out the one answer that makes sense and telling us why.

The Man from the Train is a little repetitive. This man killed over 100 people and in places we learn about murders committed by others. But, if you are going to claim to solve a 100 year old serial murder and be taken seriously, you'd best show your work, including the part where you hire your daughter to actually solve the crime!

Like all his books, I am left in awe by the thoroughness and clarity. Put this man in charge of our department of defense! Our country needs his brain more than the Red Sox, his day job employer.

Their is a song by The Baseball Project called Ichiro Goes to the Moon. The premise is that Ichiro Suzuki is capable of anything, including becoming a pitcher and designing a rocket ship to the moon. Bill James is like Ichiro. You don't put anything past him.

I look forward to his next book about whatever he wants to write about.

Fascinating read! I was enthralled with it from beginning to end; plus, it unnerved me for I live near train tracks, and the thought that this was happening in the US just over 100 years ago astounded me. The details of these crimes are rich and meticulous, and well placed out. A story well told. I could only imagine how long the research must have taken. Well worth the read.

This book was so poorly written (and edited) one would think it was self-published. The authors' thesis is not at all consistent and changes to suit the story. There are numerous typos and simply bad grammar (subject/verb agreement). Even setting aside these errors, the book was badly structured. The authors somehow made an interesting topic incredibly boring and obnoxious.

While not a perfect book, and as others have mentioned, could use a better editor, it is an ASTONISHING accomplishment. The research is thorough beyond thorough. As a scientist, engineer, and born skeptic, I was 110% convinced by the evidence presented that the Bill James has identified possibly the worst serial killer known.....and then he one ups himself and NAMES the guy!!!

This is an interesting book and concept. The author goes on about the subject too long bout is trying to get the reader to go along with his idea of a serial killer in the early twentieth century. I am not convinced of all his theory, bit he deserves a good job of researching and explaining his ideas.

If you like true crime, you will enjoy this book. Very interesting story of a serial killer who got away with it because investigations were primitive at the time. James speculates on a very plausible theory concerning the killer. I really enjoyed it.

This is a fantastic, well researched, fascinating book doing what no researcher has done before - linking the Villisca killer with all his other crimes. James' style is fun and easy to read, and the way he peels back the layers of these crimes is captivating. Icannot recommend this highly enough.

This book was so very interesting, and written extremely well. Listened to the audiobook, and the narrator was top-notch, striking the right tone that the author was going for. If you like true crime, this is a great book!

Bill James, controversial baseball writer and statistician, has written a book, “The Man from the Train,” about solving a serial killer mystery. It would be fair to ask what a man with James’ background in baseball knows about solving a 100-year old mystery replete with axe slayings and sexual perversion by an invisible man? Or maybe a better question would be, why?

His background of assembling massive amounts of data is obvious and James answers the question of why in the preface to his study. After reading an account of a notorious Iowa family massacre over a hundred years ago, he had the thought that there must be other incidents that could be linked to the same murderer.

Using the miracle of computers, he and his daughter, Rachel, uncovered scores of others in which, as an aftermath, people had been executed, lynched, and rotted in prison as perpetrators of the crimes. In reality, according to their conclusions, a single Man from the Train committed the horrific crimes. They even identify the mad man, name him, and track his movements as he jumps off trains to commit mayhem and back on to disappear.

The James gang, using their talent for researching and assembling data from hundreds thousands of small–town newspapers and sketchy police and court records, produce the results covered in their book. Their tenacity for sifting together and melding tremendous mounds of raw statistics into a sound and reliable conclusion is evident.

James has a unique writing style. He’s persuasive, witty, somewhat whimsical, and definitely convinced he’s right in his conclusions. That sometimes makes his treatise slightly airy and sarcastic. His attitude is, “Here’s what we found. You can believe it or move along to another topic or book.” I believe it, have followed along, and now have knowledge of something I never heard of.

I find the final murderous episode in far-off Germany, some ten years after the end of the United States episodes, somewhat incredulous and far-reaching, but this is his book and I‘ve bought into his conclusions.

Schuyler T Wallace
Author of TIN LIZARD TALES

Badly written, which results in a very clunky, laborious read. I wanted to like it and I'm loathed to dismiss something which has clearly involved a lot of time-consuming research, but I gave up half way through. It could be a much more compelling story but sadly structure and style get in the way of this being a good book.

As others have stated, the authors obviously spent a lot of time researching crimes over a long period of time but the story jumps around too much and fails to create a coherent narrative. I'm sorry to say I regret forcing myself to finish it.

This is a terrific read -- very well researched and written in a conversational, accessible voice. It examines the crimes committed by this itinerant killer, but it also provides a snapshot of American life at this time period, and a look at media and communication during an earlier period in our history. A really, really good read.

Loved this book-it was terrifying to me. The authors did a great job compiling all of their research into this story. The thought of the killer rampaging up the stairs in a house was the most horrifying part.

As fascinating as the subject matter is, the connection of the Iowa murders to a serial killer who rode the rails is far from revolutionary. The 2006 documentary Villisca: Living With A Mystery was the first to explore this.

Mr. James is another self-congratulatory, dime-a-dozen Liberal Democrat who seems to think his cheap shots directed at white Southerners automatically makes him a great author. The narrative is dull, dry and disjointed. Is that. . . .Is that alliteration? Don't waste your credit and certainly not your money.