| MATTHEW LYNCH,
EXECUTIVE EDITOR |
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Not so long ago, in our pre-Google prehistory, one had to really work to find instruction in certain unsavory aspects of human knowledge. In the 1980s and ’90s, a handful of publishers filled the market for mayhem how-tos with titles like Breath of the Dragon: Homebuilt Flamethrowers and Advanced Dim-Mak: The Finer Points of Death-Point Striking. Today, first-time VF contributor Abbott Kahler tells the story of one such book, Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, and the woman who wrote it. The author, now a great-grandmother whose real identity has not previously been reported, has lived with guilt for decades after the manual was found to have inspired a triple murder that took place in 1993. It’s a truly incredible story that only grows stranger from there.
Elsewhere today, Noah Shachtman reports on Jay-Z’s thwarted bid to build a casino in New York; the Trumps head to London; and the Fed caves on interest rates. More tomorrow… |
Abbott Kahler was a young reporter in the late 1990s when Hit Man became the center of a First Amendment test case. While the book, and the various trials left in its wake, attracted media attention, no one seemed able to pin down its mysterious author, who wrote under the pen name “Rex Feral”—ersatz Latin for “king of the wild beasts.” |
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“Only one detail about her life had come to light: She was a divorced mother of two living in a trailer park in Florida,” Kahler writes. “I grew obsessed with her. How did this woman come to write a murder manual? What had happened in her life to bring her to that point?” |
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BY ALLISON SCHALLER AND HILLARY BUSIS |
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