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America’s First Serial Killers and Many More Deadly Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan September 6, 2020 35 min

Train - Train robbery — History's first peacetime passenger train robbery. CBS News

39. America’s First Serial Killers

‘Gateway to the West, Daniel Boone Leading the Settlers Through the Cumberland Gap, 1775’, by David Wright. Cumberland National Historic Park

The Harpe brothers began their career of deadly mayhem during the American Revolution. British Loyalists fought for King George III as volunteer militia and irregulars. After their side lost the war, they became outlaws, and took to robbing and killing settlers west of the Appalachians.

Their depravities seem to have been driven by sheer bloody-mindedness and blood lust, rather than financial gain. That has led scholars to designate them as the country’s first documented “serial killers”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.