Fall 2018:

This was part of a historical horror series released by Amazon for checkout on special. I ended up listening through all of them, and being both fascinated and horrified by the things within. The questions that are left, and the points about how certain authors and certain novels headtip to these things was quite interesting. ( )

Interesting read ( )

Before listening to The Pied Piper, I had never heard of Charlie Schmid. In 1960s Tuscon, AZ, Schmid gathered a group of followers around him. Schmid had a fascination with killing people. He murdered three young women just to do it. He got away with it for awhile....until his friends turned on him.

This story is supremely creepy. I don't see how Charles Schmid had any sort of magnetic personality. His behavior and appearance seems incredibly odd. He loved Elvis...so he dyed his hair black, used mascara and applied pancake makeup to his face. He walked around with a strange sneer on his face, thinking it made him look like Elvis. That would not attract me to follow someone into aberrant behavior....it would repel me. But then again, I guess I can't understand why people followed Charles Manson either.

Bizarre story. I listened to the audio book version of The Pied Piper. The audio is just over an hour long and is narrated by Steven Weber. Weber reads at an even pace and is easily understandable. I have partial hearing loss but was easily able to hear and understand the entire story.

The Pied Piper is one of six true crime stories in the Bloodlands Collection from Audible/Amazon Originals. Schechter has written several true crime novels about famous killers including Ed Gein and H.H. Holmes. The Bloodlands Collection gathers together little known stories of crimes from the last 100 years. I've listened to 3 of the stories so far....enjoyable and informative. This one is by far the creepiest. Schmid makes for a disturbing tale of murder and weird behavior. ( )

In the 1950's there was a young serial killer named Charles Starkweather. In the late 1960's there was Charles Manson. Wedged in between was Charles Schmid, an Elvis wanna-be who killed teenage girls and buried them out in the Tucson desert. His notoriety at the time of his arrest earned him the nickname "The Pied Piper of Tucson" as his sociopathic charm made him popular with girls despite the fact that he wore a full face of heavy make-up.
This was the most interesting of the Bloodlands Collection of true crime stories, to me. Maybe because Tucson isn't that far from me, or just the fact that it was recent enough that there were pictures of the weird looking but sort of handsome killer, including one of him in women's clothing and wig from when he escaped from prison and was immediately recognized by a railroad worker, who just happened to have gone to high school with him.
I should mention that each Kindle edition of these stories has some pretty cool graphics. When you open this one, the shovel raises and then stabs into the dirt, where a skeletal hand appears, then there's a flashing montage of actual newspaper and magazine headlines and photos of the victims. Really well done, and it's another story I'd never heard of. ( )

This one did not captivate me as much as the others in the series, but still a good account. ( )