 The
Devil's Rooming House
A silent, simmering killer terrorized
New England in 1911. A heat wave unlike any that had come
before killed people in the streets, caused others to drown
in the waters where they sought relief, and drove still
others to suicide. As more than 2,000 people died during the
natural disaster, another silent killer began her own
murderous spree. Amy Archer-Gilligan operated the Archer
Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids in Windsor,
Connecticut. What was thought to be a respectable business
run by a pioneering woman was exposed as little more than a
murder factory.
Amy would be accused of murdering both
her husbands and dozens (as many as sixty) of her elderly
patients with cocktails of lemonade and arsenic—all for
money. She would be convicted and sentenced to hang, and her
story would shock turn-of-the-century America and provide
the inspiration for the Broadway sensation and classic film
Arsenic and Old Lace. Acclaimed crime writer M. William
Phelps has written the first book to tell the true story of
greed and murder even more shocking than its fictional
counterpart.
Readers will enter a kind of Twilight Zone where a
Bible-thumping caretaker and entrepreneur of the nursing
home industry became one of history’s most evil female
serial killers. With first-hand accounts from Amy’s
“inmates,” riveting trial transcripts, and accounts from the
investigative journalists who covered the case, Phelps puts
readers face-to-face with a woman who was both a Black Widow
and an Angel of Death. And Phelps paints a vivid,
spine-chilling portrait of turn-of-the-century New England.
This is historical true crime at its best.
mwilliamphelps.com
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