THE MEMPHIS MURDERS

by Gerald Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1974

Three years after that 1969 Memphis summer of five grisly murders, the killer's young wife, Mary Putt, contacted Meyer to sell her story; and it is Meyer's intelligent weighting of that material from Mary and others of her family, with the five case histories and police documentation, which gives this reportage its breadth and affect. The deaths were violent and obscene with robbery as the motive -- committed by George Howard ""Buster"" Putt, a battered child who grew up in boys' homes with brother Clifford. An early head injury might or might not have caused a psychopathic turn (he was judged sane in court). Mary married Buster as an alternative to Clifford whose child she was carrying. The child of a Mississippi sharecropper, Mary, after a brief period of youthful hopes, got knocked up, married and began that restless movement of the urban poor: work and education continuously started and dropped, dingy apartments, welfare (you took Tennessee's $96.00 a month rather than Mississippi's $26.00); finance companies, establishment. cruelty (she was turned away from a hospital while in labor because she had no money). Thus the killer lived in an atmosphere encouraging to instant satisfactions; a seriously disturbed man, trapped by his own nature, he also embodied the cynical hopelessness of the poor. Mary (who knew nothing of Buster's crimes until after he was caught) remembered him saying after a TV plea to the killer, ""They don't really help people like that."" A cool, steady, responsible account of tragedy and terror -- of victims both living and dead.

Pub Date: May 1, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Seabury

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1974

Categories: NONFICTION