July 8, 2024

Looking back at The Misbegotten Son

the true crime that's worth your time

Over the course of the summer, we’ll be doing a look back at the 1994 Edgar Award nominees for Best Fact Crime. …Our next 1994 Edgar nominee is The Misbegotten Son by Jack Olsen.

[read Susan Howard’s full review here, or join us with a paid sub and get these straight to your inbox!]

The crime
Serial killer Arthur Shawcross’s first known murders occurred in his home town of Watertown in New York’s North Country region. In 1972, he abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered a young boy and girl. Granted a plea deal and ultimately an early parole in 1988 due to prison overcrowding, Shawcross re-settled in Rochester, where his second murder spree under a new M.O. began, this time targeting sex workers. Within a span of two years, he would claim 12 victims, dumping their remains along the Genesee River Gorge.

The story
The Misbegotten Son adheres to Jack Olsen’s signature style of investigative crime writing – studies of some of America’s most sadistic and violent criminals. I’ve always founded his books thorough, if somewhat muddled. This one fits that bill while also being very graphic – this reader had to set it aside more than once. The strengths of The Misbegotten Son lie in the first person accounts from dozens in Shawcross’ orbit: his wives, girlfriends, co-workers, investigators, and victims’ family members. The most compelling and fascinating of these voices are the Rochester sex worker, known in the book as "Jo Ann Van Nostrand," who was instrumental in his capture; and the mother of Shawcross’s first known victim, Mary Blake. Both these women deserve their own books.

Olsen does an excellent job transporting the reader to the communities where Shawcross lived and committed his crimes – from the very insular Watertown to the handful of communities with their own histories of traumatic child murders that ran Shawcross away after his release on parole. Shawcross lands in Rochester in large part because he can blend in there, though his quirks (riding around town on a bicycle always equipped with fishing gear handing out his catch; hanging out at Dunkin’ Donuts in the middle of the night talking to cops; being gross and inappropriate with just about every woman he comes into contact with) can’t be stifled.

The Misbegotten Son is very concerned with digging into Shawcross’s background and classifying his behavior and mental processes. He exhibited behavioral problems and violent tendencies by the age of 8, and checked all three boxes of the homicidal triad – bedwetting, arson, and cruelty to animals. He was a peeping tom and a thief. However, psychologists examining him after his first murders did not detect any brain or nervous-system anomalies. His profile remained a list of symptoms without an official diagnosis.

A psychological evaluation by Dr. Richard Kraus (hired by the defense in Shawcross’s trial for the Rochester murders) comprises the final section of The Misbegotten Son. Kraus’s job was to determine a diagnosis that could be used in trial as grounds for an insanity plea. Kraus is skeptical of the Vietnam service trauma and childhood abuse Shawcross insists remove his culpability. Kraus ultimately lands on a genetic diagnosis – a chromosomal abnormality known as 47,XXY syndrome. That theory didn’t move the needle in Shawcross’s case, and it appears that studies over the last 30-plus years since the publication of The Misbegotten Son have not established a clear link between the syndrome and criminal behavior. It’s an odd note on which to end the book, although perhaps when it was published, the potential genetic explanation felt like an “a-ha” endnote to this twisted story.

Olsen’s catalogue has its place, but his output may feel mostly gratuitous to the present-day reader. This one specifically is a hard book to recommend – it’s long, the subject matter is really disturbing, and the preoccupation with identifying the “why” behind Shawcross’s sadistic crimes really starts to wear.