E H Freeman

Edward H. Rulloff: the Veil of Secrecy Removed E H Freeman

??you cannot kill an unquiet spirit, and I know that my impending death will not mean the end of Rulloff. In the dead of the night, walking along Cayuga Street, you will sense my presence. When you wake to a sudden chill, I will be in the room. And when you find yourself alone at the lake shore, gazing away at gray Cayuga, know that I was cut short and your ancestors killed me.? These were words of Edward H. Rulloff as he faced the gallows in May of 1871, following some twenty-five years at war with society. He was unrepentant murderer, thief and bona fide evil genius who committed robberies to fund his grandiose research into the lost origin of all languages. His trial created a sensation in post-Civil War America, inspiring a wry editorial by no less a personage than Mark Twain. Journalist E. H. Freeman was Rulloff?s jailhouse confidant and confessor. In Edward H. Rulloff: The Veil of Secrecy Removed, we learn of his early years as a child prodigy, the murder of his wife, his history as a prisoner and fugitive, his public trials and jailbreaks, and of his research into ?the great secret in philology.? A long-scarce, out-of-print text, Freeman?s biography of the villain-scholar is the essential primary source upon which all later works on Rulloff have depended.