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Killer in the House

Ten Days of Terror in a Pennsylvania Suburb

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Killer in the House

By: Kathryn Canavan
Narrated by: Tanya Eby
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A meticulously researched page-turner about one of the Philadelphia suburbs' most shocking twentieth-century crimes. A gunman broke into Jack and Peggy Abt's house moments after the last family member left for the day. He took a seat in the living room and waited for eleven hours.

People expect things to go bump in the night, but, in 1976, most adults never fretted a stranger would invade the sanctity of their home in the middle of the day. Six people walked through the kitchen door one by one that afternoon, all expecting nothing more than a Friday night fish fry. The killer leaped out from behind the living room wall over and over and over and over and over and over again. He fired at them at a distance of less than eighteen inches. After each murder, he dragged the body to the basement. Then he sped back upstairs to tidy up for his next victim.

This story from a news reporter who was on the scene ninety minutes after the killer slipped away is built from autopsy reports, prison records, IQ tests, trial transcripts, the killer's own eidetic confession, interviews with witnesses, and the author's experiences covering the case. With that research, it was possible to reconstruct the six murders, minute by minute. Tension builds as the six innocent victims turn the kitchen doorknob at 3:30, 4:15, 4:40, 5:15, 6:10 and at 6:30.

©2026 Kathryn Canavan
Americas Biographies & Memoirs Murder State & Local True Crime United States Crime
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The reporter began the book about how she didn’t stay for a “scoop” the night the murders happened. Okay. Why keep bringing it up? The story is not how you missed breaking the story! There were numerous instances of sentences and paragraphs being repeated. I finally stopped checking to see if I had inadvertently pressed rewind on the file! Editing was lacking. As mentioned in other reviews this could have easily been a short story, or a magazine article. Not enough there for a book! Waste of a credit!

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