Harpe Brothers: America's First Serial Killers

Before the gunslingers, before the hanging judges, there were the Harpes — and the American frontier had no word for what they were.In August 1799, a posse ran down a fleeing horseman in the Kentucky barrens. As he lay dying, the husband of a woman he had butchered drew a knife and took his head, then carried it to a crossroads and wedged it in the fork of a tree as a warning. The place is still c...