Women Who Love Men Who Kill: 35 True Stories of Prison Passion

Sheila Isenberg

Oct 2021 · Diversion Books

About this ebook

The “engrossing, thoroughly researched look at women who are in romantic relationships with incarcerated men”—fully updated with twenty-first-century cases (Publishers Weekly).
 
In 1991, Sheila Isenberg’s classic study Women Who Love Men Who Kill asked the provocative question, “Why do women fall in love with convicted murderers?” Now, Isenberg returns to the same question in the age of smart phones, social media, mass shootings, and modern prison dating. The result is a compelling psychological study of prison passion in the new millennium.
 
Isenberg conducts extensive interviews with women who seek relationships with convicted killers, as well as conversations with psychiatrists, social workers, and prison officials. She shows that many of these women know exactly what they are getting into—yet they are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of a love without hope, promise, or consummation.
 
This edition of Women Who Love Men Who Kill includes gripping new case studies and an absorbing look at how the digital age is revolutionizing this phenomenon. Meet the young women writing “fan fiction” featuring America’s most sadistic murderers; the killer serving consecutive life sentences for strangling his wife and smothering his toddler daughters—and the women who visit him in prison; the high-powered journalist who fell in love and risked it all for “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli; and many other women absorbed in online and real-life dalliances with their killer men.

About the author

Sheila Isenberg is an author and journalist. A member of the Authors’ Guild, PEN, and Women Writing Women’s Lives, she is the recipient of fellowships and grants, including one from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Isenberg has been interviewed often by national and international media and has appeared in several documentaries. She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley.