In a Child's Name: The Legacy of a Mother's Murder - Hardcover

Maas, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671694162 ISBN 13: 9780671694166

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1990

Synopsis

Relates the story of the brutal murder of a young wife by her psychopathic husband and how it sparked a nasty custody battle over the couple's infant son between the murdered woman's sister and the killer's parents

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

In 1984 Ken Taylor, a dentist in Marion, Ind., cracked open the skull of his third wife, Teresa, with a dumbbell. Driving her body halfway across the country, he dumped it along a Pennsylvania road, then went to visit an ex-wife in Pittsburgh. Apprehended, Taylor, a calm, eerily confident wife-beater, philanderer and heavy user of marijuana and amphetamines, pleaded self-defense. He put forth a bizarre story that Teresa had been a drug addict and that he had caught her performing oral sex on their five-month-old son, Philip. In a taut, chilling voyage into the mind of a sociopath, Maas ( Serpico ) highlights the regional, religious and ethnic passions unleashed by a case that extended from the Midwestern Bible Belt to New Jersey, from Mexico to Staten Island, N.Y. As dramatic as the trial itself was the custody battle over Philip; his paternal grandparents temporarily adopted him after snatching him away from Teresa's sister, who had won custody. The grandparents' scheme, according to Maas, was directed by the convicted murderer from his cell. Photos. $100,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Kenneth Taylor, a dentist, brutally beat to death his third wife, Teresa, thereby orphaning their infant son, who became the focus of a bitter custody battle between Taylor's Indiana parents and Teresa's New Jersey relatives. Despite Taylor's absurd claim that Teresa sexually abused their son, there was no motive for the murder, but then there was none for his vicious attack on Teresa during their honeymoon (blamed on "intruders") or a similar assault on his second wife. Maas, author of Serpico ( LJ 12/15/73) and Manhunt ( LJ 7/86), provides a dark, compelling portrait of a sociopathic middle-class professional who ruined many lives. A wrenching story with popular appeal. Literary Guild main selection; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/90.
- Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0671694162
• ISBN 13: 9780671694166
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 378