Killer in the House: Ten Days of Terror in a Pennsylvania Suburb

"Kathryn Canavan's Killer in the House is true crime writing at its best. Extensively researched and told with compelling insights and graceful writing, the book tells the story of the gruesome Abt family murders with humanizing details that give this decades-old crime new relevance in our increasingly violent America." -- Anne Hillerman, New York Times bestselling author of the Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito mysteries

A meticulously researched page-turner about one of the Philadelphia suburbs' most shocking 20th-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 next to the upright piano in the living room and waited silently for 11 hours. He didn't eat. He didn't sleep. He didn't watch television.

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 18 inches, the width of a dining room chair. After each murder, he dragged the body to the basement. Then, to maintain the element of surprise, he sped back upstairs to tidy up for his next unsuspecting victim.

This first-person story from a news reporter who was on the scene 90 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 in 1976 and in the 2020s, and the author's experiences covering the case from the first night to the stunning courtroom moment when the announcement of six death penalties was met with loud cheers.

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. Readers know their fates, but they didn't.

To get a story, journalist Kathryn Canavan has reported at gunpoint, lived with the Moonies, negotiated with a killer and joined Tug McGraw in the dugout. She has worked as a reporter or editor on daily newspapers in four states. She is the author of two other true crime books--Lincoln's Final Hours and True Crime Philadelphia. She has been featured on PBS, CSPAN-3 and the Discovery Channel. Her writing has been published in USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily Beast and the History News Network.