Killer in the House

Ten Days of Terror in a Pennsylvania Suburb

A meticulously researched work 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 (P)2026 Tantor Media