In the untamed wilderness of late eighteenth-centuryAmerica, where the rule of law barely reached beyond scattered frontier settlements, two men carved a bloody path through the territories of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. Micajah "Big" Harpe and Wiley "Little" Harpe are often referred to as cousins. However, their exact familial relationship remains debated by historians, and they have earned thegrim distinction of being considered America's first serial killers. Between 1798 and 1799, these two men terrorized the frontier with acts of violence so brutal and seemingly purposeless that they shocked even the hardened settlersof the American borderlands.

On July 2, 1778, Bathsheba Spooner became the first woman executed in the newly independent United States of America. Her death by hanging in Worcester, Massachusetts, marked a dark chapter in Revolutionary War-era justice and sparked debates about capital punishment, pregnancy, and the rights of the accused that would echo through American legal history for generations to come.