Daunting as the room was, Vera, the bookworm, couldn’t stay away from it, lured by the impressive collection of rare volumes that had belonged to the previous owner, a bibliophile by avocation, a wealthy and powerful literary agent—representing some of the top authors in horror, fantasy, and science fiction—by vocation. The books had come with the house, because the library had remained untouched since the murders; no heirs of the family had wanted them, considering them cursed.

It happened in the early 1980s. According to the estate manager, it was the custom every Friday evening for the family to convene in the library, where the father would read by firelight a classic fantasy tale to his children, gathered round the hearth, while his wife crocheted. On this particular Friday, a bitterly cold November night, the live-in estate manager bid the family goodnight before taking the weekend off to visit relatives downstate. As he later noted to the police, tonight’s classic was an Unwin & Allen first edition of The Hobbit.

When the estate manager returned the following Monday morning and found the front door unlocked and the bedrooms unslept in, he immediately began a search of the house, starting, naturally, with the library. The door was closed, which was not unusual, as the library was climate controlled and humidified for the protection of the rare books. When he opened it, he reeled at the ghastly scene before him, and clutched the jamb to break his fall.

The entire family was dead, shot execution-style in the torso. Their bodies were arranged on the floor with their arms and legs spread, feet touching, to form a crude star shape. Upon each of their faces an open book, seemingly randomly chosen, had been laid. Despite his revulsion, the estate manager’s curiosity got the better of him, and he peeked under the book resting on the father’s face. The murderer had taken a trophy—the right eye; he had done the same with the other victims, the investigation later revealed.

The estate manager had picked up the library telephone to summon the police when he heard a plaintive wail, and looked up to see the family cat, perched upon a shelf beside a bust of Edgar Allan Poe, tail puffed up, pupils gigantic with fright. It was later determined the cat had been shut up in the charnel house all weekend, and had likely been the only witness to the murders. And when it had gotten hungry it had…

Suffice it to say, the tabloids went into gory detail about this grisly aspect of the case, which remained unsolved. Nothing had been stolen, not even a single priceless book. The bizarre clues became the subject of countless sensational articles, books, and documentaries. But the killer remained at large and had not struck again, to anyone’s knowledge—at least not in the same confounding and gruesome manner.