This is exactly right.

This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised. We know people do evil things, but we don't really understand the many faces of evil. In 1871, it took journalist Hamilton Freeman just a few minutes to figure out that Edward

Ruloff was not a spiritual man.

The journalist told himself, this man prays to science, not God.

Freeman was sitting knee to knee with a killer who had ignored so many tenants at the Bible

for decades, but Edward Ruloff did believe in one biblical theme, vengeance.

His real troubles began almost 30 years earlier

when he was still a member of the Scut family. In the spring of 1845 there didn't seem to be a need for vengeance

yet because Edward Ruloff was actually happy for once.

After a year and a half of marriage he and his 18 year old wife Harriet weren't

fighting quite as much as they used to. They had bigger priorities.

On April 12th, Harriet gave birth to a little girl they named Purcell after his mother.

Edward had made up with his brother-in-law after their last argument over Dr. Henry Bull.

William prayed that parenthood would somehow give Edward some peace,

maybe more grounding.

He might actually be a good father.

And there was more promising news. Edward planned to move his little family out west to Ohio for a new start.

He had been offered a position as the principle of a but with little financial gain. Historian H. W. Brands says that being a professor in 1845

wasn't particularly lucrative.

Professors were poorly paid in those days

and you pretty much had to do it for the love of learning and within

...