Chambers of Horror

Chambers of Horror is a study of the warped thinking that went into some of the world’s most macabre crimes, as well as a clinical examination of the purpose-built rooms, hidden spaces and soundproof dungeons increasingly prepared for victims.


From the massive ‘Murder Castle’ once used by Dr. H. H. Holmes to prey upon those attending the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to the hand-tooled box kept under the bed where Cameron Hooker kept his ‘sex slave’, this book covers famous cases of the past along with many from the modern age. John Marlowe takes the reader on a disturbing journey through a world of murder and mayhem, providing insight into evil and the motivations of monsters.


• In 1984 abusive father Josef Fritzl drugged his 18-year-old daughter with ether and imprisoned her in a dungeon under his house – she wasn’t to see daylight for 24 years


• Down-and-out millionaire Gary Heidnik wallpapered his hallway with $5 bills, anointed himself bishop of his own religion and began collecting ‘wives’, women he abducted from the street and kept chained up in a pit


• Bondage freak Izabela Lewicka willingly signed a 15-item contract giving John Edward Robinson complete control over her life, but she never imagined it was a licence to kill