More than compiling a chronicle of horrors, Castel and Goodrich have produced the first full-fledged account of Anderson's career. Then he led the brutal Centralia Massacre, a blood-soaked nightmare recounted here hour-by-hour from firsthand accounts. He rode with Quantrill in the infamous sack of Lawrence and killed more victims than any other raider. In telling this story of bitter bloodshed, historians Castel and Goodrich track Bloody Bill's reign of terror over increasingly violent raids. Wherever Bloody Bill rode, the Grim Reaper rode alongside. Sometimes he decapitated them and rearranged their heads. Sometimes he left the bodies of dead Federal soldiers scalped, skinned, and castrated. A former horse thief turned bushwhacker, he became the scourge of Kansas and Missouri with a reputation for unspeakable atrocities. A name associated with William Quantrill and Jesse James, Bloody Bill Anderson was known for never taking prisoners. For a brief but dramatic period, ""Bloody Bill"" played the leading role in the most violent arena of the entire war - and did so with a vicious abandon that spread fear throughout the land. Nowhere was the Civil War as savage as it was in Missouri - and nowhere did it produce a killer more savage than William Anderson. This book talks about the short, savage life of a civil war guerrilla.
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