Intelligence, Evil, and the Birth of Criminal Psychology: A Review of All That Is Wicked

In All That Is Wicked, Kate Winkler Dawson examines the life and crimes of Edward Rulloff, a nineteenth-century murderer whose intelligence fascinated the public almost as much as his violence horrified it. Rulloff was a criminal, linguist, self-styled scholar, and master manipulator who became the object of intense scrutiny from journalists, physicians, psychiatrists, neurologists, and phrenologists. Many believed that studying him—and eventually his brain—might reveal the physical or psychological source of evil.

Dawson’s book operates at the intersection of true crime, intellectual history, and the early development of criminal psychology. It is not merely a chronological account of Rulloff’s offenses. It is also a study of how Victorian America attempted to understand people who seemed to violate every accepted standard of morality. Through Rulloff’s case, Dawson explores an enduring question: Are violent criminals born with some identifiable defect, or are they shaped by experience and circumstance?

The result is a dark and intriguing work of historical true crime. Its strongest sections reveal how badly nineteenth-century experts wanted scientific certainty—and how easily that desire could turn an intelligent murderer into a cultural myth.

The Making of a Criminal Celebrity

Edward Rulloff possessed qualities that made him unusually compelling to the nineteenth-century public. He was educated, articulate, commanding, and apparently capable of discussing difficult academic subjects. He projected an image of intellectual superiority and cultivated the impression that he was engaged in important linguistic work. This distinguished him from popular images of criminals as ignorant, impulsive, or visibly degraded.

His intelligence also complicated the public’s response to him. Some observers treated his learning as evidence that he was extraordinary, perhaps even too valuable to execute. If his mind could produce a major scholarly contribution, they wondered, should society preserve him despite his crimes?

That question exposes one of the book’s most disturbing themes: the tendency to confuse intelligence with worth. Rulloff’s victims could become secondary to speculation about his potential. His education and self-confidence granted him a degree of attention—and sometimes sympathy—that a less charismatic criminal would never have received.

Dawson is especially effective when examining how Rulloff participated in creating his own legend. He understood the power of performance. Whether addressing investigators, journalists, visitors, or experts, he presented himself as someone too complex to be judged by ordinary standards. He offered different versions of himself depending on his audience: misunderstood genius, persecuted intellectual, imposing scholar, or unknowable criminal mastermind.

The public did not simply discover Rulloff’s mystique. Rulloff actively manufactured it.

A Story Larger Than One Murderer

Although Rulloff provides the narrative center, All That Is Wicked is ultimately concerned with a broader historical transformation. During the nineteenth century, older religious and moral explanations for criminal behavior increasingly competed with emerging scientific theories. A murderer might still be described as sinful or wicked, but physicians and investigators were beginning to ask whether violence could be traced to disease, heredity, anatomy, insanity, or psychological abnormality.

This shift created new kinds of experts. Alienists, the predecessors of modern psychiatrists, evaluated behavior and mental stability. Neurologists searched the brain for physical abnormalities. Phrenologists claimed that personality and moral character could be inferred from the shape of the skull. Anatomists hoped dissection might uncover visible evidence of criminality.

Rulloff became an ideal test subject because he seemed to embody a contradiction. How could a person appear rational, educated, and disciplined while committing terrible acts? If intelligence did not guarantee morality, then what did? If he was mentally ill, why could he reason and plan so effectively? If he was sane, how could his apparent lack of conscience be explained?

These questions remain recognizable, even if the methods used to answer them have changed. Dawson uses the historical material to demonstrate that criminal psychology did not emerge fully formed. It developed through arguments, mistaken assumptions, speculative theories, and attempts to impose order on behavior that frightened and confused the public.

The Seduction of the “Criminal Genius”

Rulloff has sometimes been described as a Victorian precursor to the sophisticated fictional serial killer: cultured, brilliant, calculating, and emotionally detached. That comparison is understandable, but Dawson’s account also reveals the danger of romanticizing him.

The concept of the criminal genius is appealing because it transforms ugly violence into a contest between exceptional minds. Murder becomes a puzzle, and the murderer becomes a dark celebrity. The suffering of victims can be pushed aside while attention turns toward the perpetrator’s supposed brilliance.

Dawson generally resists surrendering entirely to Rulloff’s self-created image. His intellectual reputation is treated as something to investigate rather than accept. He may have been intelligent, but intelligence is not the same as wisdom, originality, or genuine scholarly accomplishment. A person can possess an impressive memory, a forceful personality, and an ability to manipulate others without being the transcendent genius admirers imagine.

This distinction matters because Rulloff benefited from other people’s need to see him as extraordinary. His apparent sophistication made his crimes seem more mysterious than they might otherwise have appeared. Yet his motives—revenge, resentment, envy, self-preservation, and control—were often disturbingly ordinary.

The book is strongest when it lets the gap between myth and reality become visible. Rulloff may have wanted to be remembered as an unfathomable intellectual force, but much of his conduct can also be read as the behavior of an entitled, violent man who used intelligence in the service of domination.

Victims and Narrative Balance

Any book centered on a notorious murderer faces an ethical problem: how can it investigate the offender without reproducing the imbalance that made him famous?

Rulloff left behind an abundant and sensational public record. His statements, trials, escapes, intellectual claims, and encounters with experts naturally generate dramatic material. His victims, by contrast, often survive in the historical record through fragmented documentation. This makes it difficult to give them equal narrative presence.

All That Is Wicked does not ignore the people harmed by Rulloff, but the structure inevitably remains centered on him. The scientific and cultural fascination surrounding his mind is the book’s principal subject, and that means readers spend far more time considering his personality than the lives he destroyed.

At times, this imbalance is uncomfortable. But it also reflects one of Dawson’s implicit criticisms of true-crime culture, both Victorian and modern. The killer’s charisma tends to dominate. The more intelligent, theatrical, or mysterious he appears, the more likely society is to elevate him into a legend.

Readers who prefer victim-centered true crime may therefore find the book frustrating. Those interested in the history of criminology, forensic thought, and criminal celebrity are more likely to appreciate Dawson’s chosen emphasis.

Science in Search of Certainty

The most compelling aspect of the book is its portrayal of early efforts to classify and explain criminal behavior. The experts surrounding Rulloff were not simply curious about one man. They hoped his body and mind might provide general rules about violence.

Some believed the answer could be found in the brain. Others searched the skull’s dimensions and contours. Still others focused on madness, moral deficiency, heredity, or environmental influence. Each discipline brought its own terminology and assumptions, and each tended to interpret Rulloff according to the theory it already favored.

This history illustrates both the ambition and danger of scientific explanation. The desire to understand violent behavior is reasonable, but the search for a single physical sign of wickedness can encourage simplistic conclusions. If criminality could be identified through anatomy, society might believe that dangerous people could be detected before they acted. Such confidence could easily support prejudice, biological determinism, and abusive systems of classification.

Dawson does not treat early investigators as merely foolish. Many were working without the concepts, technology, or evidence available today. Their theories often appear absurd in retrospect, particularly phrenology, but their basic questions have not disappeared. Modern researchers still investigate neurological development, trauma, personality disorders, genetic influences, and environmental factors associated with aggression.

What has changed is the recognition that behavior rarely has a single, easily isolated cause. A brain cannot simply be removed, preserved, and expected to disclose the moral history of its owner.

The Brain in the Jar

The fate of Rulloff’s brain provides the book with its most memorable symbol. After his death, the organ became a specimen, preserved in the hope that physical examination would reveal what testimony and observation could not.

The image is both grotesque and strangely poignant: a once-feared man reduced to tissue in a container, his supposed genius and wickedness unavailable to direct inspection. The brain promises answers merely because it belonged to someone notorious. Yet its continued existence also demonstrates the failure of the original project. No visible mark provides a definitive explanation for Rulloff’s actions.

As a historical artifact, the brain represents the optimism of an age that believed the body could be made to confess. It also represents the transformation of a human being into evidence. Rulloff spent much of his life controlling his own story, but after death he became an object labeled and interpreted by others.

There is an irony in this outcome. The man who wanted recognition for his mind achieved a form of physical immortality through his brain, but not the scholarly immortality he imagined. The preserved specimen is famous because of his crimes, not because it validates his claims to greatness.

Dawson uses this image effectively as a bridge between biography and intellectual history. The brain is at once a curiosity, a scientific artifact, and a monument to the limits of forensic certainty.

Historical Atmosphere and Research

Dawson’s experience with narrative true crime is evident in the book’s pace and construction. She draws on court records, newspaper reports, scientific discussions, and other historical documents to reconstruct both Rulloff’s life and the world that responded to him.

The nineteenth-century setting is essential to the story. This was a period of growing cities, expanding newspapers, public executions, developing police institutions, and intense debate over insanity and criminal responsibility. It was also an era when legitimate scientific investigation coexisted with theories now regarded as pseudoscientific.

Dawson conveys the atmosphere of that transitional period particularly well. Rulloff’s story unfolds in a culture eager for modern explanations but still uncertain about what counted as reliable science. Newspapers helped turn criminal cases into mass entertainment, while experts competed to establish authority over the newly imagined territory of the criminal mind.

Because the book originated from podcast material, some readers may notice an episodic quality. Scenes and historical figures arrive in segments, and certain ideas are revisited to maintain continuity. This makes the narrative approachable, especially in audio form, but it can also create repetition.

The prose favors momentum over dense academic analysis. Readers seeking an exhaustive scholarly history of nineteenth-century psychiatry may find the treatment too streamlined. For a general audience, however, Dawson offers enough context to explain why Rulloff mattered without allowing specialized terminology to overwhelm the story.

Born Evil or Made Wicked?

The central philosophical question of All That Is Wicked is whether evil is innate or produced by circumstance. Rulloff’s observers wanted a decisive answer, but his case resists one.

To call him born evil would simplify the mystery by locating wickedness within his nature. To blame environment alone would risk diminishing personal responsibility. Neither explanation fully accounts for the relationship among temperament, experience, choice, intelligence, and social conditions.

Dawson wisely avoids pretending that a historical biography can solve this debate. Instead, she shows why the question is so persistent. People want violent behavior to have an identifiable cause because causation promises prevention. If evil comes from biology, perhaps it can be detected. If it comes from childhood experience, perhaps it can be interrupted. If it results from illness, perhaps it can be treated.

Rulloff frustrates these hopes. His intelligence did not protect him from brutality. His ability to reason did not produce empathy. His apparent self-control did not prevent violence; it sometimes made that violence more purposeful. He forces a distinction between cognitive ability and moral character.

The book’s title reflects this ambiguity. “Wicked” is a moral term rather than a medical diagnosis. It expresses judgment while leaving causation unresolved. Rulloff may be analyzed scientifically, but science cannot replace the ethical language necessary to describe deliberate cruelty.

Strengths

The book’s greatest strength is its unusual combination of true crime and history of science. Rulloff’s biography is disturbing on its own, but the reactions to him add a richer layer. The reader learns not only what he did but how one period attempted to define sanity, responsibility, genius, and criminality.

Dawson also has a strong eye for vivid historical details. Public fascination, courtroom drama, scientific competition, and the preserved brain all give the narrative a gothic quality without requiring fictional embellishment.

Another strength is the book’s skepticism toward easy conclusions. Rulloff is not reduced to a diagnosis, and no single investigator is allowed to provide a complete explanation. The competing theories reveal more about nineteenth-century assumptions than they do about the ultimate origin of violence.

Finally, the book demonstrates how criminal celebrity is constructed. Rulloff’s intelligence became part of his mythology because journalists, scientists, supporters, and Rulloff himself repeated it. Dawson’s account invites readers to question why society continues to turn articulate murderers into objects of fascination.

Limitations

The main limitation is the uneven balance between Rulloff’s criminal biography and the larger history of criminal psychology. Readers primarily interested in his crimes may find the scientific sections distracting, while readers seeking a deep intellectual history may want more sustained analysis.

The podcast-derived structure can also produce repetition and occasional fragmentation. The narrative does not always move with the seamless momentum of a biography conceived entirely as a book.

Rulloff’s victims receive less space than his personality and reputation. Some of this is due to the surviving evidence, but it still contributes to the familiar true-crime problem of allowing the perpetrator to dominate the narrative.

The book’s emphasis on the mystery of Rulloff’s mind may also preserve some of the mythology it seeks to question. Even skeptical attention is still attention, and readers may come away remembering the “brilliant murderer” more vividly than the critique of that label.

Final Assessment

All That Is Wicked is a thoughtful and unsettling account of Edward Rulloff and the nineteenth-century experts who believed his mind might contain the secret of criminal violence. Kate Winkler Dawson combines biography, true crime, medical history, and cultural analysis to show how one murderer became a test case for an emerging science of the criminal mind.

The book is most successful when examining the distance between what experts hoped to discover and what their methods could actually prove. Rulloff’s brain became a scientific prize, but it could not offer a simple explanation for cruelty. His intelligence made him fascinating, but it did not make him morally complex in the ennobling sense that admirers sometimes imagined. It simply gave him additional tools for deception and control.

While the narrative can feel episodic and sometimes gives Rulloff’s legend more space than his victims, it raises important questions about criminal celebrity, scientific authority, and society’s desire to locate evil in a measurable physical form.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

This is a strong choice for readers interested in historical true crime, early psychiatry, forensic science, and the cultural construction of serial killers. It is less a conventional murder mystery than an investigation into why intelligent criminals fascinate us—and why the search for a simple explanation of evil so often reveals the limitations of those doing the searching.