In Boston: Inside a Tortured Mind

On Thursday, Dec. 5, 1963, Arthur Inman, one of the most bizarre Americans in the history of the Republic, went into his toilet carrying a Colt revolver. The latest in a lifelong string of crises, real or imagined, to cause Inman to despair was rising outside his old haunt in Boston's Back Bay. "The Prudential Tower," he had told his diary, "is 28 stories into the sky, soon will be goosing God." He had fled to Brookline to escape the din of construction, taking with him the noises in his head, and now he was over the edge. "This is being...

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