Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune, Revised and Updated Edition

Revised and updated to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Sarah Winchester, the mysterious heiress of the Winchester Rifle Company, this new edition demystifies the life of a woman who, for too long, existed as a ghost herself-in a netherworld somewhere between the facts of her life and a set of sensationalized news stories. After inheriting a vast fortune upon the death of her husband in 1881, Winchester purchased a simple farmhouse in San José, California. She built additions to the house and continued construction for the next twenty years. When neighbors and the local press could not imagine her motivations for the structural changes, they invented fanciful ones of their own. To this day, it is largely believed that the extensive construction on her San José house was done to appease the spirits of the great many people killed by the Winchester rifle. By exploring Winchester's private life and excerpting from personal correspondence, Mary Jo Ignoffo's definitive biography unearths the truth about this reclusive eccentric, revealing that Winchester was not a maddened, ghost-obsessed spiritualist driven by remorse, but an intelligent, articulate woman who sought to protect her privacy. This revised and updated edition features 29 new photographs as well as informative histories from San José residents with connections to the historic Winchester house. Captive of the Labyrinth puts to rest the myths about this American heiress, and in the process uncovers her true legacies while restoring dignity to her memory.