Eden Undone

An incredible true story of murder in a utopian community established on a remote Galápagos island by European refugees, and the American millionaire who became embroiled in the investigation, from the New York Times bestselling author of “The Ghosts of Eden Park.”

At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul, George Allan Hancock, and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other American elites had been traveling to the Galápagos to collect specimens for scientific research. On his first trip, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise. One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he'd had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.

As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, the paradise suffered from chaos. The three sets of exiles, a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian Baroness with two adoring lovers-turned against each other. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The Baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers and seduced American tourists. The conclusion was deadly: two exiles missing and three others dead, with the survivors hurling accusations of murder.

Using never-before-published archives and set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. With a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, “Then Came the Devil” explores the universal and timeless desire to seek utopia, and how human fallibility renders such a quest doomed.