The Jolly Roger Social Club is Nick Foster’s astonishing and vivid account of a man who may be the world’s first ‘capitalist’ serial killer. In the process of piecing together what happened, he sheds light on the bigger questions raised by Wild Bill’s actions: what was it that made Bocas del Toro such a fertile hunting ground for the murderer, and why did it take the expats so long to raise the alarm? The answer lies in the paradox of Panama itself – paradise with a sinister underbelly. Languishing in a Panamanian prison cell, William Holbert – known as ‘Wild Bill’ – is on trial for the murder of five fellow American expats. His first victims were the mysterious Brown family, who lived a deliberately quiet life in Panama’s remote province of Bocas del Toro. After killing the Browns, he turned their house into the Jolly Roger Social Club with the motto ‘Over 90% of our members survive’. He appointed himself Minister of the First Church of the Inebriation, and used drink and drug-fuelled parties to get close to others who, like him, had fled to Panama’s Caribbean coast in desperation to leave their past behind, assumed new identities and disappeared into a blissful loophole…
