"After creeping out of bed on a frigid January night in 1832, teenage farmhand Abraham Prescott took up an ax and thrashed his sleeping employers to the brink of death. He later explained that he'd attacked Sally and Chauncey Cochran in his sleep. The Cochrans eventually recovered but-to the astonishment of their neighbors-kept Prescott on, somehow accepting his strange story. This decision would come back to haunt them. While picking strawberries...