With a long history of criminal convictions, Abbott's writing concerning his life and experiences was lauded by a number of well-known literary critics, including author Norman Mailer.

[1]: 71 Abbott was born on January 21, 1944, at Camp Skeel in Oscoda, Michigan, to an Irish-American soldier and a Chinese-American prostitute.

As a child, Abbott was in trouble with teachers and later with the law, and by the age of 16 was sent to a long-term reform institution, the Utah State Industrial School.

"[5] After leaving prison, Abbott went to a halfway house in New York City and made the acquaintance of some of Mailer's literary friends.

At about 5 a.m. on July 18, 1981, six weeks after being paroled from prison, Abbott and two women, Véronique de St. André and Susan Roxas, went to a small cafe named the Binibon, located at 79 Second Avenue in Manhattan.

[6] The next day, unaware of Abbott's crime, the New York Times published Anatole Broyard's review of In the Belly of the Beast.

Adan's widow successfully sued Abbott for $7.5 million in damages, which meant she would receive all the money from the book's sales.

In a 1992 interview in The Buffalo News, Mailer said that his involvement with Abbott was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in".

His application was denied because of his failure to express remorse, his lengthy criminal record, and his disciplinary problems in prison.

[9] On February 10, 2002, Jack Abbott hanged himself in his prison cell using a makeshift noose constructed from his bedsheets and shoelaces.

[10] Abbott claimed that his incarceration from the ages of 12 to 18 was the result of "not adjusting well to foster homes", and his indeterminate sentence of up to five years for "issuing a check for insufficient funds" when he was 18 was another example of a system that criminalizes and harshly punishes those it deems unfit for society.

[11]Psychologist Robert D. Hare described Abbott as displaying the lack of conscience and empathy typical of psychopaths.