On the evening of November 20, 1901, Gibson girl Nell Cropsey, oldest daughter of a transplanted Brooklyn family, stepped out into her family's front hall in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to join her suitor Jim Wilcox—and was never seen alive again. In a kaleidoscopic examination of this celebrated case, Simpson (Writing/University of North Carolina; The Heart of the Country, 1983) reviews and renews its enduring mystery. As soon as Cropsey's body was discovered in the Pasquotank River five weeks later, suspicion fell on Wilcox, who'd never joined the search for the missing girl, and he was convicted of murder (narrowly escaping a lynch mob) and served 16 years in prison before a pardon returned him to the town that had condemned him. But in his own voice—one of three that Simpson alternately uses to unfold the story—Jim stoutly maintains his innocence, though secretly admitting that he knows what really happened to Nell. Simpson's second narrator, Nell's sister Ollie, sees the family's whole history—from her father's unfortunate decision to take up farming in the South to the suicides of her brother and of her own caller on the fatal evening—refracted through the moment when she sent Nell out into the hall to join Jim. The third narrator, newspaper editor W.O. Saunders, after attempting for years to persuade Jim to talk to him, finally succeeds in 1934, two weeks before Jim's own suicide, but takes the secret of Jim's revelation to his grave. Simpson persuasively re-creates the decorously frenzied, boomtown atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Elizabeth City in the grip of a tabloid mystery complete with bloodhounds, anonymous tipsters, and a famous spiritualist. Don't be disappointed, though, if you never do find out who killed beautiful Nell Cropsey. (Five illustrations)
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1993
ISBN: 0-8078-2120-9
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
Absorbing story of how the FBI developed a new mode of attack on the New Jersey crime family—and then failed to make its case in court. Rudolph covers organized crime for Newark's Star-Ledger. Once the FBI had admitted, during the mid-70's, that there was such a thing as the mafia, it began insinuating undercover agents into crime families, especially—in the mid-80's—into the Lucchese family, which had a lock on New Jersey rackets such as loan- sharking, gambling, fraud, extortion, and drug-dealing. Masterminded by FBI agent Dennis Marchalonis, the government operation was carried on with such enormous secrecy—it had been decided to make a case against an entire crime family and wipe it out all at once, a historic decision—that FBI agents might find themselves under surveillance by two or three other legal agencies. When the secret task force finally had its evidence—gathered from wiretaps, informants, and agents—it rounded up the entire Lucchese family, then headed by Anthony (``Tumac'') Accetturo and Michael (``Mad Dog'') Taccetta, and brought indictments against 21 defendants. The government had a strong case and assembled a terrific team of prosecutors, led by hot-tempered, aggressive V. Gray O'Malley, who had never lost a case. The defense had a huge, strong, smartly chosen team as well. The flaw in the federal case was its size and the nearly two years it took to prosecute before a jury so wearied by picayune detail and evidence wandering off on endless tangents—with the jury's families under intense scrutiny all the while—that long before the 21 cases went to the jury, the jury had decided not to convict—in part, says Rudolph, to spite the government for having put it through such an ordeal. Richly served up and dotted with absurd moments as the fat cats go free and the feds eat their shoes. (Eight pages of b&w photographs.)
Pub Date: April 16, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-09259-4
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
In an effective though overwritten account, the distinguished trial attorney (My Life in Court, etc.) tells the tragic story of Murray Gold, a former client who, according to Nizer, was twice wrongfully convicted of a horrific double murder. Gold was indicted for the grisly 1974 multiple-stabbing deaths of Connecticut attorney Irving Pasternak and his wife, Rhoda. A troubled man with psychiatric problems, the accused was Pasternak's ex-son-in-law and quickly became the favorite suspect of the police. According to Nizer, the case against Gold was entirely circumstantial (for instance, the killer, like Gold, wore shoes with the words ``Cats Paw'' on the heel—but Nizer explains that such shoes were widely distributed in the local area), while authorities ignored a much stronger case against Bruce Sanborn, an anti-Semitic Satanist who hated Pasternak and repeatedly threatened to kill him. Gold endured four trials, two of which ended in mistrials and two in convictions. Nizer never represented Gold at any of the trials; instead, he conducted a successful appeal to the Supreme Court of Connecticut after the first conviction (the Court held that testimony on Sanborn's alleged admission of guilt was improperly suppressed as hearsay) and a successful habeas corpus proceeding subsequent to the second conviction. Nizer argues persuasively that Gold was an innocent victim of prosecutorial misjudgment and his own paranoiac personality (Gold angrily fired Nizer after the appeal, fired his trial attorney later on, and rejected a proposed plea bargain, all because he suspected conspiracies against him). Although Nizer praises the American legal system, at the core of his narrative lies a monstrous proposition—that an innocent man spent nearly 17 years on trial and in prison even though there was never any direct evidence of his guilt. Nizer's style can be melodramatic and his account self- serving, but, overall, he tells an engrossing and powerful story of a tragic miscarriage of justice. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: April 30, 1992
ISBN: 1-55611-276-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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