by M.M. Stoddart ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 4, 2007
Overwhelming number of facts and a hop-scotching narrative mar what could be a compelling case for wrongful conviction and a...
A thicket of dubious alliances, jealousies, missing evidence and inconsistent testimony lead to a dubious conviction for murder–and reasonable doubt.
The shadowy Appalachian Mountains surrounding the small town of Parsons set the somber tone for this account of a bloody, shotgun double-murder of a father and his rebellious teenage son on Aug. 23, 1982. Stoddart painstakingly re-examines the evidence and transcripts related to the murder 26 years ago of her stepmother Edith Roberts’s teenaged son Timmy and husband Glenn in rural West Virginia. Townsfolk live in double-wide trailers and carve out their hardscrabble existence with blue-collar jobs, forming tenuous alliances that mimic community. The author makes a valiant attempt to present a plausible alternative to robbery and murder and poses the question of guilt or innocence. Stoddart’s inexorable journey uncovers a web of official incompetence, lies and deceit. She has concluded that convicted murderer Russell “Rusty” Clark Phillips didn’t do it. Building the case that the wrong man is serving a life sentence, she pores over inexhaustible volumes of trial transcripts, annotated lists of evidence, medical reports and police records. A dizzying kaleidoscope of alternative scenarios and rhetorical questions–neatly backed up with hand-picked academic opinions–are posed to guide the reader to the same conclusion. Rusty was young Timmy’s friend; an impoverished drifter with a checkered past and few resources or legal avenues to explore in defense of the charges brought against him. Stoddart elucidates an alternative suggestion of patricide followed by Timmy’s suicide that is unfortunately–despite the slate of information and opinions presented–less convincing than the more probable robbery and double-murder. The facts surrounding this case were expertly and exhaustively researched; however, they are so numerous and unadulterated that they leave the story line a challenge to follow.
Overwhelming number of facts and a hop-scotching narrative mar what could be a compelling case for wrongful conviction and a flawed justice system.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-595-68825-8
Page Count: 354
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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by Truman Capote ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 7, 1965
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby...I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty 17-year-old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them—enough for ten people if necessary. This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues—just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters—he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words—"It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize." It's a magnificent job—this American tragedy—with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1965
ISBN: 0375507906
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
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