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
A startling account of a desperate problem boiling on and spilling over the border.
Mexico City–based investigative journalist Beith presents the bloody story of Mexico’s drug-trafficking kingpin.
In 2009, Joaquin Guzman appeared on the Forbes magazine billionaire list. Better known as “El Chapo,” Guzman, since his sensational 2001 escape from a maximum-security prison, happened also to be Mexico’s most-wanted man. Chapo hasn’t been seen in public for more than two years. Sequestered in the hills of Durango or his native Sinaloa, he’s virtually the last man standing in the savage drug wars that have crippled Mexico. Beith traces the country’s serious drug trade back to the ’70s, when the Colombian Medellín and Cali cartels ruled, and Mexican capo El Padrino served as point man. In charge of logistics for El Padrino and fueled by his ambition, efficiency and ruthlessness, Chapo steadily rose through the ranks. By the ’90s, with El Padrino in prison and the Colombians muscled out of the way, Mexican drug lords were growing their own product and fighting each other for control of the $40-billion-per-year industry. In a desperately poor country, many people see drug traffickers as Robin Hoods, but they also bring kidnappings, assassinations, beheadings and torture. Chapo’s emergence from this sanguinary scrum is the heart of the author’s tale, but he forthrightly concedes the difficulty of reporting on the elusive boss and organized crime in general, dealing as he must with so many untrustworthy sources. He offers a discouraging list of the dead journalists who’ve gotten too close to the story. Thus, only a faint picture of Chapo emerges: his four wives and many mistresses, the relatives and allies he’s lost to prison or murder, anecdotal evidence of his ability to charm, seduce and strategize. His near-mythic status has been enhanced by a variety of factors, including his influence (at one time he employed as many as 150,000 people) his many escapes from near-capture, the narcocorridos (drug ballads) and public banners mocking thwarted rivals and feckless law enforcement (“You’ll never get Chapo”). More successfully, Beith paints a depressing picture of the culture of corruption ensnaring Mexico’s government officials, military and police. The trade also thrives because of the flow of illegal weapons south and because of America’s apparently insatiable demand for heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines. Today, the Sinaloa cartel has cells in more than half of American states.
A startling account of a desperate problem boiling on and spilling over the border.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1952-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
A former prosecutor's bold, if rather wooden, memoir of fighting sexual predators. It's not irrelevant that Vachss is married to novelist Andrew Vachss, who's an Çminence grise throughout these pages, giving the author tough advice, leaving her notes of encouragement on their breakfast table. Alice Vachss strongly shares the hatred of sexual criminals that energizes her husband's thrillers—but what she doesn't share is his way with words: She's a monotonic writer, and, for all their inherent drama, the many cases she describes here from her decade spent prosecuting sex crimes in N.Y.C.'s Queens County unfold flatly; moreover, she tells us little of her years before law school, making this more the memoir of a crusade than of a life. Even so, Vachss embeds hard-hitting messages in her case- histories: that ``rape [is] a choice,'' not an irresistible compulsion; that serial sexual offenders don't reform; that too many judges and cops side with the accused in rape trials. Tales of various prosecutions—of a father who'd raped his daughter from her youth until her 30s; of the rapist who claimed Vietnam-induced stress as his defense; of the local civic leader, a Boys Club director, who preyed upon kids he was supposed to help—offer intricate reconstructions of how Vachss built her cases, with some interesting legal lore salted on: the importance, in order to win a case, of having a ``Good Victim'' (i.e., an appealing one); the effect of dress on a jury (in summations, Vachss wore ``black and white...No gray areas. No excuses''). And all this played against a background of infighting among the political hacks of Queens- -infighting that finally got the toe-stepping author fired. Not gripping, but an effective blow in the war against what Vachss calls a ``self-absorbed sociopathic beast'': the rapist.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-42435-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
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