Advocates of Murder by Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson (New York: Collier Books, 1962) is derivative; the authors did not cite their sources and added fictional flourishes, and their essay on a case I know well is full of mistakes. But this book is otherwise great "true crime for connoisseurs" as promised on the cover. This book tells amazing, mostly obscure stories of ten attorneys who committed murder. If half of this stuff is true, these cases may bear further looking-into. The writing is fine and wry. For example, here is the short but devastating biography of one of the lawyers in question:
Albert T. Patrick was a New York attorney of about forty, with an indifferent practice and a staff of one: Morris Meyers, his clerk. Although the lawyer had been scratching along, picking up only a meager living, his aspirations were as grandiose as his pocketbook was bare. Some day, he believed, he would make the big killing. In one sense, his ambition was to be realized.
The subjects of this book are:
Samuel McCue, Attorney at Law, former mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, who hired a private detective to solve his wife’s murder but was unpleasantly surprised when the detective then solved it;
Daniel Sickles, Esquire, a U.S. Congressman who killed his wife’s lover and later became “the American king of Spain.” He also formed a mutual admiration society with Harry K. Thaw, who committed the same crime;
Tom Cluverius, who drowned his pregnant mistress and then ended his own life on the gallows. The case against him was proven with a tiny gold key. It was the key to his wind-up gold watch, and he’d lost it while committing the murder at the Marshall Reservoir near Richmond, Virginia;
Albert Patrick and Charles Jones, who murdered an aged millionaire so clumsily it's amusing. (This infamous duo is also the subject of an unforgettable Edmund Pearson essay, The Firm of Patrick & Jones);
Donat Prilukov of Moscow, who conspired with Countess Marie Tarnowska to murder her fiancé (a story I have retold more than once);
Arthur Reed Pennell, Esq. of Buffalo, New York, who murdered another prominent attorney, Ed Burdick, then decided to avoid arrest;
Frank J. Egan, Public Defender of San Francisco, who arranged the murder of his friend Jessie Scott Hughes and deservedly ended up in San Quentin;
Mark Shank, Former Justice of the Peace emeritus for Kenmore, Ohio, who got into a little trouble involving forgery and burglary, and decided to cover up his crimes by poisoning a family of five with strychnine. For the convenience of the police in Alabama, where the crime occurred, he left the half-empty bottle, clearly marked POISON, in his briefcase for authorities to find;
The Honorable Thomas John Ley, Minister of Justice emeritus for Australia, was implicated in a London case that began with the mysterious disappearance of a bartender who was last seen getting into a limousine with a very attractive woman. Ley, who was demented by jealousy and had a fool for a client, testified in his own defense and proved himself "a pompous, arrogant, imaginative and above all a fantastic liar";
Pierre Jaccoud, President of the Bar Association of Geneva, Switzerland, was a pillar of the community until he came crashing down in a spectacular series of scandals; then he went on a shooting spree on May 30, 1958. The trial that followed was a sensation in Europe and gave the Swiss one of their most legendary murder cases.
The list of lawless lawyers who have committed murders goes on, of course, alas, in other case studies....
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