Scoundrel

How a convicted murderer persuaded the women who loved him, the conservative establishment and the courts to set him free

De: Sarah Weinman

Narrado por: Gabra Zackman

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CBC AND ESQUIRE

A true-crime masterpiece, this is a story of wrongful exoneration about killer Edgar Smith and the prominent crusaders who fell prey to his charm.

Having spent almost half his lifetime in California's state penitentiary system, convicted killer Edgar Smith died in obscurity in 2017 at the age of eighty-three—a miracle, really, as he was meant to be executed nearly six decades earlier. Tried and convicted in the state of New Jersey for the 1957 murder of fifteen-year-old Victoria Zielinski, Smith was once the most famous convict in America.
Scoundrel tells the true, almost-too-bizarre story of a man saved from Death Row by way of an unlikely friendship—developed in nearly 2000 pages of prison correspondence—with National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the most famous figures in the neo-conservative movement. Buckley wrote articles, fundraised and hired lawyers to fight for a new trial, eventually enlisting the help of Sophie Wilkins, a book editor with whom Smith would have a torrid epistolary affair. As a result of these friends' advocacy, Smith not only gained his freedom, he vaulted to the highest intellectual echelons as a bestselling author, an expert on prison reform, and a minor celebrity—only to fall, spectacularly, back to earth, when his murderous impulses once more prevailed.
Weinman's Scoundrel is a gripping investigation into a case where crime and culture intersect, where recent memory begins to slide into history and where the darkest of violent impulses meet literary ambition, human ego and hunger for fame.

Very interesting

This shows how much influence public opinion has on justice, how a few people can change opinions by not having all the facts.
It made me think about all of these podcasts that only tell you or know part of the evidence, that unless you were at the trial or know all the facts you can not pass judgement. We have to be careful when we try to convince others of what we think we know.

well told story

I enjoyed listening to this book. It was well researched and an interesting, well narrated story.