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Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free
Maybe someday
44
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
8/100Critics
81/100Scholars
Author:
Sarah Weinman
Publisher:
Ecco
Date:
February 22, 2022
In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. Buckley began to advocate not only for Smith's life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned. So begins a bizarre and tragic tale of mid-century America. Scoundrel leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame, and eventually to attempting murder again.
What The Reviewers Say
... a riveting chronicle.
... [a] powerful new book from Ottawa-born writer and editor Sarah Weinman.
In straightforward prose, Weinman diligently and chronologically recreates the judicial proceedings, literary lunches, letter exchanges, prison visits, stays of execution and romances (there were many!) that led from incarceration to exoneration and back again. Her research is meticulous and extensive, allowing us to witness step by shocking step how Buckley and Wilkins chose to believe and then hand a microphone to a murderer.
The narrative's goal isn't to grip readers using a what-happens-next approach...but rather to explore how and why things happened the way they did — and who helped him become one of the most famous convicted murderers of his time.
