Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free

 

Today's nonfiction post is on Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman. It is 447 pages long and is published by Harper Collins. The cover is a newspaper article about him and his different victims. The intended reader is someone who is interested in historical true crime and politics. There is some foul language, some discussion of sex and sexuality, and some violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- The astonishing story of a murderer who conned the people around him- including conservative thinker William F. Buckley Jr.- into helping set him free.
In the 1960s. Edgar Smith, while on New Jersey's death row for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, who refused to believed that a man who supported the conservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, 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 midcentury America. Sarah Weinman's Scoundrel leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame, and eventually to attempting murder again. In Smith, Weinman has uncovered a psychopath who slipped his way into public acclaim and acceptance before crashing down to earth once again. 
From the people Smith deceived- Buckley, the book editor who published his work, friends from back home, and the women who loved him, among others- to Americans who were willing to buy into his lies, Weinman explores who in our world is accorded innocence, and how the public becomes complicit in the stories we tell one another.
Scoundrel shows, with clear eyes and sympathy for all those who entered Smith's orbit, how and why he was able to manipulate, obfuscate, and make a mockery of both well-meaning people and the American criminal justice system. It tells a forgotten part of American history at the nexus of justice, prison reform, and civil rights, and exposes how one man's ill-conceived plan to set another man free came at the great expense of Edgar Smith's victims. 

Review- A well written true crime story with good notes and index for personal research, if wanted. Weinman, whose first book I have read, does a good job with this story and all the very different personalities that are in this story. It is very clear who the reader is with and how they are involved with Edgar Smith. The book begins with an introduction about the crime and the people the reader is about to follow. Then we get right into the story with the first known victim, Victoria Zielinski, her life and her death. The police do their job and they find their man, convict him, and that should have been the end of Smith's story. But instead he came to the attention of one of the great conservative thinkers' and Smith did what he always did and conned him, just like everyone else in his life. I enjoyed this book and Weinman handled the subject with insight and care for the all of Smith's victims. I would recommend this true crime book. 

I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.