Post: #113

this is new, i just ordered it since it's a well-known case here on Cape Cod. i am familiar with a couple of the principals.
i disagree that McCowen is innocent.
(Dateline did a program on this case.)


Amazon review:
In January 2002, forty-six-year-old Christa Worthington was found stabbed to death in the kitchen of her Truro, Cape Cod, cottage, her curly-haired toddler clutching her body. A former Vassar girl and scion of a prominent local family, Christa had abandoned a glamorous career as a fashion writer for a simpler life on the Cape, where she had an affair with a married fisherman and had his child. After her murder, evidence pointed toward several local men who had known her.
Yet in 2005, investigators arrested Christopher McCowen, a thirty-four-year-old African-American garbage collector with an IQ of 76. The local headlines screamed, “Black Trash Hauler Ruins Beautiful White Family” and “Black Murderer Apprehended in Fashion Writer Slaying,” while the sole evidence against McCowen was a DNA match showing that he’d had sex with Worthington prior to her murder. There were no fingerprints, no witnesses, and although the state medical examiner acknowledged there was no evidence of rape, the defendant was convicted after a five-week trial replete with conflicting testimony, accusations of crime scene contamination, and police misconduct—and was condemned to three lifetime sentences in prison with no parole.

Rarely has a homicide trial been refracted so clearly through the prism of those who engineered it, and in Reasonable Doubt, bestselling author and biographer Peter Manso is determined to rectify what has become one of the most grossly unjust verdicts in modern trial history. In his riveting new book he bares the anatomy of a horrific murder—as well as the political corruption and racism that appear to be endemic in one of America’s most privileged playgrounds, Cape Cod.

Exhaustively researched and vividly accessible, Reasonable Doubt is a no-holds-barred account of not only Christa Worthington’s murder but also of a botched investigation and a trial that was rife with bias. Manso dug deep into the case, and the results were explosive. The Cape DA indicted the author, threatening him with fifty years in prison.

The trial and conviction of Christopher McCowen for rape and murder should worry American citizens, and should prompt us to truly examine the lip service we pay to the presumption of innocence . . . and to reasonable doubt. With this explosive and challenging book Manso does just that.









convicted



married boyfriend & baby daddy tony jackett

Post: #114

LC, this one is right up your alley in that it takes place right in your back yard...sorta. It is a novel set in Salem, Mass. A murder mystery with a nice witchy back drop. I have only just started it, but it has hooked me already. Again, it is a NOVEL..but here is a plot line:
Some deaths live on forever
For as long as it has stood overlooking New England's jagged coastline, Lexington House has been the witness to madness…and murder. But in recent years the inexplicable malice that once tormented so many has lain as silent as its victims. Until now…

A member of the nation's foremost paranormal forensic team, Jenna Duffy has made a career out of investigating the inexplicable. Yet nothing could prepare her for the string of slayings once again plaguing Lexington House—or for the chief suspect, a boy barely old enough to drive, much less kill.

With the young man's life on the line, Jenna must team up with attorney Samuel Hall to pinpoint who—or what—is taking the lives of those who get too close to the past. But everything they learn brings them closer to the forces of evil stalking this tortured ground.

Post: #115

Thanks QB...sounds good!

Post: #116

being a devoted Dickens fan, i liked this find...it's being restored now.

nicked from the daily fail.

The discovery of a room-dividing screen decorated by Charles Dickens with 800 images of the great and the good of the day has stunned historians.

It is believed to have been created in 1850 by Victorian novelist Dickens and his actor friend William Macready to educate the thespian's children and is a Who's Who of famous people from the 19^th century.

It includes images of the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon, Isaac Newton, Admiral Nelson, William Blake, Mozart, George III, Byron, John Swift, Samuel Butler, William Hogarth and George Washington.

Scenes from Shakespeare plays like Henry VIII were also stuck onto the screen by the two friends who spent hours gluing etchings and prints to the 7ft tall divider at the actor's home

A burn hole caused by a candle shows how someone in the past had been closely looking at it during the night.

'It is canvas on a wood frame and the pictures are probably from periodicals and have been stuck on with glue in a large collage.

'The pictures include the names of the day as well as Shakespeare and classical history - things Macready would want his children to know.'

The 10ft wide screen was found among the possessions of Sir Neville Macready's late mother and was bequeathed to the Friends of Sherborne House.

Sherborne House, was built in 1740, and is currently being sold by Dorset County Council which used to run it as a school.











A close up of images on the screen show The Duke of Wellington who served as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army until his death and Lord Nelson who died during the Battle of Trafalgar






On closer investigation, playwright William Shakespeare is also seen as well as a portrait believed to be that of Henry VIII who became King of England in 1509

a delicate restoration

Post: #117

Texas death row

has a brief on their crimes, their sentance and thier last meals an statements and such 450+ profiles.

Post: #118

i'll buy this book.





LATimes
Reading anything by or about Charles Dickens is a year-round pleasure for many readers, but it's especially difficult not to associate him and his world with the holidays thanks to "A Christmas Carol." In Claire Tomalin's new biography, "Charles Dickens: A Life," the author (whose other books include lives of Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen) suggests, in the following excerpt adapted from "Prologue: The Inimitable 1840," why Dickens the man — not just his books — presents such a feast for any biographer.

Charles Dickens had been observing the world about him since he was a child, and reporting on what he saw as a journalist and then as a novelist. Much of it amused him, but more of it upset him: the poverty, the hunger, the ignorance and squalor he saw in London, and the indifference of the rich and powerful to the condition of the poor and ignorant. Through his own energy and exceptional gifts he had raised himself out of poverty. But he neither forgot it, nor turned aside from the poverty about him.

Dickens was twenty-eight in February 1840, and had another thirty years ahead of him. He was living in a country that had been at peace for a quarter of a century. Dickens was still a young man. His grammar could be shaky, his clothes too flamboyant — "geraniums and ringlets" mocked Thackeray — his hospitality too splendid, his temper fierce, but his friends — mostly artists, writers and actors — loved him, and their love was reciprocated. When he went out of London in order to have peace to write, he would within days summon troops of friends to join him. He was a giver of celebratory parties, a player of charades, a dancer of quadrilles and Sir Roger de Coverleys. He suffered from terrible colds and made them into jokes: "Bisery, bisery," he complained, or "I have been crying all day … my nose is an inch shorter than it was last Tuesday, from constant friction." He worked furiously fast to give himself free time. He lived hard and took hard exercise. His day began with a cold shower, and he walked or rode every day if he could, arduous expeditions of twelve, fifteen or twenty miles out of town, often summoning a friend to go with him. He might be in his study from ten at night until one in the morning, or up early to be at his desk by 8:30, writing with a quill pen he sharpened himself and favoring dark blue ink. He was taking French lessons from a serious teacher. He was also doing his best to help a poor carpenter with literary ambitions, reading what he had written and finding him work.

He was an obsessive organizer of his surroundings, even rearranging the furniture in hotel rooms. He smoked cigars, and often mentions his wine-dealers in letters, and the brandy, gin, port, sherry, champagne, claret and Sauternes delivered and enjoyed; and although he was very rarely the worse for drink, he sometimes confessed to feeling bad in the mornings after overindulging the night before. Raspberries were his favorite fruit, served without cream, and he was very fond of dates in boxes. He belonged to the Garrick Club and the Athenaeum, and he knew and frequented all the theatres in London and could ask any of their managers for a box when he wanted one. Eating out, going to the theatre, adventuring through the rough areas of London with a friend or two were habitual ways of spending his evening. He also walked the streets by himself, observing and thinking. He was passionately interested in prisons and in asylums, the places where society's rejects are kept.

He saw the world more vividly than other people, and reacted to what he saw with laughter, horror, indignation — and sometimes sobs. He stored up his experiences and reactions as raw material to transform and use in his novels, and was so charged with imaginative energy that he rendered nineteenth-century England crackling, full of truth and life, with his laughter, horror and indignation — and sentimentality. Even one of his most hostile critics acknowledged that he described London "like a special correspondent for posterity." Early in his writing career he started to call himself "the inimitable": it was partly a joke with him, but not entirely, because he could see that there was no other writer at work who could surpass him, and that no one among his friends or family could even begin to match his energy and ambition. He could make people laugh and cry, and arouse anger, and he meant to amuse and to make the world a better place. And wherever he went he produced what, much later, an observant girl described as "a sort of brilliance in the room, mysteriously dominant and formless. I remember how everyone lighted up when he entered."

From "Charles Dickens: A Life" by Claire Tomalin.

Post: #119

cool~

Almost a century after Captain Scott and his team perished on a polar expedition, new details of their ill-fated adventure described in letters and journals are to be displayed for he first time.

New artifacts include the last letter written by Scott’s closest comrade Dr Edward Wilson before he died on the return from the South Pole.

Addressed to publisher Reginald Smith, the letter - which reflects on the crew’s struggle - had remained undiscovered since 1913 until an archivist returned to inspect a box of documents.

The story of the Terra Nova expedition is explored in a mixture of newly discovered and rarely seen letters, diaries and photographs of its members, in an exhibition at Cambridge University’s Polar Museum.

The exhibition tells the full story of the fateful expedition, not just through the famous journals and letters of Scott, Bowers, Evans, Oates and Wilson, who died on their way back from the Pole, but through other members of the ship’s crew and shore party.



daily mail

Post: #120

i almost never read fiction. but after reading some glowing reviews, and because it's a Mass. locale, i bought it. i'm only on chapter 3, but i'm into it. it's a courthouse thing and legal thriller, and having once worked in a Mass. courthouse it intrigued me. i still prefer non-fiction.
for mystery fans, blurb below--->



Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

Award-winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis—a suspenseful, character-driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control.

Post: #121

I have a love of short stories and novellas. Bought this book used on Amazon. Will donate it when I'm finished.

Post: #122

Right now I'm reading the first word of every post on page 9 in this thread.

Post: #123

(02-25-2012 09:12 PM)Lady Cop Wrote:  i almost never read fiction. but after reading some glowing reviews, and because it's a Mass. locale, i bought it. i'm only on chapter 3, but i'm into it. it's a courthouse thing and legal thriller, and having once worked in a Mass. courthouse it intrigued me. i still prefer non-fiction.
for mystery fans, blurb below--->



Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

Award-winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis—a suspenseful, character-driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control.

Read that! Pretty good! I read a book every 3-4 days. Stupid authors can't publish quick enough for me.

Post: #124

User, what type of books do you like most?

before i got a computer i read a good 5 books a week.

and like Cracker, believe in donating and passing along anything i don't intend to read again, or save for my kids to read. some things you HAVE to keep. (my histories and my Dickens)

Post: #125

(02-25-2012 10:40 PM)Lady Cop Wrote:  User, what type of books do you like most?

I have a Kindle now because I just couldn't handle the volume of books in the house. I feel bad because I can't donate them now but we don't have a good bookstore nearby so it's so much easier for me to download a book than drive to a not-nearby bookstore.

I read every genre. I like mysteries, spy books, Jodi Picoult, John Grisham (some) and fantasy (The Hunger Games etc.). "Unbroken" was a great book. Vince Flynn and the Mitch Rapp series...awesome. I've read most of the James Patterson books and Harlan Coben is another great writer. Lee Child. The John Locke/Donovan Creed series is great but I think it's only available on Kindle.

Plus I've read every urban fantasy/paranormal book out there (except those that try to insert too much kinky sex in to the books--Laurel Hamilton, for example). Loved the Jim Butcher series.

I love them all!

Post: #126

God i'm a dinosaur! i probably should have gone to kindle long ago.

maybe it's the librarian in me, i like the look, feel, weight of books. and have had a few first editions (I was a court law librarian for a time).