Marianne Wesson | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

"This is an

extraordinary and ground-breaking book, a wonderfully creative mix of fact and

theory, imagination and drama. Anyone with an interest in law, history, or, for

that matter, great storytelling will fall in love with A Death at Crooked Creek. The startling origin of the complex

'intention exception' to the hearsay evidence rule becomes canvas on which a

grand and marvelously detailed tale is told. This is modern narrative at its

best: a marriage of spectacular writing and hard, documented truth presented by

a brilliant author who doubles as a gifted and fastidious legal scholar and

historian."

—Andrew Popper,

American University



One winter night in

1879, at a lonely Kansas campsite near Crooked Creek, a man was shot to death.

The dead man’s traveling companion identified him as John Hillmon, a cowboy

from Lawrence who had been attempting to carve out a life on the blustery

prairie. The case might have been soon forgotten and the apparent widow, Sallie

Hillmon, left to mourn—except for the $25,000 life insurance policies Hillmon

had taken out shortly before his departure. The insurance companies refused to

pay on the policies, claiming that the dead man was not John Hillmon, and

Sallie was forced to take them to court in a case that would reach the Supreme

Court twice. The companies’ case rested on a crucial piece of evidence: a faded

love letter written by a disappeared cigarmaker, declaring his intent to travel

westward with a “man named Hillmon.”



In A Death at

Crooked Creek, Marianne Wesson re-examines the long-neglected evidence in

the case of the Kansas cowboy and his wife, recreating the court scenes that

led to a significant Supreme Court ruling on the admissibility of hearsay

evidence. Wesson employs modern forensic methods to examine the body of the

dead man, attempting to determine his true identity and finally put this

fascinating mystery to rest.



This engaging and

vividly imagined work combines the drama, intrigue, and emotion of excellent

storytelling with cutting-edge forensic investigation techniques and legal

theory. Wesson’s superbly imagined A Death at Crooked Creek will

have general readers, history buffs, and legal scholars alike wondering whether

history, and the Justices, may have misunderstood altogether the events at that

bleak winter campsite.