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Search - A Death at Crooked Creek: The Case of the Cowboy, the Cigarmaker, and the Love Letter

A Death at Crooked Creek The Case of the Cowboy the Cigarmaker and the Love Letter
Author: Marianne Wesson

"This is an extraordinary and ground-breaking book, a wonderfully creative mix of fact and theory, imagination and drama?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 writ... more »ing 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. Marianne Wesson is Professor of Law and President?s Teaching Scholar, University of Colorado Law School. She is the author of best-selling and prize-winning legal novels including Render up the Body, A Suggestion of Death, and Chilling Effect. She lives in a Colorado mountain valley with her husband, llamas, dogs, and visiting wildlife.

ISBN-13: 9780814784563
ISBN-10: 0814784569
Publication Date: 5/24/2013
Pages: 400
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: NYU Press
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Biographies & Memoirs >> True Crime >> Murder & Mayhem
History >> Americas >> United States >> 19th Century
History >> Americas >> United States >> State & Local
History >> Modern (16th-21st Centuries) >> 19th Century
Law >> Legal Theory & Systems >> Legal History
Law >> Criminal Law >> Evidence

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