'Scoundrel' examines how and why a convicted killer went free
NPR, February 22, 2022: 'Scoundrel' examines how and why a convicted killer went free
“In 1957, a 15-year-old white girl, Victoria Ann Zielinski, was brutally murdered by a white man named Edgar Smith. He was caught, rather quickly, and didn't officially confess to police, although he did say things like ‘it hit me really hard — I must have been the one who really did it.’
“This was no mastermind killer — a trope we love to love and hate in the United States. But this was a man in his early 20s who was married to a 19-year-old who had just birthed a baby, a man who kept getting fired from jobs he didn't seem to care much about anyway and a man who had learned as a teenager that he could get away with violence. Sarah Weinman's new book, Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free, covers the saga of Edgar Smith's rise to infamy, fame and infamy once more.”
Additional reading:
Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman on bookshop.org
The New York Times, February 22, 2022: How a Death-Row Inmate’s Embrace of Conservatism Led to His Release
Books are Magic, February 22, 2022: Sarah Weinman: Scoundrel w/ Alexis Coe Q&A
