MURDER, HONOR, AND LAW. Four Virginia Homicides from Reconstruction to the Great Depression

Paperback. In 1868 a scion of one of the leading families of Richmond, Virginia, ambushed and killed the city's most controversial journalist over an article that had dishonoured the killer's family. In 1892 a Democratic politician killed a crusading Danville minister after a dispute at the polls. In 1907 a former judge shot to death the son of the Nelson County sheriff for an alleged rape, and in 1935 an Appalachian schoolteacher stood accused of killing her father by beating him with a shoe. All of these killers stood trial; two were convicted and two were acquitted. These cases attracted extensive press coverage, and journalists became not only recorders of the stories but integral parts of them, constructing the meaning of the events as they occurred and blurring the lines between reporter and reported. In each of the cases the author shows the interplay of national media and culture with southern law, values, and culture and highlights how newspapers accepted, produced, altered, and disseminated ideas of southern exceptionalism, especially ideas about honour and chivalry. Illus., Conclusion, Notes, Selected Bibliog. + Index. 263pp. trade size p/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F.