DEADLY INNOCENCE?

Softcover. For 5yrs the author followed vulnerable people on death row whose confessions came too easily and had little or no evidence to back them up. Then came a note from a valued colleague that sent him back to Pueblo, Colorado, into a period dating from 1915 to 1939. What drew him back was a shy, likeable man named Joe Arridy. Arridy, a Syrian-American, had been kicked out of elementary school, labelled "feebleminded," and placed in a "state home for mental defectives." During the Great Depression, when thousands of people travelled by "hopping freights," he walked away from the institution and became an avid boxcar rider. That is, until a sheriff in Cheyenne, Wyoming, led him to confess to the vicious rape and axe murder of a teenager in Pueblo. Arridy was tried and convicted in Pueblo under strange circumstances. He was executed in Canon City even though Warden Roy Best worked undercover to stop the execution. In this fast-paced true story, the author traces Joe Arridy's life from birth to gas chamber. Much of what the author reports can cast fresh light on what is happening in the criminal justice system today. With References and Index. 143pp. 4to softcocer. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. with no creasing to covers.