Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Well researched and cleanly written, Sympathy for the Devil relates the events of 2 murders in San Francisco in 1895. The author painstakingly recreates the events leading up to the murders, the media coverage to rival that of the OJ trial, the trial itself, and the subsequent appeals. You can tell the author did her homework. Each chapter is filled with footnotes that provide not only the source of the information, but at times additional facts about the time period, the city, and the mores of the time. It was fascinating to read about a city I visit regularly and recognize some of the places mentioned.
However, the most fascinating part of this book was the trial itself. The media circus surrounding the trial was phenomenal; the 3 major newspapers took turns printing sensational accounts of the murder, the trial, and the defendant as well as out and out lies in the form of forged letters and false testimonies of people involved in the case. Additionally, the differences between trial procedure and proper behavior then and now are astounding. For example, in the trial, jurors actually stood up and asked questions of the witnesses.
The only negative comment I have is that the author waited until the very end of the book to discuss the possible reason behind the murders. Granted, this was her opinion (though backed by facts) so I can understand why she placed it outside the narrative of events from murder to trial, but it was frustrating at times to read the story without any idea why these murders occurred.
Despite this one drawback, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in mysteries, history, and human behavior.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Sympathy for the Devil: The Emmanuel Baptist Murders of Old San Francisco
On the day before Easter Sunday 1895, the stabbed and strangled body of twenty-one-year-old Minnie Williams was found in Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco's Mission District. A search of the church yielded another grisly discovery in the belfry: the decomposing body of another young woman, reported as missing ten days earlier. She, too, had been strangled. But unlike the victim in the library, Blanche Lamont was lovingly laid out as if for burial. Clues led the police to suspect a friend of both victims, a medical student who was also the assistant superintendent of the church's Sunday school. But those who knew Theo Durrant denied that this highly respectable young man could have had anything to do with these horrible crimes.
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