The Murder of Dr. Chapman
The Legendary Trials of Lucretia Chapman and Her Lover
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- £7.99
Publisher Description
In this "first-rate blending of true-crime, character-study and history" a 19th-century love con leads to murder and a sensational double trial (Susan Isaacs, New York Times–bestselling author of Compromising Positions).
In 1831 Lucretia Winslow Chapman was a wife and mother of five who had founded one of Philadelphia's first boarding schools for girls. But her comfortable life and marriage to prominent local scientist William Chapman changed forever the night Lino Espos y Mina appeared at their door, requesting lodging. It wasn't long before the Cuban con artist had entrenched himself in the Chapman home and begun an illicit affair with Lucretia. A little over a month later, William Chapman was dead from a lethal dose of poison. Lino and Lucretia were eventually arrested and charged with murder—and the double trial of the century began.
Wolfe skillfully weaves court transcripts, love letters, and period recollections into an edge-of-your-seat historical thriller about the crime that rocked pre–Civil War America. With its shocking verdicts that raised troubling questions about sexism and racism, this mesmerizing true-crime tale still resonates nearly two hundred years later.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Murder was the favorite subject , and... murders that took place within the privileged class excited the greatest interest," writes Wolfe in this fascinating historical re-creation of an early 19th-century scandal. Lucretia Chapman, a wife, mother and headmistress of a boarding school near Philadelphia, and the man who called himself Lino Espos y Mina, a sociopathic liar who was the catalyst for her husband's murder, are as colorful characters as one is likely to find in true crime tales. Lino, in particular, seems to defy the laws of rationality. He turned up dirty and penniless at the Chapmans' door, boasting that he was the aristocratic son of a Mexican general who was governor of California, and was heir to gold and silver mines in his native country. Dr. William Chapman, a noted scientist, had doubts about the man who henceforth boarded with them, but Lucretia fell under his spell and soon became Lino's lover. After two years, Lino either poisoned Dr. Chapman himself or inspired Lucretia to do so. Nine days later, he married the supremely gullible Lucretia, who continued to believe his outrageous stories about why his money never arrived. Eventually arrested for murder, Lucretia and Lino were given separate trials. In a demented act of vengeance, Lino viciously maligned Lucretia with newly invented lies in a memoir he wrote before he was hanged, thus making him one of the first people in America to try to make money by publicizing his criminal activities. Wolfe's assiduous research has re-created the background and trial events in specific detail she acknowledges the essential help of a contemporary (1832) book chronicling the trial by William Du Bois. Wolfe (Wasted) has always been a keen observer of contemporary true crime; here she has delved deeper into history to disinter a quintessential con man who cut a wide swath along the eastern seaboard among people eager to believe they were in the presence of royalty.
