Justice is blind, they say, but perhaps not to beauty. In supposedly
dispassionate courts of law, attractive women have long avoided
punishment, based largely on their looks, for cold-blooded crimes. The
Beauty Defense: Femmes Fatales on Trial gathers the true stories of
some of the most infamous femmes fatales in criminal history, collected
by attorney and true crime historian Laura James.
With cases from 1850 to 1997, these 32 examples span more than a
century, across cultures, ethnicities, and socioeconomic status. But all
were so beautiful, as James demonstrates, that they got away with
murder.
When Madeline Smith, a Glasgow socialite, tried to end a relationship
with one man to date another, her jilted lover proved difficult to
shake. She solved the problem, James writes, with arsenic-laced
chocolates. And in Warrenton, Virginia, mild-mannered heiress Susan
Cummings gunned down her polo-playing boyfriend, Roberto, following a
disagreement. While these two women lived in different centuries and on
different continents, both of their lawyers argued that they were too
beautiful to be killers. And in both cases, the juries bought it.
In telling the stories of Madeline Smith and Susan Cummings--and 30
others--James proves the existence of the so-called Beauty Defense and
shines a spotlight on how gender bias has actually benefited femmes
fatales and affected legal systems across the world.
