Corpus Delicti

Diane Wagner apparently knew that there was something extraordinary about the now almost forgotten case of one Leonard Ewing Scott who was put on trial for the murder of his wealthy wife in the mid 1950's in Los Angeles. In any case, Ms. Wagner's timing in writing the book was great because she was able to interview not only the (at that point) aging and failing Mr. Scott before he died, but she also interviewed the hard-charging Los Angeles prosecutor who put Mr. Scott behind bars against all odds. You see, L. Ewing Scott (he liked the "Ewing" part) killed his unsuspecting wife Evelyn and carried out a "body disposal" scheme so clever that Mrs. Scott was never found. Mr. Scott thought, of course, that without any body, he would never be charged with murder and he told everyone a wide range of stories to account for his wife's sudden departure. ("She was in a sanitarium back East" he'd whisper. "Somewhere.") While the general public and true crime buffs have almost forgotten about this original "missing woman" case, prosecuting attorneys have not because the case Ms. Wagner discusses forms the basis for nearly all prosecutions of "bodiless homicides" in the U.S. The assistant D.A., J. Miller Leavy, took on the Scott case, body or no body, and effectively prosecuted the homicide even though there was no body, no crime scene evidence, and "only" circumstantial evidence. For a new book which puts the L. Ewing Scott case into the context of crimes in which men skillfully dispose of their wives or girlfriends in carefully constructed plots to "get away with murder", see Marilee Strong's new Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives. If you can find a copy of Corpus Delecti, it is a great combination of true crime and legal procedural on just how such a tough case can be built.