Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman

Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free Reviews

• 
  Jill Hutchinson

  I have never heard of the subject of this book.....a killer named Edgar Smith who played the legal system for all it was worth and was a master manipulator.
  
  Smith was accused and tried for the brutal murder of a teenage girl in his home town and sentenced to death. For some reason which I didn't think was very clear, the arch-conservative William Buckley took up his cause and brought many other high profile individuals into his camp, especially attorneys of the rich and famous. Thus began the legal battle to have the verdict overturned. Smith spent 14 years on death row as the case was argued, denied, and reintroduced as it worked its way through the justice system. The story concentrates on these years and Smith's manipulation of the people involved. During that time, he wrote a book about his conviction which did rather well and solidified the support for him.He also struck up a "romance" with the book's editor which eventually ruined her life. I will go no further regarding the outcome since there are several twists in the story which would be considered "spoilers".
  
  I thought the overuse of copies of his letters from death row to some of the major players who were defending him became repetitive and slowed down the narrative. But they did show the psychotic side of Smith and gave the viewer a look at the "real" Edgar Smith who was not exactly what he appeared.
  
  An interesting book but very slow in places. And it is also surprising.
• 
  Cecilia

  A strange book. Or, at least, a book that leaves me with a strange feeling. It was both interesting and boring. (I think another reviewer really insightfully summed it up when they said it was both really well researched and superficial). It was a great topic for an article, maybe. But the details are terribly mundane, and all in all, it’s not very illuminating. I’m sorry I gave so much mental space to this horrible person and his enablers.
• 
  VL

  Weinman is a master of true crime. Reading this, I couldn't understand why anyone believed this man but he absolutely preyed on people and was at his heart, a con man. Truly an unbelievable and alarming story but I feel like there are parallels to some folks now who get lifted up in the media.
• 
  vanessa

  I don’t think the author did her own introduction justice. It begins by discussing how true crime has been changing in the past decade or so to pay more attention to the victims & survivors. There’s also mention that books about the justice system are paying more mind to how race and social class affect cases. Honestly, this book did none of that. It didn’t highlight these inconsistencies; instead it was a play by play of the life of Edgar Smith and his crimes. We paid too close attention to his misdeeds and his biography, without any real analysis as to why his case is indicative of what sociopathic white men got away with in the 1950s-1980s. Truthfully, I did not need to know about this man. Even the bits about how he got in with the publishing industry and with William F. Buckley didn’t necessarily take center stage.
• 
  Bill

  This is a book about a guy named Edgar Smith. Edgar Smith murdered a teen-aged girl, was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and was sentenced to death. That’s when right-wing gadfly William F. Buckley swept in to free Edgar from his confinement, only to have Edgar come close to killing another woman. If you’re thinking that William F. Buckley kinda sounds like the bad guy in this story, you’re pretty much right. At the end of the day, Edgar Smith couldn’t help what he was; he was a psychopathic murderer and a congenital liar. Buckley, on the other hand, was a rich jackass who used his wealth and influence to set a psychopath free. And all because Edgar read the right-wing rag that Buckley published (that would be The National Review. Think of it as “Fox News for people who can read"). Buckley’s reason for helping Edgar is because “no one who reads The National Review could possibly be a murderer.” Uh-huh. This is what happens when your ego is the only functioning part of your brain.
  It would be one thing if Buckley was just a right-wing dipshit who fell for a conman. As we’ve seen in the last seven years, he has plenty of company in that department. It’s his other actions in this matter that make him rather despicable. In articles he writes in support of his pet psycho, Buckley manages to denigrate Edgar’s victims with baseless and cruel accusations. And, once Edgar is back behind bars after Buckley frees him, Willie has the unmitigated gall to blame the court system for Edgar’s release! And who made that release possible, Willie? Was it the lawyers you paid for and your constant clarion calls for a duly-convicted murderer to go free?
  I’m sure glad I got that whole “William F. Buckley was a real douchebag” thing off my chest. Now then… I think I was doing a book review. I don’t want you to think I’ve spoiled anything in what I’ve written so far. Oddly enough, Ms. Weinman starts with an introduction that covers every major point in this book, sort of like an outline for a college term paper.
  That is where my criticism ends, because this is a very well-written book, one that’s hard to put down. Maybe that’s the idea behind the encapsulating introduction. Ms. Weinman is letting us know this train is going to crash. She spends the rest of the book showing us exactly how the engine barreled off the bridge into the gorge below, taking quite a few victims, literal and figurative, down with it. I’ve written before about the changing nature of true crime books and Ms. Weinman is a leader in that field.
  Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession, a compendium of modern true crime chronicles that she edited, is one of the best true crime books I’ve read in quite awhile. In Scoundrel, Ms. Weinman shows what a talented writer she herself is. She tracks a small-town murder case as it explodes onto the national stage, never dispassionately but never straying from the facts. Ms. Weinman doesn’t waste time on moralizing that Buckley is a mean-spirited rube who gets conned by a psycho. She simply lays out the facts that allow the reader (or, more specifically, this reader) to come to that conclusion. Much of this book depends on correspondence between Edgar and Buckley as well as Edgar and the editor of a book he writes. I can see why some people might feel like these sections tend to drag a bit. At the very least, the reader might be more than a little icked-out by the salaciously sexual content in the letters a 30-something Edgar writes to his 50-something female editor. In the end, these letters are an integral part of the story that she’s telling and would be poorer without them. It certainly didn't keep me from ripping through this book. She had me hooked. I really wanted to see just how this train would crash.
  
  From the “Tit for Tat” Department
  After my ranting about right-wing douchebag William F. Buckley, I would be remiss not to mention that Ms. Weinman references an incident in which liberal douchebag author Norman Mailer championed the release of career criminal Jack Abbott. Shortly after Abbott was freed in 1980, he murdered a man and was sent back to prison. It would be easy to paint Mailer with the same brush I’ve used on Buckley, but there are some glaring differences between the two cases. Abbott was already set for an early release from prison, whereas Buckley managed to get a guilty man off of death row. To my knowledge, Mailer never denigrated or lied about Abbott’s victims the way Buckley did concerning the female victims of Edgar Smith. In a quite ironic twist, when I Googled the Mailer/Abbott incident, one of the first results was an article published in 2017 in The New Republic, the very magazine that Buckley founded. In the article, the author makes a big deal about how Mailer’s publishing success left him with an oversized ego, mirroring William Buckley’s inflated sense of self-worth on his initial publishing success. The author states that Mailer’s arrogance led him to run a losing campaign for mayor of New York City, exactly like William Buckley did. All these amazing parallels to the case of Buckley and Smith, yet not once does the author mention that the guy who founded the magazine that she's writing in freed a murderer long before Mailer ever did. The author of that article?
  Sarah Weinman.
• 
  Athena

  Before this book, I hadn’t heard of Edgar Smith, his crimes, his books, or the relationships that championed his eventual release from prison. As time passes, the true crime genre has lost a lot of its appeal for me. But Scoundrel was touted as an examination of how Edgar Smith was able to manipulate the system and those with power to win his release from death row, despite his guilt and return to crime barely five years later. I thought this would be a heavier book that discusses how some can manipulate the system, despite their guilt, while so many others languish in prison under false convictions. That ultimately was not the case.
  
  Scoundrel is a detailed timeline of Edgar Smith, from the murder he commits to his bitter end nearly 60 years later. Weinman tirelessly details his many legal efforts to overturn his conviction, the lengthy and numerous edits that went into his death-row memoir, and the many letters he exchanged with infamous conservative, William F. Buckley. Despite the wide scope the author takes, this book ultimately feels… superficial. Yes, we are privy to the many, many private letters exchanged between Smith, Buckley, and several other characters. Yes, we are presented with snippets of court documents, newspaper articles, among other written artifacts from Smith’s life. But the narrative never really progressed beyond “so this happened, and they wrote this in consequence.”
  
  There is no doubt that Smith was guilty, nor do I doubt that he used his powerful friendships to manipulate an already broken system. But I don’t walk away from this book understanding what endeared him to the public, Buckley, or any of the other people in his web. Early in the pandemic, I read The Real Lolita by the same author, and this book suffers many of the same problems. Besides a blurb in the introduction about the intersections of race and class within the American justice system, the book never dug deeper than a retelling of the facts. While Scoundrel was interesting to read, I had hoped for something complex, and it never got there.
• 
  Jeanette

  Meh! The photos were 4 star. Could have added several.
  
  This was a decent rendition. Written at an average prose flow ability but with lack of focus continuity.
  
  The author's bias was obstructive and made it circuitous at points. When it actually wasn't so in chronological time and event. I doubt I will read more of hers.
  
  This guy was a mental case with vast personality and association skills. It is not that rare. Dozens to hundreds get out of prison to reoccur worse crimes presently. Innocent victims in the 1000's daily.
  
  His original sentence would have been the fairest. And would have ended any opportunity for more victims of his brutality. Which occurred.
• 
  Pamela

  This was a very interesting book but unbelievable that a man could be so evil and deceive so many people especially a famous person like William T Buckley.Edgar Smith murdered a young 15 year old girl and then tried to say his friend did it.He ended up being on death row for 14 years before Buckley and other people helped set him free by thinking he was innocent.It nearly cost another young woman her life by releasing him.
• 
  Alex Cruse

  4 stars.
  
  A true WTF book. Literally how this man played the system and the people around him is angering and will leave you going “how?!” often.
• 
  Leslie

  The story itself is reasonably interesting, but I really wanted Weinman to go beyond straightforward narrative and to analyse this story to tell us why it matters. William F Buckley Jr was a reactionary and a racist who devoted his life to building the conservative movement. What about Edgar Smith's story caught and held his attention for so long? Buckley was a man convinced of his own intelligence and contemptuous of almost everyone else's; he was not a man open to either self-reflection or humility. He believed firmly in the authority of the police and law enforcement, dismissing with contempt concerns about police misconduct, lawbreaking, and brutality. So why did he side with the criminal against law enforcement in this case? He certainly withheld his sympathy from people who deserved it a whole lot more than Edgar Smith did, so why was he so ready to extend it to Smith? How did his advocacy of Smith's innocence fit into his larger political concerns and priorities? Without some analysis or thoughtful engagement with Buckley's ideas, he's a cipher, a patsy, just someone Smith conned. And there's much more to be said about the celebrity accorded Smith, albeit briefly. What was going on in the culture in the 1970s that contributed to Edgar Smith becoming such a focus of attention? Smith was certainly ready to take advantage of those cultural currents, but Weinman doesn't have anything to say about what they were. Without some contextualization or broader cultural framework, the story of Edgar Smith and William Buckley and all the others who circled in Smith's orbit is just an odd story, nothing of significance beyond its factual elements.
• 
  Jake

  Sarah Weinman’s books have followed a familiar pattern of bringing to life the women of whom are the object of inspiration for horrible, powerful men. Just as she did in The Real Lolita, Weinman covers the lives of the women Edward Smith assaulted, with special detail to the one he murdered, and how he connived his way to an early prison release thanks in part to William F. Buckley, who denigrated the victim without knowing her. Not as tight of a story as her other book, but still mostly well told and important for understanding how the female victims and survivors of violence are often pawns in a larger narrative.
• 
  Sherrie

  ***I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway***
  
  I liked this book but I can't help but feel like it could have been so much MORE than what it was. The author did a fantastic job researching Edgar Smith and the case that sent him to death row (the murder of a 15 year old girl). She provided back story to all the key people in his life and laid out the story chronologically, clearly, and as far as I can tell...accurately.
  
  But, there's so much more going on than the facts. How did Edgar Smith get women to fall in love with him from prison? What were they feeling? How did he get a famous and successful conservative businessman to bend over backwards for him repeatedly? Why does our justice system fail so many in such myriad of ways? I feel like Scoundrel only scratched the surface of those questions when it could have delved so much deeper.
  
  It's really unfortunate that the author doesn't disclose much about her correspondence with the murderer til the last couple chapters. Even that small bit of connection helped draw me in, but by then the story was basically over.
  
  If you're really into true crime, and like stories that stick to the facts, you will like Scoundrel. It just wasn't it for me.
• 
  britt_brooke

  Convicted murderer Edgar Smith was a master manipulator and incredible con artist. While on death row, he maintained ardent epistolary affairs, built relationships on deceit (most notably with conservative political commentator William F Buckley), and ultimately got what he wanted. A scarily brilliant psychopath; mediocre book.
• 
  Robert Stevens

  Sarah Weinman tells the story of the convicted criminal (murder and attempted murder) Edgar Smith and those who entered his circle. Edgar Smith was a pure sociopath who was also an attention seeker. There were plenty of people who gave him that attention, especially those such as William F. Buckley and Sophie Wilkins, who corresponded with him for years helping him to get his foot in the door of the world of authors. His is a story of seeking freedom at whatever cost, gaining freedom, and losing freedom because old habits die hard.
  
  While I know that the "love" letters between Sophie and Edgar support the claim of "how a convicted murderer persuaded the women who loved him," I honestly could have done without all of the time given to them. I also know that William F. Buckley pretty much was the representative of the Conservative Establishment, but I would have preferred some more details from some other people. I also would have liked some more details on the legal side of the cases, too.
  
  The coda is appreciated because it tells the story of Edgar's first crime and how that crime impacted the victim for her entire life. This was also shown elsewhere, too, with the family of the girl he murdered alongside the woman he stabbed and nearly killed. This focus is important in a work of the true crime genre.
  
  Additionally, this book would have been stronger if more could have been shared about the thoughts and actions of Sophie Wilkins and William F. Buckley once they no longer believed his innocence.
• 
  Ben

  Thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for an ARC of this title.
  
  I was a fan of the thorough approach Sarah Weinman took in
  The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World, and her curatorial eye in
  Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession, so I was very excited to see she was writing another true crime book about a case I hadn't heard anything about.
  
  Edger Smith is a real piece of work, and Weinman does a great job of using various sources to show us just how he committed his many crimes, but also convinced everyone he was innocent (until that all fell apart in the 70s). I would have maybe loved a little more about his (apparently mostly terrible) work as a published author, but otherwise this does a great job of telling this story without glorifying its central figure.
• 
  Erika Nerdypants

  This is my second book on killers who became protégés of leading intellectuals in the 1970s. In Austria, Jack Unterweger was championed out of prison and became a published author, only to go on to kill again. Edgar Smith, the subject of this book, escaped death row because of influential writers, and editors at Knopf publishing house who went to bat for him, believing in his innocence. When they succeeded, and it turns out they were just as wrong as their colleagues in Austria, another woman nearly lost her life.
  
  Smith and Unterweger are sociopaths, doing what sociopaths the world over do. They lie, cheat, manipulate and kill. Awful, but nothing new. I wish this book could have given more insight into what motivated those intellectuals to champion their cause in the first place. Sophie Wilkins, the editor at Knopf is the only one who seems to examine her own culpability with any kind of real honesty, even when it is to her detriment. More than once Janet Malcolm's excellent "The Journalist and the Murderer" came to mind while reading this book.
• 
  MM Suarez

  I had never heard of Edgar Smith and his heinous crimes but I certainly had heard of William F. Buckley and I am not all that surprised that a white, entitled, arrogant man like him was persuaded and became an advocate for this killer, since men like Buckley consider themselves infallible, once he made up his mind that Smith was wrongly convicted (in spite of all evidence to the contrary) that was all she wrote.
  Edgar Smith happened to be white and attractive, had Buckley become an advocate for any of the many black and brown men wrongly convicted of a brutal murder, now that would have surprised me. One of the most disgusting parts of the book (there are plenty) was reading editor Sophie Wilkin's sexually explicit letters to Smith, yuck!
• 
  Avid Reader and Geek Girl

  4 stars
  
  This was an interesting read. I liked that it was more about life than the violent crimes of the man. And mostly about the relationships within his life. The narration was excellent for a non-fiction book. This is also a guide in why never to just take someone at their word when they're convicted of a crime and claim they're innocent. And why you do need proof that there was something wrong with their trial or the investigation.
• 
  Siobhan Ward

  I think part of the challenge with this book is that Smith and his story are both so dislikeable that it's hard to enjoy the book. It's just frustrating to read about how he managed to weasel his way into people's hearts and minds - especially since he didn't seem that clever or creative. Like other books about legal proceedings, this one definitely had some dry moments, but Weinman did her best to make the plot and proceedings accessible to everyday readers.
• 
  Angela's Booked

  This was so intriguing. Very well-written. Some parts felt like a work of fiction because I couldn’t believe what a smooth talker Edgar Smith was and how he got all these women he got to fall in love with him is beyond me.
• 
  Lindsay Hunter

  What an incredible story. So well researched and written. Just wow.
• 
  Kip Gire

  If you are a fan of true crime books, this will interest you. The fellow was a complete sociopath that managed to outsmart some of the best minds of his time. That said, its, overall, a really sad case of a pathetic person seeking to find fame within the worst of circumstances and to the detriments of dozens. It is interesting and not overtly.
• 
  Patricia

  I had never heard of Edgar Smith or his crimes--killing a teenage girl in 1957 and, after his release from prison, violently attacking a woman in 1976--nor that his release from prison was enabled by William F. Buckley and others; that Smith published a popular, self-serving memoir; and that he manipulated his book editor and at least one other woman romantically while he was in prison. The story is interesting, but I was hoping not for just a recital of Smith's crimes and correspondence, but for analysis of the context and implications of the support this white man received from the conservative establishment and his manipulation of the legal system. As it is, I wish I hadn't spent quite so much time immersed in this horrible man's deeds and writings.
• 
  Lindsay

  Psychopathy and extreme wealth are one in the same.
  
  How did the book make me feel/think?
  
  What did I learn from Scoundrel?
  
  It is a fascinating read. I never thought I would be into a historical murder story.
  
  I dove in.
  
  What a voyeuristic ride. The writing is captivating. Weinman is a fabulous storyteller. I hope she’s okay (after being immersed in this horrendous story).
  
  Edgar Smith was a monster, and William F. Buckley was a monster as well, who walked lockstep with Smith.
  
  I guess what I learned from Scoundrel is that there is a razor-thin line between psychopathy, genius and the utter manipulation of everything and everyone around you for personal gain.
  
  Narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy are deadly bedfellows. Extreme wealth is a disease.
  
  I learned those inflicted by extreme wealth care about only one thing: themselves.
  
  I feel a sense of calm. Now, I understand the news better. We all scream about political figures saying insane things and still being loved. I get it now. The shackles attached to those needing validation, the wealthy + deranged mentally ill (1), do not care. We shriek: These people need to listen. They won’t.
  
  Because after they’ve jumped on a cause, their hearing has been muted. The rest of us suffer the noise of not comprehending why those diseased are not as outraged as the rest.
  
  That’s how Scoundrel made me feel/think.
  
  You can’t change a debilitating illness.
  
  Psychopathy and extreme wealth are the same.
  
  1) I’m not making light of mental illness; these thoughts pertain specifically to monsters of the ilk of Smith + Buckley + those who often rise the political ranks.
  
  WRITTEN: 12 October 2022