Crafting True Crime: Trial by Ambush

For our readers, a Christmas present from the incomparable John Valeri, host of Central Booking podcast, a writer, readers and reviewer, on his collaboration with Marcia Clark, both pictured above:

How the Past Became My Present: Marcia, Mom & Me

By John B. Valeri

As I write this, the calendar now reads December. There is magic in the air, but it’s tinged with melancholy. I contemplate what’s to come, even as I honor what has been.

And I find myself thinking about how gifts often beget gifts, and not the kind that are bought in stores or online but the ones that are born of confluence, if not coincidence. The ones where the past becomes the present. Let me tell you about one of those …

Last time I had the honor of appearing on the Miss Demeanors blog, Marni Graff asked me to recommend a crime author I thought readers might not be aware of but would enjoy. I responded, in part:

Anybody who knows me can see where this is going. I’ve been recommending Marcia Clark—yes, that Marcia Clark (prosecutor in the “Trial of the (last) Century”)—since her very first crime novel, Guilt by Association, was published in 2011 … Not only does her experience as a trial attorney and media personality give the books authenticity and gravitas, but she is a master of jaw-dropping plot twists, sharp dialog, and gut-busting humor. Funnily enough, you can see the roots of her crime fiction in her trial memoir, Without a Doubt, which may very well be my favorite book of all-time. As a twelve-year-old, I had unrepentant hero worship for Marcia Clark. Then, I met her when she launched Guilt by Association in Connecticut seventeen years later. We’ve been friends ever since. It’s been one of the greatest, most unexpected delights of my life …

That was December 7, 2022.Ten days later, Marcia Clark emailed me to detail a top-secret writing project (under subtle threat of bodily harm, should I blab) and asked if I might possibly consider working as her research assistant.

Whaaaat?!?!?!

After the initial shock wore off, I pinched myself to make sure I was awake, picked my jaw up off the floor, and did an embarrassing little happy dance in my chair. Oh, and I re-read the email to make sure I hadn’t somehow manufactured the whole thing in my delusional little mind. Then, a moment of pure, unadulterated panic.

What if I wasn’t good enough? What if my ineptitudes caused the whole thing to implode?

But. This was Marcia freaking Clark. Who was I to say no?

And so I fired off a very professional response than went a little something like this: OhMyGodOhMyGodOhMyGod!!! A million times YESSS!!! But please tell me if I suck and I’ll gallantly step aside. We’d still be friends, right??? Oh, and … are you sure that email was meant for me??? 😊

Marcia quickly assured me that this was not some accidental misfire caused by an errant twitch of the finger and promised to send along the book proposal to provide a better idea of what I’d be getting myself into. She signed off: “I have to say, I think we’ll have a lot of fun doing this treasure hunt together—and there’s no one I’d rather do it with!”

So … Christmas had come early, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity delivered straight to my inbox—and with absolutely no provocation on my part.

And now we flash back to 2014.

Marcia was in Connecticut for the launch of her fourth book, The Competition, and had asked me to moderate the conversation. (Again: Whaaaat?!?!?!) During the audience Q&A after, my usually reserved mother stood up—in front of more than a hundred people, mind you—and asked something along the lines of: “Will you hire my son?”

My eyes may have bulged out of my head a bit, but Marcia handled it with grace and good humor, promising that she would indeed hire me, if ever the need arose.

And then we all went on with our lives, that moment little more than an amusing memory mostly lost to time.

Eight years later, Marcia—managing a full caseload of appellate work as a defense attorney and actively developing a podcast (always the overachiever!)—found herself intrigued by the decades-old case of Barbara Graham (its own “Trial of the Century”) and sold a true crime book on proposal. But it would require a lot of research, and the demands on her time were such that she couldn’t possibly do all of it herself.

I didn’t know who Barbara Graham was, but I soon would.

Here’s the lowdown: Barbara—a 30-year-old, four times married and thrice divorced mother of three—had led a life of mostly petty, largely victimless crime after being neglected as a child and spending her young years in and out of reform schools. Then, in 1953, two hardened criminals, Emmett Perkins and Jack Santo, enlisted her to aid them in a home robbery that went terribly wrong, resulting in the brutal murder of Burbank widow Mabel Monahan.

Suddenly on trial for her life, Barbara found herself at the center of a media frenzy, dubbed “Bloody Babs” and depicted as a femme fatale villainess. Meanwhile, her cohorts—who were both known killers—faded into the background, their brute no match for Barbara’s beauty.

Marcia, knowing a little something about the toxic intrusiveness of the media from trying her own generation’s “Trial of the Century,” could empathize with Barbara—and began to suspect that she was the victim of an overzealous prosecution. But would the records bear that out, assuming they still existed?

We spent the better part of a year going down the proverbial rabbit hole. We scoured newspaper databases. We accessed producer Walter Wanger’s papers, which served as source material for the Oscar-winning film, I Want to Live!. We engaged the California State Archives in a painfully long but ultimately fruitful search for the court reporter’s transcripts, eventually resulting in more than four-thousand pages of copy landing on Marcia’s doorstep.

And through it all, we maintained a near constant email exchange, sharing our excitement over new discoveries and our frustration over what can only be described as a gross injustice. I even began referring to us as the “Graham Crackers” in an attempt to maintain some levity as we delved deeper the sad story of Barbara Graham’s life and death.

Then, my part was done, and Marcia began the daunting task of writing the book.

While I’d been plagued by unfounded doubts that something would jettison the project, all indications were positive: A manuscript! A title! A pub date! A revised pub date! A cover! Then, months later: A PDF! A paper galley! A starred review in Publishers Weekly! (Do you like how I managed to sneak that in there?)

And all along, despite my not having written a single word of it, Marcia continued to refer to Trial by Ambush as “our” book in a generosity of spirit that cannot be overstated.

Coincidentally (or not!), I happened across my mom’s copy of The Competition a few months before “our” book’s release and found an inscription I’d never seen before: “To Chris—I can’t wait to hire your son—no kidding!! ❤ Marcia”

I’m not going to lie. That got to me. So much so that I snapped a picture and sent it to Marcia. And then we both marveled at the weird, wild, wonderfulness of it all.

Not long after, Marcia emailed to tell me that her finished author copies had arrived and sent her own picture as proof. “The first one out of the box is yours!”

It came a few short (but really very long!) days later. I broke the seal and held the book in my hands with all due reverence, taking in its look and feel and overall splendor.

My mom—now living with us after having suffered a series of strokes that severely compromised her speech—looked at me wide-eyed and anticipatory, in full understanding of the moment.

I thumbed to the book’s acknowledgements and found my name at the very top, followed by a recognition that still makes me blush. “It was an incredible gift to get to work with him on this book,” it ended.

I read it aloud to my mom

She nodded along as I did, patting my hand. “I’m so proud of you.”

I didn’t know how badly I needed to hear those words until she somehow managed to say them.

And that’s the story of how the past became my present.

John Valeri

TRIAL BY AMBUSH:

In this dramatic true account about the power of sensationalized crime, one woman’s case is exposed for its sexism, flagrant disregard for the truth, and, ultimately, the dangers posed by an unbridled prosecution.

MIss Demeanors

Author

Marni Graff is the award-winning author of The Nora Tierney English Mysteries and The Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries. Her story “Quiche Alain” appears in the Anthony-winning Malice Domestic Anthology, Murder Most Edible.  Managing Editor of Bridle Path Press, she’s a member of Sisters in Crime, Triangle SinC, Mavens of Mayhem SinC, the NC Writers Network, and the International Crime Writers Association.