Test. Test. Test. Test. Your honor, opposing counsel, members of the jury, its easy to paint a woman such as ms. Harris as arrogant and with an uncontrollable temper. Its easy to accuse such a woman as driven with jealousy and rage when she covered her lover of 14 years ms. Harris left behind a suicide note and drove to see mr. Tarnower as a final goodbye before she decided to end her life. They will fail to tell you about the bruises found on ms. Harris arms and shoulders, indicative of a struggle ms. Harris recalls over the gun when mr. Tarnower tries to pull her hand away when she pointed it to her head. The same struggle as the bullets went through his palm in his effort to cover the mouth of the gun and into his chest. They will show you a letter written by ms. Harris to mr. Tarnower that they say shows undeniable proof of her intent to kill her lover. They will fail to tell you that this letter is only representative of ms. Harris state of mind at the time she found out of his af
Relationship with the doctor and her conviction for his murder. All right. Good afternoon. We are going to talk about jean harris and for those of us old enough to remember the scarsdale diet doctor murder. Well talk about the case itself and some of the impact of the choices that the lawyers made during the trial that affected the outcome, but as we talk about this case i want you to keep two things in the back of your mind because were going to come back at the ented of class to talk about these. The first is i want you to think about how this case is similar and different from the Lizzie Borden murder trial from 1983 so about 100 years earlier and the second is the question of why do you all know who Lizzie Borden is and raise your hand if you had ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial before this class . Okay. One, two, kind of, and before we did liz borden you had all heard of Lizzie Borden, right, and i want to talk about why some cases remain more famous than oh
I dont actually solve the mystery in the course of the story, that i thought it was important to lay out the story from the beginning to the verdict to the strange cultural after life of the case without officially taking a position so that so that it would be as evenhanded as possible and would allow the readers to puzzle it out for themselves. Theres also something i think that always feels a little bit like a cheat when youre reading a nonfiction narrative, and theres a solution to the central mystery, that its hard not to think that and i think that this has been the case with prior works on the borden mystery. You do have the sense that people are really emphasizing and deemphasizing parts of the story, and, again, that was something i didnt want to do. Anyway, all that have is the background, and just to begin with what we know for certain and that is on august 4th, 1892, and drew and abby borden, an elderly couple, were found hacked to death in the words of their local paper in
Professor sarah fields teaches a class about the 1981 trial of gene harris, who was accused of murderering the scarsdale diet doctor. Professor fields describes the suspects background, her long relationship with the doctor and her conviction for his murder. All right. Good afternoon. We are going to talk about jean harris, and for those of us old enough to remember the scarsdale diet doctor murder. Well talk about the case in a couple of different sections. First well talk about the case itself and some of the impact of the choices that the lawyers made during the trial that affected the outcome. But as we talk about this case i want you to keep two things in the back of your mind because were going to come back at the end of class to talk about these. The first is i want you to think about how this case is similar and different from the Lizzie Borden murder trial from 1983 so and the second is the question about 100 years earlier. And the second is the question of why do you all know
Harris. For those of us who are old enough to remember the scars dale diet doctor murder. As we talk about this case, i want to keep two things in the back your mind when i come back at the and across the talk about these. The first i want you to think about how this case is both similar and different from the lizzy board and murder trial from 1893. About 100 years earlier. And the second is the question why do everyone know who lizzy borden is and raise your hand if you ever heard of the jean harris murder trial before this class . One or two kind of. And before we get lucky borne out of lizzy born in. What to talk about why some cases remain more famous than others, especially since everyone always talks about cases as if they are this case of the century, the trial of the century. We are going to begin with opening statements. The reason we are doing this is most of america really got to know our alleged perpetrator jean harris and her victim in the opening statements. Today luke ni