The Unfortunate Dr. Webster

New evidence in this true crime novel of the murder of Dr. George Parkman in 1849. John White Webster didn't do it! But money talks, and the family of the murdered man put their money to work populating the Court, the jury, and the witness box with family members. The prosecuting attorney was a relative. Even the clergyman who became, at his own insistence, spiritual adviser to Dr. Webster, was related to the Parkman family. And in the end, the Parkman money spoke. The Unfortunate Dr. Webster is a fictional account of how the murder may have been committed and how it came to pass that Webster was accused, tried, convicted, and executed for a crime that he did not commit. Parkman's family used their considerable influence to ensure Dr. Webster's conviction in spite of monumental evidence to the contrary. Dr. Webster maintained his innocence throughout his ordeal, but his attorneys did little to defend him. They did not challenge outright lies and contradictions made by witnesses for the prosecution and called virtually no witnesses for the defense. They compounded their inadequacy by presenting a rambling and often incoherent closing argument. The jury found him guilty, and Dr. Webster was hanged on August 30, 1850. Calling upon trial transcripts and copies of original correspondence among the principals, Carlson melds fact with fiction, showing how wealth and power were applied to please the family of the murdered man.The case of Professor John White Webster is remembered as one of the most blatant miscarriages of justice in the history of Boston.

Glen H. Carlson is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. The Unfortunate Dr. Webster is his second book. His first book, The Murder of Andrew Sigler is the account of a true crime that took place in the little town of Hurley, Wisconsin in the mid-1920s. He has been published in several magazines including The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies. Carlson is an avid historian and Lizzie Borden scholar.