Book Count: 57
The True Crime Files of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Non-Fiction: crime 288 pages 2001
This is the story of the two real life crimes that the creator of Sherlock Holmes investigated. In both cases he was working to free a man he felt was innocent of the crime after having already been found guilty in court. The majority of the book was about the case of George Ernest Thompson Edalji, a lawyer that was charged with attacking animals and writing letters about his attacking of animals and threats of more crimes to follow. Although a lawyer, he didn’t bother to do as much defense in the case as possible as the defense thought it wouldn’t be necessary as he couldn’t have reasonable commented the crime. Because, first he had an alibi for the attack and at least one of the letters, he had no motive, he was not a violent person, and lastly he had vision so bad that he would be considered legally blind today without corrective glasses which he didn’t own at the time. (His vision was between -8 and -10 with astiginatism in one eye. Legally blind is now defined as having 20/200 vision [with any possible corrections i.e. glasses, eye surgery etc.] in most 1st world countries. This is about -2 to -2.5.) The second case is of Oscar Slater who was convicted of the murder of someone that he had no reason the know and or want to kill largely on eye witnesses that clamed to see him there. However, the means of getting the identification would not be allowed today, as they knew he was the defendant before being asked to identify him as some one that they only saw for a few seconds. Also in both cases he deals with the police involved’s prejudice of men seen as foreigners.
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