Justice is blind, they say, but perhaps not to beauty.
In telling the stories of Madeline Smith and Susan Cummings--and 30 others--James proves the existence of the so-called Beauty Defense and shines a spotlight on how gender bias has actually benefited Femmes Fatales and affected legal systems across the world..
And in both cases, the juries bought it.
While these two women lived in different centuries and on different continents, both of their lawyers argued that they were too beautiful to be killers.
And in Warrenton, Virginia, mild-mannered heiress Susan Cummings gunned down her polo-playing boyfriend, Roberto, following a disagreement.
She solved the problem, James writes, with arsenic-laced chocolates.
When Madeline Smith, a Glasgow socialite, tried to end a relationship with one man to date another, her jilted lover proved difficult to shake.
But all were so beautiful, as James demonstrates, that they got away with murder.
With cases from 1850 to 1997, these 32 examples span more than a century, across cultures, ethnicities, and socioeconomic status.
The Beauty Defense: Femmes Fatales on Trial gathers the true stories of some of the most infamous Femmes Fatales in criminal history, collected by attorney and true crime historian Laura James.
In supposedly dispassionate courts of law, attractive women have long avoided punishment, based largely on their looks, for cold-blooded crimes.
Justice is blind, they say, but perhaps not to beauty
