by M. William Phelps

In the play Arsenic and Old Lace, two women, living under that “harmless little old lady” persona, offering seniors a cozy place to room and board, use elderberry wine and arsenic to commit murder. The play, written by Joseph Kesselring, is billed by the Connecticut Theatre Group as “a delightful evening of murder and mayhem with eccentric aunts, crazy nephews and bodies in the basement!” The Ivoryton Playhouse, on Main Street in Ivoryton, CT, is performing Arsenic and Old Lace June 9 through the 27 of this year. We’re working out the details now, but I will be attending a performance on June 24 to sign copies of my book, The Devil’s Rooming House, and talk about how Kesselring wrote the play based on the true story of prolific female serial killer Amy Archer-Gilligan, the subject of my book.

The play has been performed somewhere on the planet for the past seventy-eight years. That’s almost eight decades! It is a popular production high schools and colleges often stage. Frank Capra directed Cary Grant in the hit Hollywood movie version. To say that the Arsenic and Old Lace franchise has been a success is beyond an understatement; the production has generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue all over the world.

What is interesting, beyond the concept of the play itself and the differences between the plot and characters and Amy Archer’s life, is the idea that murder is a form of humorous entertainment. These two old women in the production murder men—and seem to enjoy making a comedy of it. There are plenty of belly laughs and gags to keep us in stitches throughout.

As I have been out on the road talking up my book, the idea of murder as a comical form of entertainment has come up time and again. Amy Archer killed no fewer than 50 people. There’s nothing amusing about that. Those deaths—by arsenical poisoning—were not fast or without a terrible bout of acute pain (and fever), projectile vomiting, nausea, explosive diarrhea, dehydration, and slow death. There’s even some indication that while her victims were dying, Amy taunted and ridiculed them—that is, before taking their money.

So the question, then, becomes: How does one sit and enjoy a production glamorizing and trivializing murder? Some of us in the business of writing true-crime books are continuously dodging jabs from certain opponents who want to minimize what we do, call it exploitation, and say we are making a profit at the expense of murder victims and their families. Many don’t see the journalism. Or understand how hard the work is.

That said, how is it that Kesselring got away with this? How did his play, which opened to favorable reviews and large audiences, get around the idea of murder as entertainment?

Kesselring made several changes, for one, after he was told he did not have permission to use Amy’s story. Amy, lest we forget, lived until the late 1960s, so she was alive for many years while a play about her life was staged around the world. Kesselring did not want to get sued. Audiences, of course, did not know they were watching a play based on a true story. In that sense, they were duped. After all, who in their right mind would write a comedy on an actual murder case?

The play is centered around two elderly women, the madcap, zany, sadistic Brewster sisters. In the real story there was only one woman in her late thirties. Amy was not, as many might presume, an old woman when she committed the murders. The original title of Kesselring’s play was “Bodies in the Cellar,” simply because his femme fatales buried their victims in the cellar of their home. Amy never buried anyone in the cellar of her Windsor, CT, home; she had the undertaker come in the middle of the night and whisk the bodies away after the in-house doctor signed off on a “natural” cause of death. Teddy Brewster, the “crazy” nephew in the production who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, is based on a real person—Amy’s brother. There are many more of these similarities. But the impetus of each scene and each character is from some part of Amy Archer’s dark reality.

I have learned a lot from the discussions about murder as entertainment we’ve had along the course of my book tour. What I have been saying, to put it briefly, is, if critics of true-crime out there really want to complain to someone about murder being a form of entertainment, please, I beg of you, write to Nancy Grace. Nancy has—along with other like her—turned exploiting murder into a cottage industry, and she thinks she’s doing the world a service, to boot!

My point is, there is truth, disguised of course through the use of trickery and gimmickry, behind most of the popular stories we think are totally fictitious (ahem … “Law & Order”). All stories are based in truth. It’s that fine line between fact and fiction—entertainment shows camouflaged as hard news—that blur things and confuse some of us. When you watch Arsenic and Old Lace, you understand it is a fictitious comedy; the fact that it is based on a true story doesn’t make a difference. But when you watch a show like Nancy Grace, you might be under the impression you are getting news/journalism, and that there are teams of investigative journalists working behind the scenes. Amy Archer was tried and convicted. Her case was closed years before the play hit. How many “alleged” criminals has Nancy Grace and her posse made viewers believe are guilty—for the most part based on the speculation and opinions of her guests? Night after night, Nancy’s guests trash suspects, couching their arguments on that ridiculous word “allegedly.”

Murder as sport, that’s what you get. Commentators and pundits who think they know what the hell it is they’re talking about. Guilty until proven innocent. The new American way.

It should be breaking news when it occurs, because the fact is, staying an execution in the state of Texas is rarely ever done. Generally speaking, Texas is right up there with, oh, I don’t know, perhaps Iran, when it comes to carrying out executions—and when Mr. Bush was governor, oh boy, Texas probably even surpassed Iran.

But just an hour—and they always wait to the last minute when they do this; why is that?—before he was set to meet his maker (and there is some question as to who that is), a former strip club bouncer condemned for a double slaying twenty years ago won a reprieve—and, one could say, a new lease on life (sorry, couldn’t resist).

When he was informed that his life would be spared, Charles Dean Hood cried like a guy who had just won Lotto.

“I just thank God,” Hood said. “I just walk by my faith. If it didn’t happen, I was going home to the Lord.”

Another one who has found Christ while in prison, but lived under the law the Father of Lies while on the outside.

This is only half the story, however. Check out the details provided to us from our trusty AP wire:

State District Judge Curt Henderson did not give a reason for lifting the death warrant. He later recused himself from the case.

Hood’s attorneys lost several last-day appeals, including one in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in which they claimed the now retired judge who oversaw Hood’s 1990 trial, Verla Sue Holland, was having an affair at the time with the prosecutor assigned to the case, then-Collin County District Attorney Tom O’Connell.

After that appeal was rejected, lawyers from the Texas Defender Service filed a motion in Henderson’s court seeking all correspondence from the prosecutor’s office that may be related to the alleged affair.

Holland and O’Connell have declined to address the allegations.

Hood, 38, was convicted of murder for the 1989 slayings of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace at Williamson’s home in the Dallas suburb of Plano. When arrested in Indiana, Hood was driving Williamson’s $70,000 Cadillac but insisted he had Williamson’s permission.

Hood says he’s innocent. Tuesday’s was his fifth execution date.

Kind of makes you think about what goes on in good ole boy country, doesn’t it? I reckon there might be some corruption involved in this story and that maybe Mr. Hood should seek a new trial. Who knows, maybe he is one those Innocent Men we’ve heard so much about lately?

A wedding is supposed to be a time of great celebration, marked by a gathering of friends and family. On Saturday, 23-year-old New Yorker Sean Bell was all set to marry his high school sweetheart. Invitations had been sent. The wedding hall prepared. Cake and flowers delivered. Guests anxious.

Sean Bell wouldn’t make it down the aisle, however.

As Sean and several of his friends were driving away from a strip club after a bachelor’s night out, something happened. Sean lost control of his car, hit an undercover officer standing outside the club and crashed in an unmarked police van nearby. It has been reported that after that happened, members of the NYPD fired some fifty rounds into the car Sean was driving, killing him almost instantly and wounding several others.

None of the men—including Sean Bell—were armed. Police “thought one of the men in the car might have had a gun.”

Thought and might are strong words. If memory serves me right, four NYPD cops trolling for a rape suspect back in 1999 knocked on Amadou Diallo’s door to question him. When he approached to the door he reached inside his jacket, at which point the officers shot at him forty-one times, hitting Diallo nineteen times and killing him.

The object Diallo was reaching for turned out to be his wallet. Those cops thought it was a gun and Diallo might open fire on them.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said it was “too early to say whether the [Sean Bell] shooting was justified.” Members of the Queens community where Sean lived are calling for Kelly’s resignation.

How can a massacre be justified in any way? What would motivate five police officers to open fire on a car full of unarmed men? If three or four shots were fired, we could sit back, wait for the internal investigation to bear out the facts and make judgments from there. But with fifty rounds being fired, one has to question the intention of the police officers firing those shots.

Ray Kelly said the Sean Bell incident “stemmed from an undercover operation inside the strip club. Seven officers in plain clothes were investigating the Kalua Cabaret”—the strip club where it happened—“and five [of those] were involved in the shooting.”

The hail of gunfire also hit nearby homes and a train station, though no residents were injured.
 
Sean Bell was no street thug; the NYPD should have known that if it had conducted such a thorough investigation. According to Sean’s friends and a local pastor, Sean was a star pitcher for John Adams High School in Ozone Park, and also a devoted father. So good was he on the mound, in fact, that Sean dreamed of playing in the major leagues and his coaches encouraged him, saying he could make it.

Being a man, however, pursuing a baseball career become secondary to Sean when he found out that his girlfriend was pregnant. Three years ago, she gave birth to their daughter, Jada. And Sean gave up his dream of pitching professionally. Five months ago, their second daughter, Jordyn, was born. Just recently, Sean decided it was time to make it official and marry her.

“He was a great baseball player. He would have signed professionally,” his pastor said. “He gave up all that baseball and everything to be with his high school sweetheart.”

Sean worked odd jobs while he and his bride-to-be lived with her parents in an apartment on Beach 27th Street in Rockaway. Sean, though, wanted to move to Atlanta after the wedding.

Why?

His pastor said Sean thought New York life was way too “violent” and didn’t want to raise a family there.

Eighteen years ago, newlywed Gregory Smart knelt on the floor of his Derry, New Hampshire home in the middle of the night and begged for mercy while teenager Billy Flynn coldly refused ot listen and then shot Gregory in the back of the head.

Billy and his high school buddies were infatuated with Gregory’s hot new wife, Pam Smart, the 23-year-old blond who worked at the high school.

Billy met Pam in a self-esteem class she helped teach at the school. They quickly became lovers. She threw sex at him, giving it to him any time he wanted it, as if he was living in some sort of teenage boy’s fantasy.

But then, on May 1, 1990, after Pam was able to get young Billy addicted to her, she convinced Billy and one of his friends to break into Pam and Gregory’s condo, wrestle Gregory to the ground and, as Billy’s friend held a buck knife to Gregory’s throat, Billy stood in back of him, asked God for forgiveness—which I have always been taught should only been done after the sin is committed—and fired a .38-caliber revolver into his head.

There were two other teenage friends outside in a getaway car waiting.

Three of the teens were convicted of murder-conspiracy or accomplice charges. In exchange for testifying against Pam,

Billy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 28 years to life in prison. In about 10 years, Billy will be eligible for parole.

Today, however, Billy goes by the name William. He has a wife and a teenage stepdaughter. He’s a member of the Jaycees. He loves to play softball.

All of this from prison, mind you.

What a country.

Pam Smart is at Bedford Hills Correctional Center for Women in New York where, I was just told the other day, she is still wooing the guards with sex to get what she wants.

Good ole Pam … love to see that she hasn’t changed one bit.

Billy Flynn is now asking a New Hampshire judge to suspend the remainder of his sentence.

Why?

Well, Billy claims he’s changed. He’s not the lovestruck teen he once was. He’s a different, remorseful person, with domestic responsibilities, who realizes what he did was wrong.

According to the AP, Billy’s “court file contains more than three dozen letters of support from prison employees, friends and others who know him. Another nine letters come from people who say they would hire Flynn once he is released.”

A hearing is scheduled for tomorrow morning in Rockingham Superior Court in Brentwood, N.H.

In the motion, Billy asks for a sentence reduction because, at age 33, he has now spent more than half his life in prison.

“He has used those years to develop from a boy into a man of great character, fully rehabilitated and ready to contribute to society upon his release from incarceration,” says his lawyer, Cathy Green of Manchester, N.H.

Boo-hoo-hoo … and so another murder is crying because he or she has to serve his or her sentence.

Billy Flynn doesn’t even deserve the court’s time—better yet, early release.