• 256 Pages
• 7 x 10
• Hardcover
• ISBN 1-933197-27-7
• Copyright 2006

By John Fulker

Attorney John Fulker readily acknowledges that the act of murder, per se, is trite; he stigmatizes it as “the ultimate obscenity.” He concedes, however, that despite that somewhat aphoristic, generally-held perception, we are, all of us, nonetheless inordinately intrigued by capital cases—those instances where the participants actually play for all the marbles.
Over the past quarter century, Fulker has researched and presented, in novelized form, a collection of carefully selected murder cases from the annals of the Common Pleas Courts of his own Miami County, Ohio. Some of his cases were chosen because of the highprofile of the participants, the events of the crime or the subsequent court trials, and the intense public attention they commanded; others were included because of some exceptional feature, nuance or wrinkle which served to set them apart from the bathetic norm. With this latest work, a trilogy, he has completed his eight-piece anthology with the re-creation of the widely-publicized, and highly-controversial trial of “Slicker” Knoop in 1916, the bizarre circumstance and quixotic prosecution of Lonnie Hight in 1938, and finally, from the author’s own experience, the trial of Charles Kennedy in 1964. As the title to the book would seem to suggest, the weapons involved in each of these cases proved to be pivotal to the issue of guilt or innocence.
A practicing attorney for more than fifty years, John Fulker is uniquely qualified, by experience and insight, to re-create the circumstances and the drama involved in these actual episodes. His research of court records and contemporary accounts, coupled with personal interviews and his own personal recollections, has enabled him to select and to present each of his cases with understanding, empathy and, above all, an elegant writing style.