cover image Corpus Delicti

Corpus Delicti

Diane Wagner. St. Martin's Press, $16.95 (244pp) ISBN 978-0-312-17016-5

The 1949 marriage between wealthy widow Evelyn Throsby Mumper and L. Ewing Scott, a handsome bachelor, is presented here as a textbook case of a scheming adventurer marrying for money in order to spend it on younger women. Six years after the wedding, Evelyn Scott disappeared; her husband offered various explanations for her absence, but apparently convinced few. After two years as a fugitive, he was arrested and, despite the absence of a body, was tried, convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonmentall the while insisting not only on his innocence but that his wife was not dead. Scott was released in 1978, and a few years later agreed to talk about the case to Wagner, a Los Angelesbased writer; he ultimately gave her a confession to the murder, thus making this a rather unusual entry in the true-crime annals. February 3