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INTRODUCTION
By Alan M. Dershowitz
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It was the most notorious murder in American history. It shook the
foundations of the ivy-covered buildings at Harvard. One distin-
guished professor at the Harvard Medical School was accused of kill-
ing and dismembering the body of another distinguished Harvard
Medical School professor. The Harvard community split right down
the middle: the President of Harvard, Jared Sparks, testified for the
defendant; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes testified for the prosecution.
Virtually every participant in the trial-the judges, the prosecutors,
the defense attorneys and many of the witnesses-were sons of Har-
vard. Though the University survived, its reputation for veritas was
tarnished by the trial and the sordid revelations testified to by the
witnesses.
The victim of the crime was an old curmudgeon named Dr. George
Parkman. At the time of his death, Parkman had all but abandoned
his career in medicine and become a real estate speculator. His pen-
chant for hounding those who owed him rent and mortgage money
had earned him a reputation as a money-hungry and merciless preda-
tor. But with his vast wealth-he was among Boston's richest citi-
zens-he bought powerful friends and honors. The George Parkman
Professor of Anatomy was his friend Oliver Wendell Holmes, who de-
livered the eulogy at Parkman's memorial service. It is revealing that
the great wordmaster could come up with no better characterization
of the dearly departed than that he was a "man of strict and stern
principle with never a flagging energy, simple and frugal."
The man accused of killing Parkman was Professor John White
Webster, the author of Webster's Chemistry, a standard medical
school text of that era. Webster was as outgoing as Parkman was
stern. A colleague described him as "a great asset at every Cambridge
party." He was witty, charming, well-read, musical-and utterly ir-
responsible in his financial dealings.
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