CRIME: Mamma's Boy

Pity the girl who marries Frank Duncan, clacked the gossips around the Santa Barbara, Calif, courthouse. The owl-eyed lawyer was arrogant and humorless, lisped so noticeably that teasing court clerks called him a "wicked wascal wabbit" behind his back. But that was the lesser half of it: Frank at 29 was a mamma's boy. Matronly, smartly dressed Elizabeth Duncan, separated from her husband when Frank was a child, held her son's hand in court, applauded when he won a case, tongue-lashed the district attorney when he lost. So tight was the noose that once, when Frank threatened to leave...

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