When handsome Highway Patrolman Leonard Kirkes was convicted of second-degree murder at Carpinteria, Calif, (pop. 2,864), many of his fellow citizens felt that justice had triumphed over long odds. Kirkes was not brought to trial until eight years after the death of his supposed victim, 20-year-old Margaret Senteney, and the trial took place then only because Sheriff John Ross had painfully gathered up snippets and scraps of circumstantial evidence and had fitted them into a damning whole (TIME, Jan. 8, 1951).
As a prisoner at San Quentin, Kirkes set out doggedly to get a new trial—even though he would soon...
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