How do you do?

I? I've been asking myself why it is that criminal trials grip the imagination of the meekest law by those among us.

What is the psychological urge that holds us to the crime

columns of our daily papers and send so many of us packing the public seats at

the law courts? It's quite a question, isn't it? Well I've got an explanation for you.

I'd like to read to you a few lines written by a great British statesman and political writer of

the 18th century, Edmund Burke. This is what he says. The annals of criminal jurisprudence

exhibit human nature in a variety of positions at once the most striking, interesting, and affecting.

The real culprits as original characters stand forward on the canvas of humanity

as prominent objects for our special study.

How well that slightly antique phrase... for our

subject

slightly antique phrase applies to the Macau figure of Dr.

Buckrxton, who slew his English wife,

lovely Isabel, and Mary Rogerson they're certain and dissected their unfortunate

remains into 200 all but unidentifiedable parts. Women in the crowded gallery of the

court grew faint and retired while expert witnesses gave

evidence that was indisputable. And all the time the prisoners written

confession lay in a sealed envelope addressed to a Sunday newspaper and in the custody of a friend who had strict instructions that it was only to be opened in the event of his death.

But let me take you back.

Back to early September 1935. We will go to the little English town of Lancaster.

It's a pretty place, and at number two Dalton Square, we find the well-loved Dr.

...