a Bennington Historical Society presentation

In November 1926, Cecelia Gullivan, treasurer of the Cone Automatic Machine company of Windsor, Vermont, was brutally killed in her home. Local police quickly arrested Cone Automatic machinist John Winters on suspicion of the crime, and the trial that followed was sensational and swift. The author of Winters’ Time: A Secret Pledge, a Severed Head, and the Murder that Brought America’s Most Famous Lawyer to Vermont, shares the story.

Jeffrey L. Amestoy, the former Vermont Attorney General (1985-1997) and Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court (1997-2004), has spent years researching a fascinating and dramatic episode of Vermont’s history: the time that Clarence Darrow, America’s most famous lawyer, came to Vermont to defend a convicted murderer before the Vermont Supreme Court.

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