eyes collapsed and the sagging lids became reptilian. His heavy dark brows, which always had a tendency to lift cynically, now arched diabolically. Never refined, his wide mouth seemed more fleshy and sagged at the lips from the pull of swollen jowls. And with the added weight and grossening, his weak knobby chin receded noticeably within the folds of his neck.
Now the educator did not merely look dissolute, but extraordinarily sinister. Not a face likely to instill confidence in a jury.
Because of the Quaker influence, the sign at the edge of town reads: west chester welcomes thee.
"I could have been president of the United States but I lost the election for mayor of West Chester" is the way John J. O'Brien sized up his brief foray into local politics.
John O'Brien enjoyed trial work, especially criminal law, but thus far his triumphs had been limited to cases such as one involving a hobo who took upon himself the duty of picking up litter in the public park near a lovers' lane. The litter mostly included discarded underwear and lawyer O'Brien got a kick out of successfully proving that the hobo was an environmentalist, not a voyeur.
A man given to self-deprecating humor, O'Brien was surprised and excited when his divorce client, Mrs. Stephanie Smith, asked him to defend her husband, Dr. Jay Smith, who he knew stood charged with a series of highly publicized crimes.
John O'Brien tilted his round Irish face and his dark brows gave him a pixieish look, when he recalled the request.
"I'm just a small-town lawyer," O'Brien reminisced, settled in his front-yard rocking chair. The wooden sign suspended over the door of his Victorian office in a residential neighborhood of West Chester said: john j. o'brien, attorney at law. And below it the word notary had been added, proving that it wasn't all that easy for a small-town lawyer to make a buck.
"Like everyone else," the lawyer recalled, "when I first met Stephanie Smith I couldn't believe she was the wife of a school principal. But she was a decent soul, and I really liked her. She was the kind who always gave you a hug and kiss when coming or going, whether you wanted it or not."
It seemed that the principal could not get an impartial trial anywhere in the Philadelphia area what with the newspaper coverage of his scandalous secret life. O'Brien wanted at least to win a venue change for the most serious offense, the theft from the St. Davids Sears store, but venue changes were timeconsuming.
Stephanie Smith was by then trying to keep her spirits up while her cancer advanced to more critical stages. She still wore her hair teased and sprayed but she'd changed the color to a less garish shade of auburn. And the dying woman even got plastic surgery on her hooked nose during what she knew would be her last year on earth. Possibly the attention of the press was welcomed by Jay Smith's suffering wife who was in and out of the hospital during short periods of remission.
In the first week of the Jay Smith scandal, she held a press interview and said to reporters, "Hon, you can live with a man for twenty-seven years and not know him. Why, Jay didn't even let me know he was in jail 'til thirty-six hours after the arrest. I was shocked!! I hadn't seen Jay since Saturday and thought he'd went to army reserves or something. He always would come and go without telling me nothing. It wasn't unusual not to see him for days at a time."
Then Stephanie told reporters how she'd met young Jay Smith when he was a student teacher at Chester High School and how, like Jay, she was from a poor local family and how, after they married in 1951, she helped to support him during his university years, and waited and worked while he was overseas in Korea as an army officer.
And despite what lawyer O'Brien advised, during every interview Stephanie gave, there would be lots of potentially damaging tidbits about his "eccentric" ways. She gave reporters what they wanted, but she made it known that she
Now the educator did not merely look dissolute, but extraordinarily sinister. Not a face likely to instill confidence in a jury.
Because of the Quaker influence, the sign at the edge of town reads: west chester welcomes thee.
"I could have been president of the United States but I lost the election for mayor of West Chester" is the way John J. O'Brien sized up his brief foray into local politics.
John O'Brien enjoyed trial work, especially criminal law, but thus far his triumphs had been limited to cases such as one involving a hobo who took upon himself the duty of picking up litter in the public park near a lovers' lane. The litter mostly included discarded underwear and lawyer O'Brien got a kick out of successfully proving that the hobo was an environmentalist, not a voyeur.
A man given to self-deprecating humor, O'Brien was surprised and excited when his divorce client, Mrs. Stephanie Smith, asked him to defend her husband, Dr. Jay Smith, who he knew stood charged with a series of highly publicized crimes.
John O'Brien tilted his round Irish face and his dark brows gave him a pixieish look, when he recalled the request.
"I'm just a small-town lawyer," O'Brien reminisced, settled in his front-yard rocking chair. The wooden sign suspended over the door of his Victorian office in a residential neighborhood of West Chester said: john j. o'brien, attorney at law. And below it the word notary had been added, proving that it wasn't all that easy for a small-town lawyer to make a buck.
"Like everyone else," the lawyer recalled, "when I first met Stephanie Smith I couldn't believe she was the wife of a school principal. But she was a decent soul, and I really liked her. She was the kind who always gave you a hug and kiss when coming or going, whether you wanted it or not."
It seemed that the principal could not get an impartial trial anywhere in the Philadelphia area what with the newspaper coverage of his scandalous secret life. O'Brien wanted at least to win a venue change for the most serious offense, the theft from the St. Davids Sears store, but venue changes were timeconsuming.
Stephanie Smith was by then trying to keep her spirits up while her cancer advanced to more critical stages. She still wore her hair teased and sprayed but she'd changed the color to a less garish shade of auburn. And the dying woman even got plastic surgery on her hooked nose during what she knew would be her last year on earth. Possibly the attention of the press was welcomed by Jay Smith's suffering wife who was in and out of the hospital during short periods of remission.
In the first week of the Jay Smith scandal, she held a press interview and said to reporters, "Hon, you can live with a man for twenty-seven years and not know him. Why, Jay didn't even let me know he was in jail 'til thirty-six hours after the arrest. I was shocked!! I hadn't seen Jay since Saturday and thought he'd went to army reserves or something. He always would come and go without telling me nothing. It wasn't unusual not to see him for days at a time."
Then Stephanie told reporters how she'd met young Jay Smith when he was a student teacher at Chester High School and how, like Jay, she was from a poor local family and how, after they married in 1951, she helped to support him during his university years, and waited and worked while he was overseas in Korea as an army officer.
And despite what lawyer O'Brien advised, during every interview Stephanie gave, there would be lots of potentially damaging tidbits about his "eccentric" ways. She gave reporters what they wanted, but she made it known that she
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