Triad author shares family connection to famous 19th century murder trial

The great-great-grandfather of Triad resident Susie Pollock was intimately involved in one of the most famous court trials of the 19th century. In 1849, the richest man in Boston vanishes. A Harvard Medical College janitor discovers cut-up pieces of a human being in a chemistry professor’s locker, and the professor is charged with murder.

The events are chronicled in a recently published book, Chopped: A Novel, written by Pollock’s husband, Dale Pollock, former University of North Carolina School of the Arts dean of filmmaking and author of Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas.

For Pollock, some aspects of writing his first novel came easily. To begin with, he says the murder of George Parkman and his wife’s ancestral involvement in the famous trial was a topic that he’d considered writing about for many years.

"James Winchell Stone, my wife’s great-great-grandfather, was an expert medical witness at the trial," says Pollock. "It was he who determined these chopped-up body parts did belong to one body, and that one body was George Parkman’s. But more important for our family history, he decided to take down all of the testimony."

To do so, Stone used what was then a new dictation system called phonography — known today as stenography. Pollock says in the process, Stone became the first court reporter in American history to record in this way, and he says the historical relevance of the trial doesn’t end there.

"The trial was in 1850," he says. "It was the first major murder trial covered after the world adoption of the telegraph system. So this was the first trial where correspondents could attend during the day and telegraph their reporting overnight. So this trial was followed all over the world."

Stone’s full transcription of the court proceedings was published in book form within two weeks of the trial’s conclusion, and it became a popular book in its time.

"His original copy of his publication is in our possession," says Pollock. "And holding that book and knowing that he had held it was a connection to him for me."

The early tension in the book is between the small, meek Harvard professor John Webster and the man he owed money to, George Parkman.

"At that time, he owned more than 2,000 housing units in the city of Boston," he says. "And most of them were occupied by the poor and by the Irish. And he was a ruthless landlord. If you didn’t pay every week, he evicted you within an hour. He was feared and he was respected."

Parkman was also extremely fit from religiously walking everywhere to collect his debts, and — at 6 feet 1 inch tall — he towered over almost everyone he encountered, including his debtor John Webster, the Harvard chemistry professor. He was just over 5 feet tall, weighed more than 250 pounds, was convicted of murdering Parkman, and eventually hung for his crime.

"He is meek," says Pollock. "He is mild. It’s just hard to imagine that he could not only murder but dismember someone by himself. And to James Stone, this is the first inkling of the mystery. This simply doesn’t make sense. Something else must have happened."

Pollock says he was able to appreciate the story’s potential early on.

"Because of my background as a filmmaker, as a producer, I sort of saw the movie of this story in my mind while I was writing it like there was a little 35-millimeter projector in my forehead," he says. "And I’m filming this as I’m going along, and so, that helped me fill out a lot of the visual details."

Pollock says he spent more than a decade researching his new novel, traveling to Boston every summer for up to six weeks a year.

"There were 27 daily newspapers in Boston and environs in 1850," he says. "They all covered the trial in detail, and I read all of their accounts for the two and a half weeks that the trial took place. I also walked every street that my characters walked. I had old maps of Boston. I knew exactly what areas they lived in. I knew what their housing looked like, what they ate, what they wore, and where they went for their social life."

But he says, even armed with years of research, a clear vision, the characters involved, and a successful biography under his belt, fiction writing was a different beast altogether.

"I had never written dialogue for characters before," says Pollock. "In my Lucas book, everything came from interviews. So, my challenge was writing like my character would speak in 1850. And I would say part of those 12 years was spent writing and re-writing and re-writing."

The result is a page-turner of a novel. And that, says Pollock, makes all the time and energy devoted to it well worth it.

"I wrote a novel that you can enjoy as both a mystery, a period piece, and hopefully a love story," he says. "I have no grand literary aspirations for this book. I think it’s a good read. I’m very happy with the fact that I was able to actually complete it, get it published, have people read it. It’s very exciting and gratifying to me and I’m already starting work on the next one."