Armed Robbers, Murderers and Lawyers

One of the things I enjoyed about being a reporter covering the criminal courts was getting acquainted with murderers and armed robbers. Interesting people.
There was a fellow who had served his time so he always introduced himself to strangers by giving his name and then saying, "I served twenty years in a North Carolina prison for a murder unintentionally committed."
Or the woman of about fifty who could have passed for being ten years older. Her scrawny body and haggard face revealed that many of those years had been spent being punched out by a lowdown husband.
One day after a beating she decided to try scaring him, see if that helped. She had never fired a gun but she picked up a loaded rusty old rifle with a bent barrel and followed him out of the house. No one familiar with guns would have risked firing that relic, but she waved it around in the air and called to her husband twenty yards away. He turned to face her so she pointed the gun in his general direction and squeezed the trigger. Dropped him with a single shot that got him in the head.
A man from far back in the hills of Tennessee had come to town looking for a job. He was a hard worker so he had no problem supporting a wife and several kids. But the wife liked to hit the bars every night, leaving the children alone and more often than not going home with some other man. Any man, she wasn't fussy.
One night the baby was sick when the husband got home from work. He walked to a bar a few doors away, one called the Oar House. The owner justified the name by hanging a couple of canoe paddles out front. The wife was sitting beside a man in a booth so the husband sat down across from them and explained about the sick baby. He asked her to come home but the wife and the other man just laughed, then she threw her drink in her husband's face. He got up and left.
A short time later the wife left the booth and started toward the restroom at the rear. Someone called a warning that her husband was coming up behind her, but too late. Like most hill country men he owned a sharp knife and he used it to cut her throat. Her head was left hanging by a slender thread of flesh.
A few days earlier the wife had talked to a lawyer, told him a husband and kids were interfering with her social life and inquired about a divorce. She said her husband might object. So the lawyers in town came up with a joke, as many lawyers will. She was told, they said, "I'll see what I can do, just don't lose your head." Lawyer humor.
I admit I had to laugh.

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