Product Description

In 1799, the murder of a young woman caused a terrific stir in the city of New York. The victim was Gulielma Sands who, on 22 December, left the boardinghouse where she lived, never to return. Her bruised body was found several days later in the Manhattan Well, a 20-minute carriage ride from her home. The accused was Levi Weeks, a fellow boarder who, Miss Sands had claimed, was to marry her the night she disappeared. Two of the attorneys for the defense were Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, friends of Ezra Weeks, a prominent builder and brother of the accused. The citizens of New York raised an enormous hue and cry over the murder: the body was displayed in the streets before the trial; mobs shoved their way into the courtroom to see the famous lawyers at work and to get a glimpse of the accused; and -- when the verdict was read -- few felt that justice had been done. This book tells the story of the trial of Levi Weeks and includes the entire transcript of the first American murder trial ever recorded. It is at once a riveting retelling of a true crime in which the voices of early New Yorkers come to us freshly from over two centuries, and a riveting legal and social history of New York in the early years of the Republic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1239428 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 258 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Gulielma Sands, a young New Yorker, was killed on the night of Dec. 22, 1799, and her body was found in a well a few days after Christmas. Suspicion centered on Levi Weeks, whom Sands had claimed was to marry her on the very night, as events transpired, that she died. The Weeks case, the first recorded murder trial in the United States, went to court in early 1800 and the defendant was fortunate in having the illustrious Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr as his lawyers. There was no forensic evidence connecting Weeks with the Sands murder; he had been tried largely because of popular clamor, according to Kleiger, a historian. The judge's summation was virtually a direction for a not-guilty verdict and the jury so found. Weeks, on his part, was to become an architect of note in Mississippi, where he died in 1819. Although the book offers an interesting view of the way criminal trials were conducted at the time--they were marathon affairs in which witnesses were not discouraged from rambling--only the most rabid true-crime buffs are apt to be intrigued by the case. Contemporary illustrations are included.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This book examines the trial of Levi Weeks, a New York City carpenter who in early 1800 was accused of murdering his girlfriend, Elma Sands. Weeks was successfully defended by Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the lesser-known Brockholst Livingston, son of New Jersey's first governor; all of these three lawyers had business contacts with Weeks's wealthy brother, Ezra. After briefly outlining the social and political backdrop of the trial, the author details its proceedings by reprinting much of the contemporary court record. Although intriguing, the book never ventures far beyond a description of events and eventually becomes a historically accurate, slow-moving murder mystery.
- David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Estelle Fox Kleiger

Customer Reviews

Somewhat dry but very professional and informative treatment
Notwithstanding the remarks from Publishers Weekly that the trial moved too slowly and the witnesses rambled too much for this story to be of interest to any but true-crime buffs, it is actually quite remarkable that there isn't more interest today in the saga of Levi Weeks and the mysterious death of his lover, Gulielma Sands.

That these incidents took place long ago (the turn of the 19th century) shouldn't matter - people are still debating the 15th century death of the Princes in the Tower of London.

The story of the death of Gulielma Sands and of Levi Weeks's trial has a quaint touch of old New York about it, occurring at a time when farm animals were routinely transported up and down Broadway, not long after the charter that led to the formation of the New York Stock Exchange was entered into under a peach tree on Wall Street.

The circumstances of Miss Sands's death were quite mysterious; the testimony of the witnesses is quite dramatic at times (however much it might sometimes have rambled), and Levi Weeks himself was represented by two of the most prominent attorneys in the state of New York - none other than Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (obviously before the ill-fated duel).

Surely, these are features which should have stimulated and maintained interest in the case, and yet there is little today.

My own interest in this case stems from a short treatment of it given by the great early 20th century true crime writer Edmund Pearson, who lovingly collected true crime stories as an epicure might collect bottles of wine.

It made me eager to read more, but this book by Estelle Fox Klieger is the only full-length treatment that I could find.

And Ms. Klieger's treatment of the subject is certainly a worthy one. I am a little disappointed with its dry scholarliness, which does not demonstrate the same sort of tender loving care toward its subject that Pearson's treatment did.

But that's a minor objection to what is otherwise an excellent work. Given the format of a full-length book in which to flesh out her subject, Ms. Klieger is able to give us an even fuller description of the history of old New York and of the social context in which the two lovers behaved and of the political context which caused Hamilton and Burr to join forces for the defense on this occasion.

There are several versions of what happened in the trial, and Ms. Klieger is able to rely upon the Coleman transcript, which is believed to be the most accurate.

The trial lasted a couple of days and went into the night virtually non-stop (there was one break for sleep, and what the participants did for food and other basic needs, no one seems to know).

It must have been a laborious task to pour over the transcript and edit it in such a way to enable the reader to progress through the story without missing anything vital. Ms. Klieger seems to have done a good job in this, though only someone else familiar with the full transcript could know for sure.

The expurgated testimony is liberally interspersed with her commentary, as it must necessarily be, in order to provide proper context and transition.

I'm also somewhat disappointed with Ms. Klieger's treatment of the "candle incident" (which, of course, reportedly took place in the evening while the trial was taking place by candlelight).

The "candle incident" is a legend associated with this trial. And assuming that it actually took place, it is easily the most dramatic moment of the trial and is described in biographies written by partisans of both Hamilton and Burr, all of whom give credit to their respective subjects for having initiated it.

However, Ms. Klieger declares flatly that it never took place because there is no notation of it in the Coleman transcript.

But perhaps the legend and the reference to it in the biographies of the attorneys can't be disregarded so lightly. Perhaps Coleman simply did not know how to record this bizarre incident in the format of an official transcript. Or perhaps there were other reasons why he chose not to record it.

Pearson was not so certain that the story didn't have a factual basis, and Ms. Klieger might be guilty of a surfeit of dryness in disregarding the story so readily. Perhaps her book could have used just a touch of Pearsonian romanticism and humor.

But again, that isn't a major criticism of a very fine book, and some wonderful contemporary prints of New York and of the personages that participated in this incident round it out nicely.

Who killed Gulielma Sands? Or did she make away with herself, as the defense suggested? No one knows, and while Ms. Klieger doesn't purport to provide the answer to us, I sense that she has her own idea. Perhaps other readers will come away with an impression different from mine. But what I perceive as her personal opinion is an undercurrent that runs through the book, which doesn't detract from the objectivity of her analysis.

This is an excellent book with which to get acquainted with what should be a classical true-life murder mystery - if only there was interest in it out there to begin with.