Winters' Time: A Secret Pledge, a Severed Head, and the Murder That Brought America's Most Famous Lawyer to Vermont
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.
Convicted of murder, Winters’ appeal brought in an unexpected ally: America’s most famous defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, who took the case after Winters’ family called in a favor promised decades before.
Praise for Winters' Time
An extraordinary account of one of Vermont’s most lurid murder trials with its twists and turns, internecine convolutions, and high political drama, is revealed in perfect measure by the best of possible narrators. Highly recommended.
— Archer Mayor, author of the Joe Gunther series
Jeffrey Amestoy reconstructs a forgotten story in American history—one that reveals tensions of class, gender, and family, and gives the reader a glimpse of justice in the 1920s. It’s all told beautifully, with careful scholarship, and at a pace that keeps the book in your hands.
— Randall Tietjen, editor of In the Clutches of the Law: Clarence Darrow’s Letters
Former Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy is the perfect scholar to write this story of the time Clarence Darrow appeared before the Vermont Supreme Court on behalf of a defendant accused of murder. That court had to work hard to ignore the reputation of America’s greatest advocate. Amestoy’s insight into the legal and social issues of the Winters case is grounded in his own experience on the court, and his understanding of the special pressures felt by his predecessor John H. Watson is particularly intriguing.”
— Paul S. Gillies, author of The Law of the Hills: A Judicial History of Vermont and Uncommon Law, Ancient Roads, and Other Ruminations on Vermont Legal History
"It’s a page-turner and a valuable portrait of small-town life inside and outside the courtroom in the 1920s."
Paperback, 2025. $19.95.
Purchase the book from our online store, on Amzon.com, at our museum stores in Montpelier or Barre, and at select booksellers in Vermont. Read an interview with Amestoy about the book here.
Available as an ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ebooks.com, Google Books, iBooks, and Kobo.
