Yesterday I finished "I AM MURDERED": GEORGE WYTHE, THOMAS JEFFERSON, AND THE KILLING THAT SHOCKED A NEW NATION by Bruce Chadwick, 2009.

I wish I could say that I really enjoyed this work, but I was rather disappointed. This nonfiction book is an account of the murder of George Wythe, 80 year old Virginia born statesman at his home in Richmond, Va., in 1806. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, for years the only law professor of the College of William and Mary, teacher and mentor of men like Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and Henry Clay. He was respected, admired, and beloved by all who knew him. On May 25, 1806, Judge Wythe, his black housekeeper Lydia Broadnax, and his protege Michael Brown were all poisoned with arsenic-laced coffee. Broadnax survived, Brown died after a week, and Wythe lingered for two weeks until he expired. The judge insisted several times on his deathbed that he had been poisoned, but his doctors insisted he had not, and their later bungled autopsy on his corpse didn't help matters. A sensational and tragic event,Wythe's grandnephew, George Wythe Sweeney, who was a ne'er do well gambler and profligate and lived with him in his house on Shockoe Hill, was accused of the murders, tried, and acquitted, much to the consternation of the community at large. As Sweeney and Brown were Wythe's co-heirs to his large estate and the cash-strapped Sweeney had already forged checks, the public generally believed he had committed the murders in order to get the entire estate. The only witnesses to Sweeney's actions (Broadnax for one, who realized that she saw him put the arsenic in the coffee pot) were not allowed to testify as they were blacks. So an outdated legal code, issues of slavery and race, as well as the issue of non-existent laws pertaining to state banks added to the problems. As far as the actual case goes, it was presented in an interesting way, but so much of the book seemed like padding or unnecessary information: I did not need to know the details of each of the doctors' and lawyers' lives, nor did I need to know the entire history of forensics or arsenic or so much on Richmond's history. It was simply too much and overwhelmed the actual events. As one reviewer noted, this would probably have made a very interesting article, but it made for a rather shallow book. It just wasn't as good a read as I hoped.