Update: The trial transcripts

/ The Authors
The transcripts were the personal copies of Arbuckle’s lawyers. (Courtesy of San Francisco Public Library)

The transcripts of the three Arbuckle trials proved to be revelatory. I have spent the past six days working with them. And I will have weeks of reading ahead of me as well as an entirely new narrative to consider. It’s like having all the bones of a museum’s brontosaurus in the entrance hall. The transcripts release me from depending too much on the newspaper reportage of the period, on reporters who came of age during the heyday of yellow journalism.

What I also learned was that every book and article previously written about the Arbuckle case and his alleged victim, Virginia Rappe, put their “bones” together wrong. To be continued . . .

The opening argument of the second trial asserts that Virginia Rappe’s presence at Arbuckle’s :abor Day party was hardly a coincidence but rather prearranged by her manager. (Courtesy of San Francisco Public Library)

2 thoughts on “Update: The trial transcripts”

  2. The first trial transcripts include the Grand Jury testimony of September 12 and 13, 1921. This document reveals the Labor Day parties of September 4 and 5 to be outright sexcapades. The details couldn’t be reported in “family” newspapers of that era and much of this was self-censored by the attorneys for both sides during the trials. That said, I hardly wasted my time reading so many newspaper accounts and secondary sources–or drafting my initial narratives. I could wade right into this new material without feeling overwhelmed or lost. What I see developing from this is a better, tighter, and shorter narrative.

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