Author Description

A riveting blend of true crime and memoir, following the unravelling of a New Brunswick family after a brutal murder. On December 15, 1974, when Amy Bell was one year old, the city of Moncton, New Brunswick, was consumed with the search for two missing police officers -Corporal Aurèle Bourgeois and Constable Michael O'Leary. They had been abducted by petty criminals Richard Ambrose and James Hutchison after a kidnapping that had scored them $15,000. The search would lead to a clearing in the woods where the officers were found -- murdered, and buried in shallow graves. Amy's father, Ed Bell, stepped up to defend the killers. His unpopular stance-"every person accused of a crime deserves a defence" -- eventually led to the ruin of his career and his marriage, and Amy and her brother lived with the aftereffects: poverty and isolation. Ed Bell never spoke of his involvement in this case. It wasn't until forty-two years later, when he lay dying, that Amy, now a crime historian, stumbled upon a Polaroid photograph of one of the killers among her father's things. That discovery led her on a search for answers. Life Sentence: How My Father Defended Two Murderers and Lost Himself is a riveting work that fuses personal and criminal justice history to tell the story of a horrific crime and examine its terrible costs. Includes personal and archival news images.