First viewed : 26 July 1989
This was another two part US mini-series and, as usual, I saw the second part, got intrigued and wished I'd seen it from the beginning. It was based on a true-ish crime bestseller by Joseph Wambaugh about the 1979 murder of an English teacher and her two children. Two men were eventually convicted in relation to her death , her colleague and lover Bill Bradfield who benefitted from her life insurance policy and their boss, the school principal Jay Smith who supplemented his salary with a little armed robbery on the side.
The convictions happened three years apart and the series was made a year after Smith was sentenced to death in 1986. Bradfield was played by the under-rated American actor Peter Coyote, Robert Loggia played Smith and Stockard Channing ( from Grease ) played their victim, Susan Reinert.
It didn't end there though. After six years on death row, Smith's lawyers got his conviction overturned for prosecutorial misconduct which included taking a $50,000 payment from Wambaugh for arresting Smith. He died a free man in 2009 with many questions in the case still unanswered.
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