Corpus Delicti

No body. No witness. No confession. In May 1955, wealthy Pasadena socialite Evelyn Scott vanished without a trace from her Bel Air home. Her charming husband, L. Ewing Scott, claimed she simply walked away to buy tooth powder—yet he quietly liquidated her fortunes and fled.

In a landmark legal battle that captivated the nation, Los Angeles prosecutor J. Miller Leavy accomplished what many deemed securing a first-degree murder conviction based entirely on circumstantial evidence. Ewing Scott was sentenced to life in prison, steadfastly maintaining his innocence for three decades.

Decades later, journalist Diane Wagner revisited the cold case, gaining unprecedented access to the aging killer. What began as an investigation into a legendary trial culminated in an extraordinary journalistic Scott’s stunning late-life confession.

This expanded reissue of Corpus Delicti recreates the gripping courtroom drama that reshaped American legal precedent. Updated with a new foreword and epilogue, this definitive true-crime chronicle includes exclusive access for readers to stream the actual recorded audio confession of L. Ewing Scott.

Step inside a quintessential 1950s mystery where greed, deception, and justice collide.