Book Description

The Retrial of Lillian S. Raizen: A Life Avenged By: Gerri L. Schaffer I was in my thirties when I discovered there was a murderess in my family; a well-hidden secret for so many years. What would drive my great-aunt to commit the ultimate crime, to take a life, a soul of another? In 1921, Lillian S. Raizen killed the family physician, Abraham Glickstein. She was indicted by a Grand Jury on December 14, 1921, arraigned the same day, and tried on February 17, 1923. Her lawyers entered a plea of insanity, but the all-male jury convicted her of second-degree murder, issuing a sentence of twenty years to life. After studying this case for decades, interviewing primary sources, and examining the implications of the law where it pertains to a plea of insanity, Gerri L. Schaffer decided to write her great-aunt’s story as a retrial, explaining the motives and events leading up to the killing from Lillian’s own point of view.