Glenwood: Murder and Madness in Mississippi

When wealthy aristocrat Mark Delgado arrives at Eldorado for his nightly visit with equally rich and pedigreed cousin, the beautiful Jeannie Murdock, he finds the front door of her elegant 1840s raised cottage unexpectedly open, and no sign of her. A quick and desperate search of her residence reveals a blood trail leading through the house to the side porch, down the exterior stairs, and to the driveway.

Delgado calls the police who quickly determine that Miss Murdock has been murdered and her body moved. She's found dead early the next morning in a thicket of weeds on the densely wooded property of her neighbors' decaying antebellum mansion, Glenwood.

But the once elegant 1830s Glenwood is now inhabited, along with its owners, by cows, chickens, hogs, cats, and other animals that roam freely through its open doors, destroying expensive furniture once owned by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, while meandering goats devour priceless books from the former library of General Robert E. Lee's ancestral home, Arlington.

When the eccentric man and woman who live at Glenwood are arrested and charged with their neighbor's murder, Los Angeles celebrity defense attorney Mark Weinstein, intrigued by the case, and the international press it generates, arrives in Natchez, Mississippi on his own private jet. With his host of of high profile attorneys and his own press corps in tow, he expects to easily exonerate the defendants and quickly return home to L.A. Instead, he finds himself facing a determined district attorney with a distinct home field advantage, and his famous L.A. 'Dream Team' immersed in a dark and many layered culture which they don't grasp, one which plays by its own rules.

There are others, not directly involved in the matter, who have their own reasons for making certain this case never goes to trial, who will stop at nothing, including murder, if necessary, to keep Weinstein from representing the defendants.

This interesting tale, inspired by the true story of the sensational 1930s 'Goat Castle Murder' has been updated and dynamically retold in the present by author Lester Seelig, of Nashville, and Holly Springs. He manages to capture the subtle nuances and menacing undercurrents of a culture closed to outsiders, as only a native Southerner can, in this engaging and emotionally charged tale, which takes place in exotic Natchez, an exquisitely beautiful place, untouched by time.