Evidence of Murder

This thorough but ultimately frustrating true-crime tale concerns Ed Post, a model family man and affable realtor in New Orleans, who was accused and convicted of drowning his wife, Julie, in a St. Louis hotel in 1986. McClellan, a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , reconstructs the complex investigation. Post claims the death was an accident, but police found his statement exhaustive and therefore suspect. Investigators learned that the couple argued regularly, that Ed faced rising debts and that Julie's insurance policy had been increased. But there was countervailing evidence: the Posts regularly upgraded their insurance; the medical evidence was inconclusive; and Julie's brother Bobby Thigpen, who claimed his sister feared her husband would kill her, failed a polygraph test. McClellan's detailed account of Post's trial borrows much from the transcript, showing how lawyers attempted to shade the evidence. After jurors found Post guilty of murder, his conviction was overturned because of misconduct by deputies regarding the jury. Post's family and friends, formerly his staunch defenders, then began to doubt his innocence, and testimony from Post's elder teenage daughter helped lead to another conviction and a life sentence. Though Post, who still claims his innocence, cooperated with McClellan, the author should have probed his subject's psyche more deeply. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb.)