Robert Leonard Ewing Scott

Robert Leonard Ewing Scott was convicted in 1959, in California, of having murdered his wife. This is notable because it is one of the first cases to establish a "bodyless" murder, that is, a murder in which no body had been discovered to bear out that there had been a crime.

The Marriage

L. Ewing Scott, and his wife Evelyn Throsby Scott [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,868087,00.html] (né Mumper), having met at a society party and married in Mexico, shared a considerable wealth that Evelyn possessed prior to their marriage. After five years of marriage, on May 16, 1955, Evelyn went missing. Concerned friends were given various explanations by Scott- that Evelyn had been hospitalized, or had run off.

In July, 1955, Leonard Scott began a relationship with a divorcée named Harriet Livermore.

On March 5, 1956, Evelyn's brother Raymond Throsby, suspicious of Leonard, reported Evelyn's disappearance to the police, beginning the investigation.

The Investigation and Trial

Los Angeles police arrested Scott and charged him with forgery and fraud for the looting of his wife’s bank accounts after they visited Evelyn's safe deposit boxes and found only envelopes filled with sand, as Leonard had withdrawn large sums from Evelyn's safe deposit boxes and deposited those funds in his own accounts.

Having been indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury on 13 counts of forgery and theft, but released on $25,000 bail, Scott fled to Canada. He was arrested a year later, on April 9, 1957, when Canadian customs authorities stopped him as he was re-entering Canada after a visit to Detroit to buy a car. During his absence, the grand jury had produced an additional indictment against Scott for murder.

Although Evelyn's body was never found, her dentures, eyeglasses, and some of her personal items were found among buried ashes near the incinerator on the couple's estate located at 217 North Bentley Ave., in the affluent Bel Air community of Los Angeles.

Scott's case was groundbreaking, as it was the first case in U.S. history of someone being convicted of murder purely on circumstantial evidence, without the victim's body having been located.

After being convicted of the murder, Scott was given a life sentence. In December 1959, the appeals court upheld his conviction, despite his complaint that the original trial court had failed to establish corpus delicti.

ources

* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,868087-2,00.html The Lady Vanishes, Time Magazine, Jan. 6, 1958]
* [http://online.ceb.com/CalCases/CA2/181CA2d605.htm Estate of Scott (1960) 181 CA2d 605]
* [http://markgribben.com/?p=201 Murder in Bel Air, markgribben.com, 3/1/2006]

ee also

*Corpus delicti
*Hans Reiser
*John George Haigh