The average high school graduate looks forward to college, time
with friends, and those last carefree days of youth before meeting
the demands of adulthood. Eighteen-year-old Bobby Wilson faced a
murder trial instead.
In Bobby’s Trials, Wilson tells his own story of being charged with
the 1963 murders of his mother and sister and the decade of legal
and emotional limbo that followed. His memoir is by turns disturbing
and uplifting, detailing an extremely difficult childhood and drawing
attention to injustices in life and law as well as the strength of
the human spirit.
When Bobby’s father abandoned the family, his mother began a long
descent into apparent madness. Her bitter view of men as “those bastards”
extended to her own son: “You’re a bastard just like your father,”
she told him. Her fear of abandonment resulted in paranoia and unpredictable
behavior, and her cruelty and neglect of her two children are illustrated
by events in Bobby’s early childhood that paint a picture of a woman
who was likely suffering from an undiagnosed and serious mental illness.
Throughout his unsettled childhood, Bobby managed to parent both
himself and his sister. He learned to earn his own money, took charge
of his own education, and even put food on the table. His efforts
were largely unappreciated by his mother, and plans for a brighter
future were soon shattered by tragedy. On June 19, 1963, Bobby woke
to the sound of his mother’s crazed rantings and the barrel of a
gun in his face. He came to outside his burning home some time later,
with no memory of the events in between. What follows is an example
of the legal system at its worst, during the pre-Miranda days when
a young man could be jailed and questioned without representation,
denied basic human rights, and convicted in the press. Over the course
of three trials and ten years, Bobby managed to hold on to his strength
and sanity when the odds seemed insurmountable. He continuously reached
for the life he deserved, eventually going to law school so that
he could defend those in similar situations and try to effect change
in a much-flawed legal system. Now a law professor and private investigator,
he is currently working on a book about his various cases from his
years as a trial lawyer.
Bobby’s Trials is captivating in its honesty and candor, evoking
reader sympathy and compassion. Bobby’s Trials remains a gripping
memoir that illustrates an extraordinary young man’s ability to not
only survive but triumph over unimaginable adversity. A worthy read.
— Jeannine
Chartier Hanscom
AMAZON.COM | Editorial Reviews
Since 1963, Bobby Wilson has held his tongue in
regards to the presumed murder of his family for which he was put
on trial. In Bobby’s Trials, he pens an insightful, heartbreaking
memoir of the events that led up to the violent deaths of his mother
and sister. As he chronicles his early childhood, he reveals what
life was like for him growing up as an Oklahoma farm boy with a mother
who suffered debilitating depression as well as strange fits of paranoiac
rage. An absolutely spellbinding true-life crime drama, this intimate
debut proves to be a strangely uplifting anecdote of survival. As
Wilson wrestles with clinical amnesia, endures two murder cases against
him, becomes a lawyer, and becomes a husband and father, readers
have a benchmark in overcoming incredible odds — and proof that justice
often is elusive, if it occurs at all.
Buffalo Law Journal
Matt Chandler
Attorney
Shares Life on the Other Side of the Law
[T]he all-too-true life story of former attorney
Bobby Wilson, as told in his new book, "Bobby's Trials." Click here or
on the link above to read the Buffalo Law Journal review.