In June 1948, 27-year-old petty criminal Caryl Chessman was sentenced in California on two counts of sexual assault, receiving two death sentences as punishment in a case that remains one of the most baffling episodes in American legal history. Maintaining his innocence of these crimes, Chessman lived in Cell 2455, a four-by-ten foot space on Death Row in San Quentin for the twelve years between his sentencing and eventual execution. He spent this time, punctuated by eight separate stays of execution, writing this memoir — a moving and pitiless account of his life in crime and the early life that produced it. Chessman's clarity of mind and ability to bring his thoughts directly to the page, even within the stifling walls of San Quentin, help make this work the most literate and authentic expose ever written by a criminal about his crimes.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 6 reviews)

Interesting

"By the time you read this they will have killed me" is a better read this is pretty much the same info by a different author than Caryl, the man who it is about.
June 30, 2008

A bone chilling look at a treacherous lifestyle

I first read this book almost 10 years ago - see post below with same heading...I picked it up again today and still am mezmerized by the ability of someone to recall the specifics and details of crimes committed years earlier. In retrospect I cannot believe that he was innocent at all, having worked in the State Prison System - everyone eventually thinks they are victims of a delapidated system of so called justice. The only one that will ever know what actually happened is Caryl and his maker. Definitely worth a second, third read and more. One of my favorite books of all time. - The Toe
September 04, 2007

Hard to Believe It Was Once a Best Seller

In 1948, two-time loser Caryl Chessman was brought to trial on eighteen felony counts, including two kidnapping charges that carried the death penalty. At that time California was big on executions and had a rather arcane standard concerning the definition and punishment for kidnapping (put on the books following the Lindbergh kidnapping).

Chessman stood accused of being the "red-light bandit", who terrorized the lover's lane areas around Los Angeles. The bandit cruised around in a Ford sedan equipped with a red spotlight. Parked couples took it to be a police car and the bandit, armed with a 45, would rob couples and force his female victims to perform sexual favors at gunpoint.

Chessman confessed when he was first apprehended but later recanted. He was tried and received two death sentences. During his twelve years on death row he wrote two best selling books. More importantly, he became an icon for an emerging protest movement; which would grow in many directions and pretty much shape the 1960's.

But while Chessman had a huge influence on the culture of the United States, it had more to do with his case than with the actual content of his 1954 autobiography "Cell 2455 Death Row". Reading the book today your biggest question will not be about Chessman but about how his autobiography ever became a best seller.

"Ding an sich-ultimate reality. Where was it? Where was it to be found? Certainly not at the wild, drunken parties I attended. Nor in the eager arms of young matrons with sophisticated ideas about the institution of marriage. Nor in free-swinging brawls with jokers who, for one reason of another, threw their weight around."

In both style and content this is a fairly typical paragraph in Caryl Chessman's autobiography. Pretentious and disorganized, Chessman tells his life story by recreating many of his "exact" conversations going back to age one. Intelligent and self-educated, much of the material seems to have been inserted simply as a means to demonstrate these qualities to readers. Today's more skeptical reader population will find it difficult to credit much of his unsubstantiated material; your gut feeling that Chessman gleefully fabricated much of his life history will make it difficult to react to it as a work of non-fiction.

While nothing in the book would lead a reader to conclude that Chessman was a raving nutcase, neither is there anything to suggest someone with the desire to provide an authentic expose. By the time he wrote it, he had figured out how to play the media and the opponents of capital punishment; he gave them what he thought they wanted.

That the autobiography is self-serving should not be a surprise, that it (through what is said and what is not said) reveals almost nothing about the actual inner workings of Chessman's mind is disappointing. Chessman certainly had an agenda (a permanent stay of execution) and the brains to exclude anything that worked against that agenda. But Chessman also had a huge ego and the self-destructive tendencies to match it. So you don't really know to what degree he was playing mind games; with himself and with his potential readers.

Most likely he was the "red-light bandit". No one has surfaced to take credit for these crimes during the past sixty years and Chessman goes into considerable detail about lover's lane and brothel incidents early in his life; intentionally or unintentionally (who can tell) establishing a fascination with these spots (including his own wife's ravishment at a lover's lane location).

So if the case itself fascinates you, you would be better served with an objective account of the matter.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
March 15, 2007

Intelligent and Engaging

Caryl Chessman does an excellent job in this autobiography of an intelligent young man who slips into hate against the system. Beginning in the 1930s, Caryl begins a life of crime that starts with petty theft and grows into shoot-outs with the police and his eventual death sentence. Merle Haggard met him in San Quentin and claims the man was innocent, but Chessman never denies that he was a menace to society. The book presents an indepth and well written look at the criminal mind and the American justice system. This book is well worth reading, but is unfortunately difficult to obtain. I own an old paperback edition, and could not imagine having to pay over $30 to replace it.
June 30, 2004

A journey to reality

Caryl Chessman takes you with him in his incredible life,he is not looking for any excuse to his crimes, he explains why he became a criminal and what the "system" should do against crime.For the first time you hear the thoughts, the feelings and the opinions of an inmate and when you finish the book you feel that a conversation with that man is something you want. If you are strongly convinced that a death penalty is right, by reading this book you realize that nobody has the right to take a life.
December 25, 1998

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