Transcript of the Marcia Clark interview was created using AI audio-to-text technology and only lightly edited by a human, so there might be some errors or typos—thanks for understanding!

[00:00:03.840] – Alan Petersen
Welcome to Meet the Thriller Author, the podcast where I interview writers of mysteries, thrillers, and suspense books. I’m your host, Alan Petersen, a thriller author, myself, and longtime fan of this genre. Today, I’m thrilled to welcome Marcia Clark to the show for episode number 210. Marcia Clark is a bestselling author known for her gripping legal thrillers, including the Rachel Knight series, which kicked off with Guilt by Association. She’s also co authored her acclaimed memoir, With a Doubt, chronicling her time as lead Prosecutor in the O.J. simpson trial, one of the most famous and complex cases in U.S. history. Her latest book, Trial by Ambush, was released on December 1st, and it’s a deep dive into the 1953 case of Barbara Graham, which exposes the dangers of sensationalized prosecution and its devastating impact. It’s a powerful true crime story that feels as relevant today as ever. I’ll be talking with Marcia about her writing process, the challenges of balancing fiction and nonfiction, and her unique perspective as both a seasoned process prosecutor who understands what Barbara Graham went through herself being subjected to media and public scrutiny during the O.J. simpson trial, and a masterful storyteller.

[00:01:13.070] – Alan Petersen
Before we dive in, though, a quick reminder. If you enjoy this podcast, please rate and review it on your favorite platform. It helps more thriller fans discover the show. And don’t Forget to visit thrillingweeze.com for all my social media links, access to over 200 interviews in the archive, and show notes and transcripts for this episode and all my other episodes as well. All right, now let’s get to the conversation with Marcia Clark. Hey everybody, this is Alan with Meet the Thriller Author, and I’m excited to welcome Marcia Clark to the podcast. She’s a bestselling author of gripping legal thrillers, as well as her acclaimed memoir, Without a Doubt, which chronicled, of course, her time as the lead prosecutor during the O.J. simpson trial. And her latest book, trial by Ambush, set to release on December 1st, is a powerful, true account of a sensationalized crime from the 1950s that sheds light on the dangers of media distortion and systemic injustice. Just to finish it, it was a fantastic read. Welcome to the show, Marcia.

[00:02:11.910] – Marcia Clark
Thank you so much, Alan. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:02:14.800] – Alan Petersen
You know, I really enjoyed this book. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard of Barbara Graham before, so it was very interesting to read this and see the parallels, even though this happened 70 years ago. It’s kind of. Kind of weird, isn’t it?

[00:02:27.950] – Marcia Clark
Crazy. I thought so, too. I mean, it’s really. This was not a case that I actually thought I was going to write about. I hadn’t heard of it either, Alan, but then I was researching another case and it was like in a footnote, it would just happen to be mentioned. Okay, that’s interesting. The case involving Barbara Graham, another woman charged with murder. And that in itself is of course unusual. And then I got more and more into it and realized, oh my God, it was a huge case. It was its own trial of the century back in the 50s. And that was interesting, but it was also kind of off putting because I thought, well, if it was such a big trial of the century, everybody’s already written about it and I’m not going to go try out on that trodden ground myself. So I was like at first kind of turning away from it and I thought, you know, it’s a little bit intriguing, let me look. And it turned out that no one had really written about the trial. People had written a little bit here, a little bit there about the case.

[00:03:24.750] – Marcia Clark
And there was one very slim book that was devoted to the case itself, but it did not focus on the trial. Plus it seemed to have been written by a reporter who had a very biased view of the case. And it turned out he was a collaborator with the prosecution. So, uh. Oh, and. And there was one book that was really terrific. That was. But it was only a piece of it. Proof of Guilt by Kathleen Cairns, I have to say, was wonderful, but her focus was on the death penalty, not on the trial. So nothing had really been written that was focused on the trial. I thought, if there’s something here, I should find out. That started me on the road to doing all the research and finding out just how hard it is to research a case that is over 70 years old. That was my. I don’t think I’m going to do that again. Of course I say that and of course in the next book will be exactly that.

[00:04:18.710] – Alan Petersen
But yeah, that was fascinating reading your research at the way the beginning you’re like trying to find the court transcripts and you actually went downtown Los Angeles, your old stomping grounds. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And I’m just kind of curious. Since you left the DA’s office, has it been a while since you’ve been in that area? Was it weird? What was that process like?

[00:04:43.660] – Marcia Clark
Well, yeah, what was really weird to me was that in all the time I had, all the 14 years I had been working in that office downtown Los Angeles on Temple Street, I never knew that the archives were actually right behind My building subterranean and below ground. And it was. It was wild when I thought I was trying to figure out, find the sources, where do I find material on this case that the beginning of the trail led was right there in my backyard, kind of. And it’s a wild place, Alan. It really is. It’s like. It’s this cavernous place. You go underground, and it’s huge and packed floor to ceiling, and the ceilings are so high. Of all these cases, all case files, but these are recent case files. I remembered because I recognized them from my days. They’re color coded and everything. And I thought, okay, those are not the case files from Barbara’s day. They’re way too recent. So I was getting a little nervous. Had a wonderful guy who helped me, and he came over and I said, I’m looking for the, you know, all transcripts, everything you can get me on Barbara Graham’s case.

[00:05:50.400] – Marcia Clark
And it was 1953. And he’s going, oh, boy, I don’t know. And I saw him go over to talk to a group of guys, older men, sitting probably on break, and they were all sitting at a table together. And I saw him, you know, talking to them and asking them. And I saw them all kind of shake their heads and go, oh. And I’m like, oh, no, the trail has ended before it began. Came back. And he said, okay, I’m not sure, but it might be on microfiche. Go take a break and I’ll text you when I. When I found out. So I went and walked around, getting nervous, looking around and remembering also having an old home week, you know, oh, that’s my building. And that’s where my office was, on the 18th floor and all that, you know, and they had turned the parking lot that was right behind the building that was the coveted parking lot. That was the place to park that you had to get seniority to have the permission to park there, because otherwise we were walking, like, half a mile to the parking lot in Chinatown, which was, you know, kind of dangerous.

[00:06:50.550] – Marcia Clark
And so now that parking lot behind the building has been turned into a park, which is much prettier, but also made me wonder, so where does everybody who works there park? Anyway, thank goodness I had things to distract me. And so when he texted, said, I’m ready, I went back and he said, it’s on microfiche. And I was, like, elated. And I said, can you tell what you’ve got? Do you know if it’s trial testimony? Because that’s what I was looking for. I was looking for the reporter’s transcript, which is what everybody’s. What happens in court. He said, I don’t think it’s that, but what it was. Ultimately, I came back the next day, and it was a stack like this, about a thousand pages.

[00:07:29.620] – Alan Petersen
Oh, wow.

[00:07:30.100] – Marcia Clark
And it turned out to be the clerk’s transcript. So that is not the testimony. The clerk’s transcript has all of the minute orders and motions filed and that kind of thing, official documents. I was depressed at that point because that’s not going to be enough to write this book. It’s not what I want. But. So that led me on the crucible to finding out, where do we find the reporter’s transcripts? And then discovered that it was, yes, we still have them because they keep them forever if it’s a death penalty case. But they’re in the state archives. And that’s where my researcher, John Valeri, was a gift from heaven because he had to chase them down and keep pushing and pushing to get them because they kept saying, we’re going to re. We have to legally vet them and let. Make sure we can let these go out. And I kept saying, tell them this is a public. These are public documents, transcripts of trials. Trials are public. You know, we’re entitled to this. This is not something. And finally they did. So it turned out when those boxes were delivered, I still wasn’t sure what they had.

[00:08:29.290] – Marcia Clark
All I could. All I could really ask them to do is, give me what you’ve got. Give me everything you’ve got on this case. And I was so nervous when I opened that box, like, if this is it, this decides whether or not I get to write this book. And I saw volume one, reporter’s transcript, and it was like, yes, after all that. After all that. Then I saw that there were over 4,000 pages of reporter’s transcript. That’s what I said.

[00:08:56.920] – Alan Petersen
So between both documents, like, over 5000 pages that you had to go through.

[00:09:01.800] – Marcia Clark
Easily over 5000 pages. Easily over. But the clerk’s transcript wound up giving me little nuggets of gold that you’ll see in the book. And I get to refer to them, incredibly important subpoenas and stuff like that. You know, I kept finding these little nuggets all over the place. Walter Wenger, a Hollywood producer, the one who did the film I Want to Live, that was based on Barbara Graham’s case, right? Susan Hayward won an Oscar for Best Actress for portraying Barbara Graham. And he had a treasure trove of stuff, and he archived everything he had regarding the case as he was Producing the film. So he had letters from Barbara, a bunch of them. He had a very critical report written by her investigator that came on board to help her after she was convicted that turned out to have an amazing amount of critical information that had never been written about before or acknowledged. And also the original statement of the accomplice who was the star witness that no one had seen before. So this book has a lot of stuff that certainly the jury never saw and that has never been written about before.

[00:10:11.550] – Alan Petersen
Wow. And the only reason they kept it is because it was capital, capital murder case. If not, what do they do? They just get rid of all that, all that information?

[00:10:18.950] – Marcia Clark
Oh yeah, yeah. What happens is cases, the reporters transcripts are kept usually for 10 years. For average cases, they keep them longer. If it’s life without. The only cases that are kept forever are death penalty cases.

[00:10:33.850] – Alan Petersen
Oh, wow. Interesting.

[00:10:34.980] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, yeah.

[00:10:37.470] – Alan Petersen
And so I’m kind of curious too now, like even before you started out on this journey and everything, what, what, what initially drew you to, to Barbara Graham’s story and, and, and why do you think it was like, I want to write this now? What, what was the catalyst for that?

[00:10:51.590] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, it was a, it was a slow dawning thing. It wasn’t like a eureka moment, you know, every. I kept reading and kept going through like everything I could get my hands on by myself. Like I. While I was waiting for the transcripts to arrive. So newspapers.com became my best friend and I got to read about the trial as told by the reporters. Not the most reliable sources for everything, but certainly gave me a flavor of what the trial was about. Certainly it also gave me the feeling for the attitude towards Barbara, which was shocking, I have to say. And I think that was part of the reason that got me very interested and motivated to run and write about this story, because they vilified her from day one. This was a woman who came up rough, no question about it. She was abandoned and neglected from birth, but she was never a violent criminal. She was kind of your typical person who of no means poverty was her life. She had no skills, particularly because she never really went to school or never got past the eighth grade. And even up until the eighth grade it was a spotty thing.

[00:12:03.370] – Marcia Clark
Yet she was very smart, but she had, that was very tough for her. She couldn’t, she had no skills that could, that were salable in a legit market. So she wound up in bad company frequently wound up being a dice girl, which is basically a shill for these illegal gambling places. And she had been busted for possession of marijuana, for prostitution, you know, that kind of shoplifting, bad checks, but all that kind of fringy misdemeanor stuff, never violent crime. And here she was in the middle of their trial of the century for the murder of this innocent woman in her 60s, Mabel Monahan, living in this nice little house in this quiet little neighborhood in suburban Burbank, California. And she became the sensation that they were writing about from morning, noon and night. I mean, they focused on Barbara almost exclusively, but in the worst way possible, because she was beautiful. They went after her looks and they spared no adjective. And describing her hair, her makeup, her clothes, the way she walked, every breath she took, every time she yawned, every move she made, they were all over it, describing it, but always through a lens of this is a villainous stone cold, cold hearted, vicious.

[00:13:26.510] – Marcia Clark
They called her Bloody Babs. And they put her at the center, calling her like the mastermind when she was nothing more than meant to be a lure to get the elder woman, the victim, to open the door. So seeing that, the way she got framed up as being the key player when she was anything but that was fascinating to me. And I thought, there’s this, I gotta tell about this, I gotta talk about this. But in order to do that, I have to know what happened in this trial. And that’s why it became such a big deal to get my hands on the reporter’s transcripts.

[00:13:59.990] – Alan Petersen
And so when you started going through the, through all those transcripts, did you even at that time, were you, did you already knew right away you were gonna write about it or do you still had to go through it to really make your, make your mind up or know what the, what you thought. Thought processes on that?

[00:14:11.930] – Marcia Clark
That’s a good question. You know, I, I knew I was invested. I already had a feeling by the time I had the reporters transcripts, I had read enough other things to have some idea that I’m. I think there’s a book here. I think there really is. But it did take me a long time to be sure of that. And it was about, I think it was by the time I was about 100, 200 pages into the transcripts, I realized, oh yeah, this is definitely, this is happening. And it was a combination, I think, of things that I had already read. I’d read the newspapers. I had read the one very slim book that had been written by the reporter. I had read what Kathleen Cairns wrote and I read. By then I had Walter Wanger’s archive. So there was enough there that I just had to Get a feeling for the players in the. In the actual trial. And that I knew for sure. And she had a wonderful lawyer, which was that I did not expect to see. I had read some things that made it seem that he. That her lawyers were kind of not really dialed in because defense attorneys who were representing, they were appointed by the court, appointed by the court because the person could not.

[00:15:26.800] – Marcia Clark
The defendant could not afford to pay a lawyer. But today’s world, in today’s world, the state will pay. The state pays for, the county pays for the lawyer that represents the indigent defendant. They didn’t back them back then. When the court appointed a defense attorney to represent someone who couldn’t pay, they did it for free. Now, that’s one thing if the case takes a week, but when you have a case like this, a death penalty case, that’s not only just, you know, not only a murder case, but like at the trial of the century, it’s going to take months. You can go down the drain. You really literally have no income because you have no time to do anything but work on that case. Nevertheless, her lawyers worked very hard. I mean, they really went all out for her and they did an amazing job. They were very dedicated and they really. They worked very hard. She had. She got lucky with that. She certainly did. But, you know, unlucky to have a prosecution that saw her as the get in the whole business and went after her in a way that even a federal judge said was unseemly.

[00:16:30.910] – Alan Petersen
That’s so fascinating about the public defenders back then. So there wasn’t like a public defender’s office. Were they forced to do this for free or how did that work?

[00:16:37.960] – Marcia Clark
They were. They were. When the court taps you and says you’ll do this case, I. I don’t know how they get out of it. I don’t know that they do get out of it.

[00:16:45.790] – Alan Petersen
Like jury duty.

[00:16:47.070] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, the ultimate irony. That’d be great. I can’t try this case. I’m on tree duty. Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:56.740] – Alan Petersen
And it’s so fascinating to read, too. Do you think? I mean, had this been three guys, this probably would have, like, it would have even been a big deal. I mean, I hate to say it.

[00:17:08.350] – Marcia Clark
You know what? You’re so right. No, it wouldn’t have been. It really wouldn’t. That’s what kind of contributed to this being such a big case is when you have the situation that is so bizarre and unusual and having a woman be the center of a violent murder case like this. And it’s not a murder where it’s somebody she knew. You know, you murder your loved ones, they’re not so loved. But that’s something that is much more familiar, right? You killing. Killing between people who know each other is a more common thing. Killing someone, an innocent victim, like Mabel Monahan, is quite another thing. This is not a woman who was she as a victim, was not somebody who was a part of the crime world. So that in itself is shocking. And then to have a beautiful woman as the defendant is shocking, you know, and had been just the two guys, and those two thugs look like exactly what they were. Talk about Beauty and the Beast. Emmett Perkins and Jack Santo looked like the murderers they were. And I think it probably would not have been a big sensation had it been just them.

[00:18:14.280] – Marcia Clark
But with her in the middle, she’s the jewel in the crown.

[00:18:18.000] – Alan Petersen
And what do you think? So, just curious, I know this is kind of like a. But I mean, looking at it, in today’s world, same. Same three people, what do you think? How do you think that would have played out nowadays compared to 70 years ago?

[00:18:33.120] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, I think it would have played out differently. Number one thing is, especially in California, I will speak because this was a California case, it was Los Angeles case. I think it would have played out very differently because we have a different view of the felony Murder rule. So for those of you who want to nerd out with me, I will explain. The felony murder rule, which probably exists in every state in some form, is that when you are participating in a certain kind of felony, violent felony and burglary and robbery are two of them, if a murder occurs in the course of committing that felony, then you’re on the hook for murder, whether you meant to do it or not, whether you actually did it or not. And even if it was accidental, you’re on the hook for murder. Nowadays in California, we are refining culpability for that murder. So if you’re not the actual killer, we look at what your participation in the felony really was. And if you only had a limited role, for example, getaway driver, that kind of thing, or lookout, that kind of thing, then it’s much more likely that you will be punished for committing the felony, but not the murder.

[00:19:41.760] – Marcia Clark
So it would have been a very different story for her in today’s world, I think. And for sure she would not have been put to death.

[00:19:48.940] – Alan Petersen
Wow. And. And they can get the pro. Would they try to. Had her, like, testify against them and that might have helped her too? Or is that not off the table when. When it’s murder?

[00:20:00.680] – Marcia Clark
Well, he isn’t off the table. But the problem that had that happened, this is so interesting to me and this is part of her psyche. Her friends were everything to her because her family was nothing. Her mother threw her out and abandoned her when she was born, so she had no family to really fall back on. And the friends that she made were not the most savory. Emmett Perkins was a friend of hers. He’s her co defendant. Jack Santo was somebody she met more recently. But she really followed the code of, you don’t snitch on your fellow travelers. And so when she got busted along with Santo and Perkins, she refused to talk on pain of anything. They threatened her, they pushed her around, they tried to get her to talk. She wouldn’t talk. But another person involved in this case, in the murder, John True, as I call him, the ironically named John True because he was a big liar, he eventually did turn and so he was the one who became their star witness. Now once they had John True as their star witness, they really couldn’t turn anybody else because it makes it, you know, who are you gonna.

[00:21:12.300] – Marcia Clark
You can’t turn everybody. I mean, you wind up basically with everybody having an immunity deal. You have to go with the girl that brought the man that brought you, so to speak. And John True, once he agreed to testify for the state that was going to be their star. And Barbara, even if she had changed her mind, which seems unlikely at that point, she. They couldn’t change horses.

[00:21:32.590] – Alan Petersen
Wow, that’s. Yeah. So that was sad read, reading all that. The. Seems like everybody was like I used her and abused her like through her whole life. It’s just kind of a sad, sad for her, of course. But yeah, yeah. I was also wondering now, so what do you see that parallels now? Because now, you know, we have Court TV and all these true crime podcasts. But back then this is like very unusual, right, to like for the public to get to find out about these things and these trials and these type of murders is very unusual right back then.

[00:22:08.200] – Marcia Clark
You know what? I wonder if that’s true. And here’s why. Here’s why I wonder about it. I don’t know for sure because I think we’ve always been fascinated by true crime. I think that people have always been fascinated by murder most foul, in part because it is the most. There’s no crime greater than that. It is life and death. The stakes are so high. The victim has lost his life. All of the surviving people who knew and loved the victim suffer. The defendant is on trial for his or her life, it doesn’t get any more high stakes than that. And then on top of it all, you have a puzzle. Did he really do it? Did she really do it? What really happened and how it happened? There are so many questions. People get kind of get addicted to the puzzle of it all, and they get fascinated by why and how, how anyone, everyone got brought to these extremes there where someone actually died. I mean, that’s. That is in itself a puzzle, a conundrum and something that people seem to always gravitate towards. So I bet they did, but, you know, they didn’t have the outlets that we have today.

[00:23:23.640] – Marcia Clark
Today we have podcasts and we have television and we have films and we have books and we have substacks and we, you know, there are so many places to find out about true crime, but I’m sure that people were looking for it as much as they could find it. I’m sure they had, they definitely had books being written about it back then. The newspapers were definitely going after it, as you saw in Barbara’s case, nonstop. In fact, I do a lot of quoting from the headlines and all the stories that were written about Barbara’s case nonstop. So I have to believe it was happening on other cases as well, not just hers.

[00:24:00.490] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that was interesting too. The. They talk about journalism now, but they were very aggressive back then. Like the sensational, the way it was like a tabloid kind of a reporting of it, of her case.

[00:24:12.810] – Marcia Clark
It really was. And that was the most shocking thing to me because in today’s world, yeah, you’re going to have some newspapers that give that tabloid spin to things and sensationalize everything. Of course you will. But you’re also going to have some sober analysis. You’re going to have dissenting voices. You’re going to have some that are going to say, hey, I don’t really know that the prosecution’s case is all that and pick out what’s wrong with it. But back then, all of the papers, whether they were kind of tabloid type papers or the more respectable papers like the outlets like San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles Times, they all fell in lockstep with one another, talking about villainous Barbara and the obvious hero that John True was, which was just nonsense, but they, they all seemed to, they just kind of all went in the same direction. No dissenting voices at all. And it didn’t really occur to anyone that the story John True was telling was ridiculous. Which when you, when I started looking at it, when I was reading his testimony, I said, are you kidding me? And then no one really, really voiced in a contrary opinion until at the very end, Ed Montgomery, a reporter for San Francisco examiner, who had been writing all these vilifying stories about Barbara, finally came to the courtroom in Los Angeles and watched the trial and got a feeling about Barbara vis a vis, as opposed to the other two defendants, and said, I don’t know that we’ve been doing this right.

[00:25:38.660] – Marcia Clark
I don’t know that we are coming to the right conclusions here. And he was very eloquent, actually, when he ultimately, after the trial, wrote about his epiphany and the change of heart that he had and realizing that they’d all gone down this primrose path of just chasing her down, going after her hammer and tongue, and realizing that he had done wrong, that he had viewed the case through an improper lens, through an unfair lens, and everyone else had, too. So he actually became her champion and chased down all that he could to find ways to get her conviction overturned and to get her clemency. And he was the one who actually interfaced with Walter Wenger for the film I Want to Live.

[00:26:23.710] – Alan Petersen
Oh, interesting. So. So he. So it seems like he had a. He was feeling remorseful about the original coverage. At least one person was.

[00:26:31.900] – Marcia Clark
At least one was. Yes. There was another one, too, Alan Bernice Friedman, who also. Who did she write for? I think she wrote for the Chronicle, and she routinely would interview death penalty inmates in San Quentin. And so she wrote a book about all. Each one, all the inmates that she had spoken to, including Barbara. And her chapter on Barbara was fascinating because she went and decided to dig, too. She was another one that she admitted she was all in for. Barbara’s guilty and she deserves a death penalty. And then she actually met Barbara and a number of times and then decided to go and meet John. True. And her revelations about what she saw were fascinating. And she, too, had a change of heart.

[00:27:19.070] – Alan Petersen
Oh, wow. Yeah. And there was a picture I saw on your website or I can’t remember this book, but it was. It was Barbara and I don’t know, between the journalists and the court people, it was all men. That was very striking. I mean, that back in. Especially back in the 50s, it was a completely male dominated world that you had to go through, huh?

[00:27:42.560] – Marcia Clark
It really was. Yeah. I mean, I think they probably had a matron with her in the courtroom or at various times, but otherwise it was all men. It was all men all the time. And that picture really got to me. I think that picture was ultimately, I think, the final. The final tipping point for me when I decided I have to write about this. And she’s sitting there next to her lawyer in this prison dress, and all of the reporters are gathered around her and hovering over her in a way that, I mean, you can feel the intensity of the moment. And she’s looking over her shoulder, and you can see she’s scared, she’s nervous, she’s not this monstrous, villainous that they’ve painted at all. It’s a very compelling photograph, and it says so much.

[00:28:29.040] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, yeah. There really is a way to. A photograph says a thousand words or whatever.

[00:28:33.440] – Marcia Clark
Yeah. Pictures worth a thousand words, that one shows.

[00:28:37.280] – Alan Petersen
And, you know, I. And I know you experienced this when you were with that whole O.J. simpson, the trial of the century. Is that something that you kind of like? I mean, you’re the prosecutor, of course, so it’s very, very different. But that intensity, I mean, you were just doing your job, and all of a sudden, like, everybody was on you, what you were wearing, all that stuff. So you kind of bonded a little bit with Barbara on that, on that retrospective.

[00:29:02.500] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, I mean, of course, you know, it was one of those things. I didn’t want to actually bring Simpson into it, but at the same time, you know, how can I not acknowledge the elephant in the room? So, you know, I mean, you can’t really avoid the. The parallels. And so, yeah, I mean, certainly as the woman, you know, a woman was not a very common thing to see at the. As a lead prosecutor in a trial of that magnitude, even though actually, you know, there were so many female DAs that were handling big cases back then. Menendez, I mean, there were so many. It just happened that this was the big trial at the time. And so they focused on me, but not like with Barbara. But I felt the heat, too. Certainly getting dissected for the way I looked. Hair, makeup, dress, everything. It all felt so stupid to me. I really didn’t understand, you know, but. But in terms of the intensity and the pressure in the courtroom because of all that attention, not just me, everyone felt it. And at one time, it was really funny because I got so used to it, I didn’t think about it anymore.

[00:30:13.740] – Marcia Clark
That case went on for so long. And a friend of mine, a defense attorney, came and to the courtroom and stopped by to see me, and he goes, oh, my God, it’s like a pressure cooker in here. I don’t know how you deal with that. And I hadn’t thought of it in so long. You get used to these things. And I thought, you know, it is kind of intense in here?

[00:30:32.010] – Alan Petersen
Well, yeah, I remember just watching it on TV back then. I was, you know, in the. Just all the. Even like the courthouse, the trial, it just seemed like there’s so many people there. It was just jam packed. Like, I don’t know how many people were in there, but it was just. It was crazy.

[00:30:48.430] – Marcia Clark
It was, it was packed. It was really standing room only just about every day of the trial. And you could see that that was the case in Barbara’s case too. I was looking through newspaper clippings and it showed all the spectators lined up in the hallway waiting to get in because there are much fewer seating than there were people who wanted to watch. So they had a packed courtroom as well, all the time. And it’s just, you know, amazing to see.

[00:31:16.490] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, yeah. Because those courtrooms really aren’t that big. I’ve only been a couple times for jury duty, but I couldn’t believe it when I was in there. I’m like, this is so small.

[00:31:25.930] – Marcia Clark
Right. I think. You know what’s funny? I think television really distorts our expectations when it comes to courtrooms. Right. Because they show them to be kind of grand or line order.

[00:31:39.490] – Alan Petersen
That’s what I was expecting.

[00:31:41.330] – Marcia Clark
I know. And I gotta tell you, even I was surprised because I really did believe that back in the day, back in the 50s anyway, that they had, you know, those very grand high ceiling courtrooms with the fan going and remember all that, and the judge sits way up high. And I was really thinking that that’s what I was going to see in the pictures of the courtroom that Barbara was tried in. Nope. It was as boring as it could be. It was just like it looked. It reminded me of the courtroom that we had in the Simpson case with just newer chairs. I mean, really boring, you know, ugly government issue stuff. It’s not.

[00:32:19.580] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, yeah.

[00:32:20.750] – Marcia Clark
Not what you expect. Yeah.

[00:32:22.030] – Alan Petersen
Not like To Kill a Mockingbird where they like, that’s your ph. That’s the big people sitting up in the aisles and the second floor.

[00:32:30.350] – Marcia Clark
Exactly, exactly. Oh, I don’t know. Those days are gone. And, you know, it’s been a long time since we’ve had courtrooms like that. Too bad. Because honestly, I do think if our courtrooms had a little more majesty, it would help jurors deal with the tedium of having to sit through these trials. At least then you feel the importance of what you’re doing. Whereas I think we kind of feel like we’re in an elementary school classroom.

[00:32:57.250] – Alan Petersen
Elbow to elbow with a fellow juror, potential people.

[00:33:01.250] – Marcia Clark
Exactly.

[00:33:03.570] – Alan Petersen
How long Did Barbara’s trial last?

[00:33:06.700] – Marcia Clark
It was a month and a half, which for them was a long time. And they went, but they went full long days and there was no days off. So when we say five days a week, it was five days a week. And from like nine to five, really every day. And they, they moved very quickly through their trial. We, we do a lot more ruminating on pre trial motions and objections. And the judge in Barbara’s case was probably, he was very smart. There were times I definitely took issue with his rulings, as you’ll see, but as one does anyway, but I gotta say, but, but they move quickly. And so when the lawyers objected, he ruled from the bench. They didn’t do sidebars, not much. Once they did sidebars just once. And that was at a time when the ambush happened in the case and the lawyers ran to sidebar and asked to be relieved. And that was a, that’s its whole other, that’s a whole big other bombshell. There were so many in that case.

[00:34:08.800] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, yeah. That’s the thing. I, I don’t want to. I mean, it’s all, like you said, it’s all public records and, and it’s, and it’s a true crime, but reading it is like. And I think that’s because of your skill. It’s writing. You’ve written so many fictional legal thrillers that you made it like a real thrilling read, even though it was a, a real court case. I don’t want to give too much away from the reader.

[00:34:28.660] – Marcia Clark
Thank you. I’m so glad, Ellen. You know, I felt that way reading the transcripts as I’m going, oh my God, oh my, oh my God.

[00:34:38.900] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. And what, and what is your, the writing process to grab 5,000 pages? I mean, do you like, outline. How does that work compared to writing a fictional book?

[00:34:48.260] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, no kidding. So I gave myself chapter breaks, just like I do for fiction when I write. When I write fiction, I do chapter breakdown. So chapter one, this happens a line, maybe a paragraph. Chapter two, same thing. So that I have an arc in my mind now. I deviate from it constantly. You know, I mean, but, but I have at least the, the map in my mind. And if I decide to go somewhere else, I adjust. I kind of did that here too. And, and yet it was, it was easier than I thought it was going to be because it does lay out logically. You have the investigation, you have the murder itself. You have the investigation. And that in itself was so fascinating. How the murder got planned, how the investigation went there Were twists and turns in that too, as they basically kidnapping one of the defendants under cover of darkness, which was amazing. And then you have the trial, you have the grand jury. And that became. That was a little more difficult to arranged because I didn’t want to repeat testimony. So I wanted to acknowledge there was a grand jury proceeding, this testimony was given, and then go straight into the trial.

[00:36:02.040] – Marcia Clark
So that, that took a little massaging as well as the things that were going on behind the scenes during the trial that no one knew were happening until it got sprung in court. The ambush was sprung. So it was in that sense, I think, a little easier than doing fiction because the story was already there.

[00:36:23.780] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I was just trying to get. Try to get like the hook, that ambush hook for the reader and going from there kind of. That was your angle, like, oh, I got it.

[00:36:35.780] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, it got me actually, you know, because the case unfolded the way it did, the trial unfolded the way it did. It was naturally pretty dramatic. I didn’t have to add anything and I, I didn’t expect to either. I didn’t want to. I mean, this is a true story. So I did quote rather liberally from what people were saying in court and, you know, their cross examination of Barbara, for example, line for line. This is what really happened, guys. This is not me making it up because there are, there is such a thing, as I’m sure, you know, true crime books that do invent dialog just to smooth things through and show you what happened in a, in a more palatable way rather than just, you know, saying, well, he went to her house and they decided this. Well, it’s a little more interesting if you put the dialog in. He went to her house and he said, so what do you think? Should we double? You know, yeah, that’s fine. I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that because I didn’t have to, because I had the trial transcripts. You could see what everybody was saying.

[00:37:40.230] – Marcia Clark
And then I had their closing argument and I had what they were. They had actually said. So that was a gift. If I write another true crime book, I think I would want to again study the trial because for me, that is the big draw. How did it happen? How did they get convicted? You know, especially in a case like this where you have a woman who has nothing like this violent crime in her background and a victim who was as innocent as they can get. How did this happen? How did the conviction happen? And why would the. Why were all the players involved the way they were? You can’t, you don’t know that unless you have the trial transcripts.

[00:38:17.850] – Alan Petersen
Do you think that the difference between writing, like. Because without. Without a doubt, that was. You know, you were there. Was that a big difference between that and writing? Here you’re more like a third party in. In Trial by Ambush.

[00:38:31.610] – Marcia Clark
Yes. It was much more pleasant to be the third party thing.

[00:38:36.330] – Alan Petersen
Just to drag up bad memories.

[00:38:38.340] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, absolutely. It was very painful writing. Writing, without a doubt. And I did not have to do it myself. I had a wonderful collab. Teresa Carpenter, who was a brilliant writer, and I could not have done it myself. I think I was just too shredded. I was an emotional wreck. And yet there was a real need to sit down and write while I still remembered everything that happened while my memory was fresh. And yet the memory was very painful. So. And of course, I don’t know that I could have figured out how to organize it, you know, the way she did. So what would happen is she would say, here’s the ark. And as I told you, I mean, that’s how I learned. That’s who I learned it from. Chapter this is going to be this. Chapter two is going to be this. And, you know, that kind of thing. So she would have me write what I could remember of each topic for each chapter, including any dialog that I wanted to throw in. So I would do that, and then she would. She would go over it, she would fix it. Let me just tell you.

[00:39:37.110] – Marcia Clark
It was, you know the old fable about Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold? Yeah. That was what it was like. I would send her straw, she would send back gold. And it was a masterclass in learning how to write and watching how a brilliant person really does it. It’s quite a thing to watch and to learn from. And that helped me deal with the awful crucible of having to relive the trial was to be able to watch someone. Watch someone do the writing process. You know, this process of creating really great prose. That was really a special experience. But, yeah, I much preferred the experience of writing Trial by Ambush by a lot.

[00:40:19.880] – Alan Petersen
I can imagine. And what was the segue to write, Writing those legal thrillers or fiction? Is that. Did that come about later, way later on, or. I can’t remember the. Because your legal thrillers are awesome.

[00:40:31.710] – Marcia Clark
Thank you so much. That’s kind of you. Yeah. I had wanted to write a novel, and crime fiction in particular, since I was a kid. I was addicted to Nancy Drew, of course.

[00:40:43.240] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. Hardy Boys.

[00:40:44.930] – Marcia Clark
Hardy Boys. I read them, too. Love them, too. Nancy Drew, I always think of. Because did you ever, I don’t know, did you ever read her Nancy Drew or just Hardy Boys?

[00:40:54.700] – Alan Petersen
No, I read Nancy Drew too. Yeah.

[00:40:58.970] – Marcia Clark
We crossed over. Did you ever notice that Nancy Drew, in every chapter she showers and changes? She showered and changed. She showered and changed. And it drove me crazy. That was a kid reading and going, how many showers, showers does this girl take? She also has a lot of clothes because she changed every time anyway. And her father always went out of town and that’s when things went crazy.

[00:41:22.160] – Alan Petersen
Yes, the same thing with the Hardy Boys. They’re always by themselves, 10 year old kids or whatever they were.

[00:41:26.830] – Marcia Clark
Exactly right. So fun. So I always wanted to. It was one of those dreams, I can’t really do this. But after working with Teresa on Without a Doubt, that’s when I really thought, gosh, I’d really like to go after that dream. And so I told Teresa, so, okay, now let’s write fiction. And she said, no, now you go write fiction. Oh, okay. I did not do it. Not for a few years. I’d had. It was a crisis of confidence. I thought, I don’t know if I could pull this off. And then I decided, oh man, yolo, you know, give it a shot. So I did. And I started with Rachel Knight. And you know, it was a joy. It’s a lot of work, as you know, but it’s really fun.

[00:42:12.360] – Alan Petersen
And now you. Do you have any plans for another fiction book? Are you non fiction? What’s. What are you working on now? Can give us this little sneak peek?

[00:42:19.080] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, I mean, you know, I’m not entirely sure. It’s, it’s funny. I am looking around for another true crime story because I think I, I really enjoyed doing this one. And if I could find a crime that was interesting to me, in other words, that was very important to me in, in selecting the case because you have to be really invested in it to work as hard and for as long as you do on these cases. And it took the better part of two years. So, you know, if you’re not really invested in the case, it’s not going to work. And I really wanted something that had more depth to it. I did not want to go for the monster in the closet, you know, the lurid tales of blood and gore and slasher stuff. I don’t care about serial killers. I’ve done enough of, handled those cases as a prosecutor, read enough of those books. I’m over it. What I want is something, a crime that gives us an opportunity to look at something more important, deeper, psychologically Socially, legally, of course, but something that illuminates our understanding of our world, our legal world and the people in it and the why of the crime and the why of the verdict.

[00:43:32.380] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I think that’s so fascinating now because we’re starting out, we are looking at older cases like this with today’s lens and things, you really look at things different. I mean, it’s just kind of mind boggling.

[00:43:45.580] – Marcia Clark
Right? It’s different, and yet there are so many things that are the same. You know, you prosecutors. It doesn’t. I want to make really clear. Most prosecutors are in the courtroom doing the right thing and being fair about what they do. Most prosecutors do not hide the ball. Most prosecutors do not look for ways to get a defendant convicted or put to death when they shouldn’t. So I want everyone who reads this to know this is an unusual situation. It does need to be called out, but it’s not so unusual that it doesn’t happen. Today. It does. And we’ve seen these cases where a prosecutor goes too far, hides the discovery, hides the evidence, or say, the exculpatory evidence, that kind of thing. And when a defendant’s right to a fair trial is violated that way, our justice system suffers. So I think it is important to recognize that this is not just a historical lesson. This is something that we need to guard against now as well. Yeah.

[00:44:47.000] – Alan Petersen
All right, Marsha, before I let you go, I have to ask you because, you know, it’s. It’s in the news now again, and all these Netflix shows, of course, the Menendez brothers. What are your thoughts on that? And the governor just now said he’s going to wait for the new da. What do you think about that? What do you think the chances are of getting out?

[00:45:05.670] – Marcia Clark
You know, good question. I don’t know. I didn’t handle that case or, you know, I didn’t. I don’t have an inside line on that case. I know what you know, I do know that there was a big difference between the two trials. In the first trial, the jury hung on both defendants, and that. And they had put in all of the evidence of abuse from teachers, friends, family, coaches, everybody. The second trial, they limited that testimony quite a bit, and that resulted in a conviction. Now, I don’t think that’s the only reason there was a conviction. I think that there was a public exhaustion with the notion that a defendant can get away with murder by claiming with the. What they call it the abuse excuse. And it’s really not the abuse excuse. I mean, they. Their defense was really that they believed they were going to be killed by their father and that it was imminent. And that’s what we call imperfect self defense, because it was not a reasonable belief in the need for self defense. It was an unreasonable but genuinely held belief. That was the defense that they put forward due to the abuse that they’d suffered for years and to more recent things that happened with their father.

[00:46:19.350] – Marcia Clark
So all I can say about this is there are a number of defendants who killed no one and are serving life without the possibility of parole, like the Menendez brothers. And so if they get paroled now, I have a few things to ask the governor.

[00:46:35.470] – Alan Petersen
The mechanical worm, right?

[00:46:37.400] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, yeah. If you’re gonna let those guys go, I have a few names on the list that you should add.

[00:46:44.060] – Alan Petersen
And those murders are very brutal. It wasn’t. I mean.

[00:46:48.940] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, yeah, it was shocking, wasn’t it? Did you watch the Ryan Murphy miniseries?

[00:46:57.320] – Alan Petersen
I haven’t yet. I kind of was. You know, like, Menendez brothers has been covered so much, but now everyone keeps talking about it, so I’m gonna have to go watch it. But I was like, now you’re stuck. Yeah, now I’m getting that fomo.

[00:47:08.940] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, that’s what always happens. Everybody starts talking and we got to go back and see.

[00:47:13.280] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, at first the shouting was. Yeah. First I was like, nah. And then I’m like, okay, now I’m gonna watch it.

[00:47:18.270] – Marcia Clark
Yeah, I know. I. I do that all the time. And I have to say I remember how brutal it was because back in the day when it was being covered, I was still in the DA’s office and I remembered thinking, oh, my God, they went and reloaded to. To finish killing their mother.

[00:47:34.390] – Alan Petersen
And With a. Shotguns. Which is a very.

[00:47:36.420] – Marcia Clark
Shotguns. Yeah. Yeah. Horrible.

[00:47:39.070] – Alan Petersen
Yeah.

[00:47:39.480] – Marcia Clark
Really brutal crime. So we’ll see what happens. My guess, if I were betting, my money would be on the fact that this DA does not go along with the program and does not say they should be released now. And maybe because of the kind of thing that I’m saying, and I’m sure other defense attorneys are saying, I’ve got clients who really didn’t kill anyone. How about them? If you’re going to get. These guys were firing shotguns. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. What do you think?

[00:48:14.150] – Alan Petersen
I think after what happened with the recall and all that, probably not. I would imagine, like, it’s going to let it stand. So. And I don’t know from what I’ve. I don’t know anything about. About that, but I mean, like that that crime was pretty brutal. So, I mean, it really was. I know 35 years is a long time, but like you said, there’s people done less than are in there for longer. So. And look at Bar Bar, what happened to Barbara, I mean, that’s kind of, I mean.

[00:48:41.630] – Marcia Clark
I mean, you know, when you look at the story more, you know, dispassionately, you take a step back and you look at what she could have done as opposed to what John True said she did do. And I actually reenacted the crime myself based on his testimony to try and test it to see if it’s possible she could have done what he said. It’s not even possible physically not possible. So. Well, we’ll let readers decide for themselves, I guess.

[00:49:07.180] – Alan Petersen
Yep. The book’s out December 1st. It’s already on first reads and everything in case when this comes out. It’ll be out on December 1st, and I highly recommend it.

[00:49:16.370] – Marcia Clark
Thank you so much, Alan.

[00:49:17.770] – Alan Petersen
All right, thank you, Marcia. That’s a wrap on my conversation with Marcia Clark. I had such an incredible time talking with her about the Barbara Graham case, her new book, Trial by Ambush, and her amazing career as both the writer and prosecutor. Honestly, time flew by. I got caught up in the discussion that I went over of the time we had planned. So a big thank you to Marcia for sticking around and sharing her fascinating insights with us. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast on your favorite platform. It really helps more thriller and mystery fans discover the show. And don’t Forget to visit thrillingweeze.com for links to my social media, the full archive of 200 plus author interviews and show notes and transcripts scripts for this episode. Thank you for tuning in to meet the thriller author. And until next time, keep those pages turning.