Word: abbotts
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...Abbott takes the stand
Jack Henry Abbott, convict turned literary celebrity, answered...
Silence fell over the Manhattan courtroom where Abbott is on trial on a charge of murdering Adan, 22, a waiter and an aspiring playwright, last July-a bare six weeks after Abbott had been released from prison on the urging of Novelist Norman Mailer. Not a cough sounded as Abbott, 37, gave some grisly details of the aftermath of the 5 a.m. stabbing outside the Bini-Bon restaurant where Adan had worked. Adan, Abbott related, "said, 'You didn't have to kill me.' He started going backward. From his face he looked like he was dead...
...courtroom tension exploded a few minutes later. Under questioning by Fisher, Abbott testified that he had thought Adan was about to attack him with a knife. "It was a tragic misunderstanding," said Abbott, covering his eyes with a hand. From a front row of seats, Henry Howard, Adan's father-in-law, shouted: "You intended it, you scum! You scum, you useless piece of s---. You and Mailer and all the [other] creeps." The standing-room-only audience burst into applause, and court officials hustled Howard out of the courtroom. Fisher asked Judge Irving Lang to declare a mistrial...
...trial has been as sensational as its background was bizarre. Abbott, who has spent 24 of his 37 years behind bars, was paroled from Utah State Prison last spring, after Mailer had arranged publication of Abbott's book, In the Belly of the Beast, a horrifying description of prison life, and offered him a job as a researcher. On the fatal July morning, Abbott was breakfasting at the Bini-Bon with two young women and asked Adan if he could use the restroom. Adan replied that it was for employees only, and the two began a quarrel that they...