Ronald Green­field didn’t look like a mur­der­er. From my seat in a Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, court­room in June, 1973, I thought he looked more like one of the tenth grade stu­dents I had taught at Albe­mar­le High School. Short, pudgy, with curly shoul­der-length black hair, he appeared younger than his sev­en­teen years, but he was on tri­al as an adult for murder.

That sum­mer I had fin­ished my first year in law school, and I clerked for a lawyer in Char­lottesville. When Com­mon­wealth v. Green­field came to tri­al, he encour­aged me to watch the pro­ceed­ings in between projects as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence. In three ses­sions, I saw six hours of the trial.

The prosecution’s wit­ness­es set the back­drop. In Novem­ber, 1972, Green­field had worked for a short time as a door­man for Poe’s, a tav­ern that catered to UVA stu­dents. He was from Brew­ster, New York. His father was a den­tist there. His co-work­ers described him as a “drifter.”

Twen­ty-one years old, Mary Frances Jor­dan was a senior in UVA’s Edu­ca­tion School. She worked for Poe’s as a waitress.

About 12:30 a.m. on Novem­ber 8, Green­field asked around for a ride home after work because of heavy rain. Jor­dan offered him a lift. She drove him to the West­min­ster Pres­by­ter­ian Church park­ing lot on Rug­by Road, next to his apartment.

Green­field tes­ti­fied that they talked for a while. He said he “shot up” hero­in that night at six p.m. and took psilo­cy­bin, a pow­er­ful hal­lu­cino­genic, at nine, and Jor­dan “bugged” him about his drug use. He resent­ed it, but he claimed their con­ver­sa­tion end­ed on a good note.

When he got out of the car, he expe­ri­enced a “falling” sen­sa­tion. The next thing he remem­bered he awoke in a “crouched posi­tion” on the driver’s side of the car. He saw Jor­dan lying motion­less in a pool of blood. His hand was bleed­ing. He saw his penknife on the floor­board and picked it up. He thought he had “freaked out” and killed her.

Thomas Kee­van lived near the lot. He tes­ti­fied he ran out­side when he heard screams and he saw some­one run­ning from the lot dressed in a green army jack­et. Green­field wore a green army jack­et that night. Kee­van found Jor­dan bleed­ing, but alive. He car­ried her to his apart­ment and called the res­cue squad and the police.

Green­field fled to a house near­by. A stu­dent there tes­ti­fied that he said he’d killed a nar­cotics agent and a girl. He asked for a ride out of town and mon­ey. No one would help him, so he ran to rail­road tracks near Rug­by Road and hid there.

Jor­dan died at the UVA hos­pi­tal at 2:55. Her mur­der­er had stabbed her twen­ty-one times in the chest, abdomen, arms, and head, and punc­tured her liv­er and lungs.

At day­break Green­field walked to a main road to hitch a ride to Rich­mond. Basil Miller, a truck dri­ver, said he picked up Green­field and drove him to a first aid sta­tion because his hand was bad­ly cut. Miller lat­er heard the descrip­tion of the mur­der sus­pect on the radio and called the police.

The police tes­ti­fied they found Green­field in a Rich­mond hos­pi­tal and arrest­ed him. They said he vol­un­teered that he killed Jor­dan with a penknife they found in his pock­et and that he told them, “I don’t feel bad about tak­ing a human life.” Green­field denied this.

The most dra­mat­ic ses­sion I attend­ed came just before Green­field took the stand. One of my law school pro­fes­sors had joined the defense team. Out­side the pres­ence of the jury, he told the judge that Green­field could recall cer­tain facts only when hyp­no­tized. While in a trance, he remem­bered a karate blow to the back of his neck that knocked him out. When he awoke, he saw a man wear­ing a jack­et like Greenfield’s in the park­ing lot. He chased the man, but lost him. My pro­fes­sor asked the judge to allow Dr. Ken­neth Locke to hyp­no­tize Green­field and have him tes­ti­fy while in a trance, or in the alter­na­tive, to allow Locke to tes­ti­fy about what Green­field remem­bered under hypnosis.

The admis­si­bil­i­ty of tes­ti­mo­ny under hyp­no­sis was a mat­ter of first impres­sion in Vir­ginia. The judge refused to allow it on the basis that jurors might regard the hyp­not­ic state itself as proof of truth even though a wit­ness could invent false state­ments while pre­tend­ing to be in a trance. The defense team went bal­lis­tic because Greenfield’s hyp­not­i­cal­ly induced mem­o­ry of the “oth­er man” was their only direct evi­dence that some­one else killed Jordan.

The judge stood firm against an avalanche of pas­sion­ate advo­ca­cy and then ordered a recess for every­one to cool down. After the break, Green­field took the stand, march­ing to the wit­ness chair with slow robot­ic strides and a far-off look in his eyes.

The commonwealth’s attor­ney asked to approach the bench. With the jury out of the room, he accused the defense of hyp­no­tiz­ing Green­field dur­ing the break. Defense coun­sel didn’t admit it, but they didn’t flat out deny it either. After major fire­works, the judge sur­pris­ing­ly decid­ed not to sanc­tion them and recessed again. When Green­field returned to the stand, he tes­ti­fied nor­mal­ly and didn’t men­tion the oth­er man.

I wasn’t there when the jury ren­dered its ver­dict, but the news swept through town like a thun­der storm. The jury found Green­field guilty of sec­ond degree mur­der and the judge sen­tenced him to twen­ty years. The over­whelm­ing sen­ti­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty was that Green­field com­mit­ted first degree mur­der and deserved a life sentence.

Mary Jor­dan had planned to be an ele­men­tary school teacher. Her co-work­ers at Poe’s described her as smart, sen­si­tive, and fun. The man­ag­er said she was like fam­i­ly. “We’re not putting you on. She was a won­der­ful per­son.” Two hun­dred UVA stu­dents made the dri­ve north to Arling­ton to attend her funer­al the week after her mur­der. UVA estab­lished a fund in her name.

From his arrest onward, Green­field seemed unfazed by the grav­i­ty of the mur­der. Upon his arrest, he said, “I don’t feel bad about (the mur­der).” While he sat in jail pend­ing tri­al, he sent a let­ter to the UVA stu­dent news­pa­per com­plain­ing about jail­house liv­ing con­di­tions. His meals were ined­i­ble, he wrote. The food was cold. He was allowed only two cold show­ers a week and was forced to shave with­out a mir­ror. And dur­ing the ses­sions of the tri­al I watched, he showed no remorse.

After the con­vic­tion, Thomas and Amelia Jor­dan sued him for the wrong­ful death of their daugh­ter. They won a dam­age award, but I doubt they cared about the mon­ey. I think they want­ed to make a state­ment to Green­field: their daughter’s life mattered.

Green­field appealed his con­vic­tion and lost. In 1974 he led a press con­fer­ence to protest liv­ing con­di­tions in the pen­i­ten­tiary. He was a ring­leader of a prisoner’s strike in 1977, and he was lat­er one of sev­en, who filed an unsuc­cess­ful law­suit about prison con­di­tions. My inter­net research trail of Green­field goes cold in 1980. I couldn’t find records about his release, but if he served his full sen­tence, which is unlike­ly, he was 37 in 1992 when he got out; he’s 61 today; and he’s been free for at least 24 years, longer than Mary Jordan’s entire lifespan.

This was the first tri­al I watched and I learned a lot, but the out­come left me cold. In my view, Greenfield’s pun­ish­ment didn’t fit his crime. Crim­i­nal sen­tenc­ing should bal­ance the need for pun­ish­ment with the oppor­tu­ni­ty for reha­bil­i­ta­tion, but when you take someone’s life for no rea­son in a sav­age fren­zy of blood­lust, drug-induced or not, I believe you should for­feit your free­dom for life, and along with it, your chance to reha­bil­i­tate. Mary Jor­dan is dead. She got no sec­ond chance. Maybe I’m being too harsh, but even if I’d thought in 1973 that Green­field could reha­bil­i­tate and turn his life around, I would have vot­ed as a juror for guilty of first degree mur­der with a sen­tence of impris­on­ment for life.

My dad was a Hud­son Motor Car Com­pa­ny deal­er after World War II. He bought a sandy-soiled piece of land along Route 60 between Williams­burg and York­town, Vir­ginia, and built on it the house we lived in and an office/garage for his busi­ness. He staked a sign out by the road: “Oder Motor Com­pa­ny.” He bought Hud­sons at auc­tions in Rich­mond and drove them back to our lot for sale. Every morn­ing, he lined them up in the front yard, fac­ing Route 60, and paint­ed prices on their wind­shields. Cus­tomers pulled into our dirt dri­ve­way and inspect­ed the new Hud­sons in the front and back yards. Dad sold two or three a month and some­how man­aged to sup­port us on the proceeds.

Dad believed that the Hud­son Com­pa­ny made the best cars in the world. In the ear­ly 50’s, the Hud­son Jets, Wasps, and Hor­nets were sleek and stream­lined com­pared to the cars of that day. They fea­tured a mas­sive smil­ing grill, a styl­ish rear bumper, and gleam­ing strips of chrome from head­light to tail­light. And they were just as impres­sive under the hood. Hud­son Hor­nets ruled the NASCAR cir­cuit from 1951 to 54, win­ning 78 races, by far the most of any brand.

Dad said Hud­sons were a salesman’s dream come true, and his sales proved it. When I was four years old I some­times fol­lowed him around the lot while he talked to cus­tomers. One spring morn­ing, he was work­ing on a sale to a tall man wear­ing a white Stet­son. The man looked at a Hor­net that had giv­en dad’s part-time mechan­ic fits. I decid­ed to help him out. “You don’t want to buy that car, mis­ter.” The man smiled tol­er­ant­ly. “Why is that, son?” I made a sour face. “Because my dad­dy says that car ain’t worth a damn.” The man bent over laugh­ing. Dad didn’t laugh, as I recall, but he closed the deal some­how and the man drove that Hud­son off the lot.

To his dying day, dad loved the 1954 Hud­son Hor­net more than any vehi­cle ever cre­at­ed by God and Detroit. It was the queen of the Hud­son hive, a crea­ture of unpar­al­leled auto­mo­tive beau­ty and pow­er. Fueled by duel twin car­bu­re­tors, the Twin-H-Pow­er mod­el Hor­nets boast­ed 170 horse­pow­er, about 30 more than oth­er stock cars of the day. When dad drove his first one back from Rich­mond, it blew by every­thing on the road. He made a sign and put it in the back win­dow. “You’ve been passed by a 1954 Hud­son Hornet.”

Sad­ly, the 54 Hor­net couldn’t save Hud­son from finan­cial ruin. The com­pa­ny was on life sup­port when the first one rolled off the assem­bly line in the fall of 1953, and by March, 1954, Hud­son had no choice but to merge with Nash-Kelv­ina­tor, the man­u­fac­tur­er of Nash auto­mo­biles, to form Amer­i­can Motors Corporation.

Dad hat­ed Nash­es. It almost drove him nuts when AMC changed the Hud­son body style in 1955 to make it look more like a Nash. Then AMC broke his heart when it dis­con­tin­ued the Hud­son line alto­geth­er in 1957, bring­ing to a close its 48 year life-span.

Dad was nev­er the same after that. He limped along as a car sales­man, sell­ing low­ly Fords and Chevro­lets, but he couldn’t get his mojo back. Then, a year after AMC stopped mak­ing Hud­sons, he found his call­ing to preach and rose out of the ash­es. I’m not cer­tain his pro­found grief over the demise of the Hud­son drove him into the arms of the Lord, but you have to admit the tim­ing is sus­pi­cious. I don’t sup­pose it mat­ters what his moti­va­tion was, though, because he turned out to be as pas­sion­ate about his faith as he was about Hud­sons and as good a sales­man in the pul­pit as he was in the car lot.

A half-cen­tu­ry after AMC sent the Hud­son to the bone yard, my two broth­ers and I were cast­ing around for ideas about what to get dad for a birth­day gift. I made a jok­ing remark to my nephew that we ought to buy the old man a 1954 Hud­son Hor­net. He dropped that pearl of wis­dom on my broth­er, and he took it seri­ous­ly, which pitched us all into a cou­ple months of furi­ous activity.

We scoured the nation and found an aban­doned 1954 Hud­son Hor­net in a field in Ver­mont. Under the rust you could see rem­nants of the orig­i­nal two-toned lime-green/hunter-green paint job. The junk-heap had the Twin-H-Pow­er duel car­bu­re­tors, so it was one of the elite horse­pow­er mod­els. It didn’t run and you could see the ground through holes in the floor­board and the uphol­stery was torn, mildewed, and rot­ting. But, hey, the thing was almost as old as I am. I was amazed it was still intact.

We thought we could restore it, so we bought it and hauled it down to Vir­ginia. On the day of the par­ty, we did every­thing we could to build up the sus­pense about the sur­prise gift. Then we herd­ed every­body into the front yard and wait­ed. I’ll nev­er for­get the look on dad’s face when my nephew backed a flat-bed trail­er car­ry­ing the old beat-up, rust­ed-out Hor­net into his dri­ve­way. Dad stared hard at it; his jaw dropped; and then a wist­ful smile crept across his face. “A 1954 Hud­son Hor­net,” he said in a small voice.

It has some­times been dif­fi­cult and heart-rend­ing to live three thou­sand miles away from my par­ents and broth­ers, but there have also been dis­tinct advan­tages. One of the biggest was not being avail­able to help restore that old Hud­son. My younger broth­er, who lived a cou­ple miles from my par­ents, almost went crazy over the next three years, hag­gling with mechan­ics, uphol­ster­ers, chrome dip­pers, car painters, and the like, but he did the job and brought the Hor­net into near-mint con­di­tion and drove dad all around the coun­ty in it.

The three of us broth­ers had some fun togeth­er along the way, too. When the restora­tion was still a work in progress, I went out there for a vis­it. My broth­er had got­ten the engine run­ning like a top, but the inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or were still wrecked. The Hor­net looked like a big old base­ment fur­nace with lime-green high­lights peek­ing through a heavy coat of rust, but my broth­ers and I climbed inside any­way and we took turns dri­ving her around all day. Late after­noon, we were head­ed up-hill on a four-lane high­way. I was sit­ting on the pas­sen­ger side in the front seat, try­ing to adjust my rear end to accom­mo­date a bust­ed spring that had punc­tured the crum­bling seat cov­er, when my broth­er decid­ed to floor the accel­er­a­tor. The engine roared like a Mack Truck in sub-low gear. The speedome­ter climbed slow­ly but steadi­ly. When it crest­ed sev­en­ty, my broth­er veered into the pass­ing lane and we pulled even with a shiny new black Ford F‑150. The farmer behind the steer­ing wheel looked over at me. I flashed a Ted­dy Roo­sevelt grin out the cracked win­dow and waved bye-bye.

He couldn’t have looked more stunned if he’d been passed by a sub­ma­rine on wheels. He had no idea what the hell had just blown by him. If dad had been with us, I know what we would have done. He would have scratched it out in his quiv­er­ing hand, and we would have placed the piece of card­board in the rear win­dow. “You’ve been passed by a 1954 Hud­son Hornet.”

Post-script: An old Hud­son takes cen­ter stage in my sec­ond nov­el, Old Wounds to the Heart. When Joleen Huk­step wakes up Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing to find her hus­band miss­ing, she goes search­ing for him in her lime-green 1954 Hud­son Hor­net. It serves her pret­ty well, giv­en that her severe myopia casts every­thing more than ten feet ahead in a fog­gy blur. Among their many escapades, she and the Hud­son chase a Pon­ti­ac Bon­neville into a tele­phone pole. Need­less to say, Joleen’s Hud­son was inspired by the one we gave to dad.

In 1918, Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies forced Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, and chil­dren into the base­ment of a house where they’d been held cap­tive, opened fire, and killed them. They buried the corpses in an unmarked grave in a secret loca­tion. Days lat­er, a rumor sur­faced that one of the tsar’s daugh­ters had escaped the slaughter.

In 1920, a young woman jumped off a bridge in Berlin. Ger­man police res­cued her. Her body was riv­en by scars. She had no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and refused to give her name. She was com­mit­ted to an asy­lum as Madame Unknown.

Peo­ple there said she spoke Ger­man with a Russ­ian accent and car­ried her­self with a noble bear­ing. One of them claimed she told her she was a daugh­ter of the tsar. Rumors about her spread far and wide. Romanov fam­i­ly mem­bers, for­mer atten­dants, and friends of the tsar’s chil­dren came to see her. For two years, she refused to dis­cuss her back­ground with them or con­firm their sus­pi­cion that she was a Romanov. Then a for­mer impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly guard final­ly drew her out, and she told him she was Anas­ta­sia, the tsar’s youngest daugh­ter. That state­ment ignit­ed a firestorm that burned for sev­en­ty years.

I met this woman in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in 1968. I was a stu­dent at UVA. My room­mates and I rent­ed an apart­ment from Jack Man­a­han, a wealthy geneal­o­gist. One morn­ing when I deliv­ered the rent check, he intro­duced me to a lit­tle, old woman, reclin­ing on a divan in his liv­ing room. “This is my new wife,” he said, “the Grand Duchess Anas­ta­sia Niko­laev­na Romanova.”

The lofty title and their rel­a­tive ages (she looked twen­ty years old­er than Man­a­han) sur­prised me. Eager to explain, he coaxed the duchess to tell me her sto­ry in Ger­man, while he translated.

She said the base­ment gun­fire wound­ed her, and she col­lapsed on the floor. A sol­dier bay­o­net­ed her and bashed in her face with his rifle-butt to fin­ish her off. When she talked to me that morn­ing, she held a shawl over her mouth. Man­a­han said she did this to cov­er ruined teeth.

As the sol­diers hauled away the bod­ies, a guard real­ized she was still bare­ly alive. He dragged her away, escaped to Roma­nia, and nursed her back to health. After she bore his child, he was shot and killed, leav­ing her with no means of sup­port. She put the child in an orphan­age and went to Berlin to seek help from Ger­man Romanov fam­i­ly mem­bers, but no one believed her. She despaired and tried to kill herself.

She told her sto­ry well. She spoke soft­ly, but with inten­si­ty, her eyes riv­et­ed to mine, coy but insis­tent, gaug­ing my reac­tion to each detail, watch­ing my every move. It sound­ed like a fan­tas­tic lie, but I found myself hop­ing it was true.

That morn­ing, I won­dered why she spent so much time telling her sto­ry to a col­lege stu­dent with no influ­ence, but lat­er I learned that she had spent her entire adult life mak­ing her pitch to any­one who would lis­ten and she’d earned a large fol­low­ing of believ­ers that way, includ­ing mem­bers of the Romanov fam­i­ly and Anastasia’s child­hood friends. In the 30’s they helped her file suit in Ger­man court, lay­ing claim to the tsar’s wealth. They alleged she knew things only Anas­ta­sia could have known. Many court-appoint­ed foren­sic experts came down in her favor. Doc­tors con­clud­ed she suf­fered from a foot defor­mi­ty that had also afflict­ed Anas­ta­sia. Oth­ers com­pared the bio­met­rics of her ear to the princess’s ear and thought they were the same. Graphol­o­gists said her hand­writ­ing matched Anastasia’s penmanship.

While the case dragged on, her advo­cates brought her to the Unit­ed States. Using the pseu­do­nym, Anna Ander­son, she became the toast of New York City’s high soci­ety. The famous Russ­ian pianist and com­pos­er, Sergei Rach­mani­noff, paid for her lodg­ing. Her life inspired a host of books, plays, and movies. Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for por­tray­ing her in Anas­ta­sia in 1956.

When I met her, those hal­cy­on days were gone. Her case, by then the longest run­ning lit­i­ga­tion in Ger­man judi­cial his­to­ry, remained unde­cid­ed. Push­ing sev­en­ty and out of mon­ey, she was stay­ing with a sup­port­er in Char­lottesville when Man­a­han stepped in, paid her liv­ing expens­es, and mar­ried her to pre­vent her deportation.

She moved in with him in the win­ter of 1968, and for the next eigh­teen months, I and my room­mates watched her bizarre and unsta­ble behav­ior in amaze­ment, while Man­a­han seemed to fol­low her down the rab­bit hole. They were con­vinced KGB agents were out to kill them. Anas­ta­sia refused to eat any­thing oth­er than pota­toes on some the­o­ry that the KGB couldn’t poi­son spuds. She wouldn’t let Man­a­han turn on the heat for fear the KGB would pump poi­so­nous gas through the air ducts. When one of my room­mates deliv­ered the rent check, she met him at the door, emit­ted a blood-cur­dling scream, and faint­ed on the floor, claim­ing he was the spit­ting image of Grig­ori Rasputin, the Romanov’s holy man, who died forty years earlier.

By the time we grad­u­at­ed and moved out, I wasn’t sure they should be run­ning around free, but things only got worse after we left. The Ger­man court final­ly hand­ed down a rul­ing in Anastasia’s case. Forty years of lit­i­ga­tion end­ed in a draw. The court found insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to estab­lish or refute her claims.

That seemed to be a tip­ping point for them. Over the next decade they dumped garbage off the back stoop, took in six­ty stray cats, and let the front yard grow into a jun­gle of bri­ars and brush. Neigh­bors filed com­plaints, but they some­how man­aged to fend them off and stay in the house until 1983 when a neigh­bor found them in Manahan’s liv­ing room suf­fer­ing from Rocky Moun­tain Spot­ted Fever.

A judge ruled that Man­a­han wasn’t fit to take care of Anas­ta­sia and com­mit­ted her to a psy­chi­atric ward. Man­a­han prompt­ly smug­gled her out. A thir­teen state man-hunt ensued. Police found them in a field in Amherst, fifty miles south of Char­lottesville, liv­ing in Manahan’s car. Anas­ta­sia died two months lat­er in 1984, and Man­a­han sol­diered on alone until his death in 1990. For an inter­est­ing arti­cle about them, see Jack & Anna, Remem­ber­ing the Czar of Char­lottesville Eccentrics at http://www.readthehook.com/86004/cover-jack-amp-anna-remembering-czar-charlottesville-eccentrics.

Not long after Manahan’s death, evi­dence sur­faced that seemed to ver­i­fy her sto­ry. The Rus­sians found a mass grave, con­tain­ing the bones of the tsar’s fam­i­ly. Mys­te­ri­ous­ly, the remains of his son and one of his daugh­ters were miss­ing. Anna Anderson’s sup­port­ers exult­ed, pre­sum­ing that the miss­ing daugh­ter proved her claim.

The tri­umph was short-lived. DNA analy­sis came along in 1994 and proved she was Franziska Schan­skows­ka, a men­tal­ly ill Pol­ish fac­to­ry work­er, who dis­ap­peared in 1920, about the same time Madame Unknown jumped off the bridge in Berlin. And the grave with the miss­ing corpses? In 2007 a sec­ond grave coughed up bones with DNA that matched the tsar’s miss­ing son and daughter.

Reflect­ing back on those days in Char­lottesville, I find the truth more incred­i­ble than the fraud. Franziska Schan­skows­ka lived into her eight­ies. For six­ty years, from the bridge in Berlin to her deathbed, her admir­ers housed, fed, clothed, and bankrolled her. She nev­er had a job, nev­er earned a pen­ny. This unschooled impos­tor deceived inter­na­tion­al sophis­ti­cates and fought the Romanov fam­i­ly to a draw in the courts for a half century.

Remem­ber­ing the gnomish woman who sat across from me in Manahan’s liv­ing room and told me her sto­ry, I under­stand how she fooled so many. Her charm­ing fairy tale was much more appeal­ing than the harsh truth. I want­ed to believe it, and I can attest that she clear­ly seemed to believe it, too. I won­der if the men­tal­ly ill Madame Unknown lost her real iden­ti­ty in her web of lies some­where along the line, like an actress lost inside the fic­tion­al per­son she played.

What­ev­er she thought, I’m glad Man­a­han nev­er learned the truth. An avid geneal­o­gist, he val­ued blood­line above all else and remind­ed me every chance he got that he was the son-in-law of the Tsar of Rus­sia. Despite his crazi­ness, I liked him and I’m glad he nev­er knew that his Russ­ian princess was real­ly a Pol­ish peas­ant, for it sure­ly would have bro­ken his heart.