A Child's Shoes...

This, obviously, is not a picture of the real shoes in question. This sketch is here simply to serve as a visual aid and to attract attention to my subject for the day: a child’s shoes and where they were on the night Margery Landry broke into the house of Elsa Newman’s estranged husband.


I’m trying, in the interest of complete truth, to dig deeply into this story of the Elsa Newman case. And today, in the process of my search, I learned something new and completely unexpected.


During Elsa Newman’s first trial on the “conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree” or whatever they called it, Katherine Winfree showed a series of slides. These slides, as I understand it, were intended to provide the jury with views of the bedroom where the then-husband of Elsa Newman was asleep with his youngest son at the time Margery Landry broke into the house. If my informants are correct, the child was nude; the father was nude from the waist down.


Oh…well…the father said the child had had difficulty sleeping and had come and crawled into Dad’s bed.


Not an uncommon occurrence, you say? I agree. Many a child crawls into a parent’s bed in the night, whether from difficulty sleeping or to find safety after a nightmare.


But why was the child naked?


Why was his father naked from the waist down?


And the thing I just learned today: the child’s shoes and socks were on the floor beside the bed. They were visible in one of the slides shown by prosecutor Katherine Winfree in Elsa Newman’s first trial. You remember…the slides I mentioned above? the ones of the crime scene.


So what this father is telling us is that his younger son was unable to sleep that night. Thus the boy got up from his bed…removed his pajamas…put on his shoes and socks…walked to his father’s room…removed those shoes and socks…and crawled into the bed where his father lay, only partly clothed.



The question: WHY were the shoes and socks beside the bed? I can see only one explanation. And I don't like it at all.