Literature: (About) 100 Words on Rereading Widow's Web 10 Years Later

Gene Lyons
Widow’s Web
Ivy Books
1994

The most amazing thing to be drawn from reading Gene Lyon's account of the murders of Ron Orsini and Alice MacArthur in Pulaski County Arkansas in the early 1980s is that Arkansans still elected the psychotic prevaricator Sheriff Tommy Robinson to the US House of Representatives where he was to distinguish himself as the biggest perpetrator in the now infamous 1990 House Banking Scandal.

It is amazing today, 25 years after the fact, that a piece of Gravel Ridge white trash (Mary Lee Orsini) could have occupied so thoroughly the attention of Robinson, Arkansas Democrat Editor John Robert Star, and indeed the State of Arkansas for two years before being sent to prison with life without parole for the death of Alice MacArthur. Orsini died in 2003 but not before owning her part in the death of her husband. I encourage Gene Lyons to reissue his book with the rest of this seedy story.

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2006