Books: An American Tragedy

THE YALE MURDER by Peter Meyer Empire Books; 302 pages; $12.95 THE KILLING OF BONNIE GARLAND: A QUESTION OF JUSTICE by Willard Gaylin Simon & Schuster; 366 pages; $16.50

It is a cliché of crime reporting that the murderer is described as polite, gentle and law-abiding. Richard Herrin, a courteous, religious chicano who had made it through Yale, certainly fit the nice-guy stereotype—at least until July 7, 1977. That morning, at the Scarsdale, N.Y., home of his girlfriend, Bonnie Garland, 20, Herrin, 23, smashed Bonnie’s skull with a hammer as she slept. A few hours later, half-naked and covered in her blood, he surrendered to police in upstate New York, confessing that he had killed her.

It seemed, in another crime writer’s bromide, to be an open-and-shut case. Yet only 35 days later Herrin was out on bail, living in a community of Christian Brothers and attending class at a nearby university. In June 1978 he was finally convicted, not of murder but of first-degree manslaughter. He has now served almost half of a prison sentence of eight years, four months. In the words of Bonnie’s father, Attorney Paul Garland, “Richard Herrin has successfully got away with murder.”

As Authors Peter Meyer and Willard Gaylin make abundantly clear in their equally compelling accounts of the case, what actually happened that morning in Bonnie’s bedroom was to have less bearing on subsequent events than what had gone before. Bonnie, an affectionate, vivacious woman with a mane of red hair and a fine soprano voice, came from a well-to-do suburban family. Richard, an illegitimate child, was a product of the Los Angeles barrio. The lovers met at Yale, of which Bonnie’s father was a prominent alumnus; she was a freshman and Richard was a senior. Despite the differences in their interests and background, and opposition from her parents, the romance lasted 2½years before Bonnie wanted out.

Except for Bonnie, Herrin had no close friends at Yale. His academic record was dismal. Yet former classmates, faculty members and, particularly, the university’s Roman Catholic community rallied immediately to his side with a $30,000 defense fund and all the influence they could bring to bear. New Yorker Jack : Litman, a stellar attorney, was hired to ‘ provide a defense. His case ultimately de| pended on Psychiatrist John Train, another brilliant performer on the criminal circuit, who argued that Herrin was suffering from both severe mental disease that impaired his ability to realize what le was doing. (Herrin testified repeatedly that he “wasn’t feeling anything” when lie set out to kill his lover.) Thus, Gaylin points out, Litman was actually arguing two incompatible cases: “Not guilty by reason of insanity; or if guilty, only of manslaughter. “

The prosecutor, with his moralistic oratory and his psychiatrist, who essentially agreed with the defense case, was no match for Litman. “In the end,” a juror summed up, “it came down to whether . . . you went with your instincts or your heart.” Bonnie’s mother Joan had a different interpretation: “If you have a $30,000 defense fund, a Yale connection and a clergy connection, you’re entitled to one free hammer murder.”

Both books show the results of exhaustive research, including lengthy interviews with Herrin. Meyer, a freelance journalist, re-creates the case with admirable detachment. Gaylin, a distinguished psychiatrist and author (Feelings; Partial Justice) — and an admitted “father of daughters” — has specialized in questions of crime and punishment for more than 20 years. He delivers some pungent comments on the psychiatric “storytellers” on both sides, who “were acting as dutiful agents of the men who were paying their fees.”

Despite all that the Catholic Church did for him, Herrin is now an atheist who has “retired from religion.” Interviewed by Meyer after he had spent three years in a medium-security prison, he insists: “I think I’ve served enough time to compensate.” Others would side with the prosecution, among them Gaylin. Arguing against canny insanity pleas, and for moral responsibility, he concludes: “The killing of Bonnie Garland, first by Richard Herrin and then again by a legal and cultural process . . . endangers us all. In our compassion for the criminal, we must remain vigilant in defense of the social for the sake of those innocents living and yet extreme unborn.” — By Michael Demarest