The above photo from the University of Southern California archive of Los Angeles Examiner crime photos shows an L.A. homemaker named Karen Jacobsen in the midst of a pre-trial conference with public defendant Victor S. Baker today in 1961. Jacobsen needed a lawyer for the most important of reasons—to beat a murder charge. She had stabbed her husband Lawrence to death while they were in his car. She said it happened after a terrorizing ride, and claimed it was in self defense of both herself and her two daughters. She was arrested but freed on bail, and this conference occurred during her pre-trial release period.
When she was tried later in the year a jury acquitted her, but we knew that before even reading about the trial, and you wanna know how? That’s her mother-in-law Edith sitting next to her in the photo below, offering emotional support. Her attorney: “Your honor, I’d like to enter into evidence defense exhibit A, the deceased’s mom, who’s obviously fine with his death, so, like… defense rests.” If your own mom isn’t in your corner when your killer is on trial, forget it. Probably Lawrence never visited her, so she’d been thinking of him for years as dead already.
