I was in my thirties when I discovered there was a murderess in my family; a well-hidden secret for so many years. What would drive my great-aunt to commit the ultimate crime, to take a life, a soul of another?

In 1921, Lillian S. Raizen killed the family physician, Abraham Glickstein. She was indicted by a Grand Jury on December 14, 1921, arraigned the same day, and tried on February 17, 1923. Her lawyers entered a plea of insanity, but the all-male jury convicted her of second-degree murder, issuing a sentence of twenty years to life. After studying this case for decades, interviewing primary sources, and examining the implications of the law where it pertains to a plea of insanity, Gerri L. Schaffer decided to write her great-aunt’s story as a retrial, explaining the motives and events leading up to the killing from Lillian’s own point of view.

Gerri L. Schaffer is a retired educator with an M.S. in Reading. As editor and advisor of school publications, she has honed her expertise in grammar and the components of good story writing.

The Retrial of Lillian S. Raizen is her first novel.