Book Report: Death Benefit

15. David Heilbroner, Death Benefit: A Lawyer Uncovers a Twenty-Year Pattern of Seduction, Arson, and Murder (1993) (8/7/24)

I was happily engrossed in Lonesome Dove—a quarter of the way in—when a FB friend, John, asked whether, if I wasn't going to read a book he had lent me, I could send it back to him. So, feeling a tad guilty for having hung on to it so long, I took a break from the dusty mesquite plains of Texas (the boys—and Lorena—were just about to leave on their cattle drive north to Montana... which happens to be where John lives, but that's just happy coincidence) and immersed myself in murder and mayhem in Kentucky and California.

I know John from Monterey County Search & Rescue, where I volunteered for a good dozen years, and he worked as a deputy sheriff a few decades ago. That is, we didn't meet on the team, but SAR folks are a family, no matter when our tenure. 

And it turns out, he was lead in the body recovery that kicks off this book. As such he was gifted with an "uncorrected proof" about the five-year story, which is what I read (resisting every impulse to pull out my pen and correct the darn thing: it's riddled with errors).

The story is mostly a legal procedural. It begins in 1987 when a corporate lawyer in Louisville, Steven Keeney, is approached by a woman at church with a question about life insurance: her daughter, Deana, had recently died in a fall from a cliff in Big Sur, California, and she was having trouble getting the proper paperwork from Monterey County to settle. He figured the issue was straightforward enough that he could help her with a little pro bono legal advice.

But as he looked into the matter, he began finding inconsistencies and weird coincidences. Starting with the fact that the couple Deana had been staying with in San Diego, and whom she accompanied on the drive up the central California coast, had helped her take out another insurance policy, with their son—and her supposed fiancé (even though she was married)—as the beneficiary. Not only that, but the policy was issued the day before they started their trip up Highway 1.

As Keeney investigates, he learns of mysterious fires (over the course of twenty years, six of the houses that Virginia McGinnis, Deana's host, had lived in had burned to the ground) and unexplained deaths (Virginia's three-year-old daughter, her second husband, her mother). In each case, insurance policies benefited Virginia. 

Did they push Deana off that cliff?

Keeney starts to build a case, and enlists the help of various investigators and lawyers both in Kentucky and in California. Finally, the case—of murder—is tried in San Diego, and the story becomes a courtroom drama. We remain in the heads of the prosecutors, the ones who are convinced of Virginia's guilt and hope to prove it, despite evidence that the defense, of course, paints as purely circumstantial. 

It's a pretty good book, though not the sort I generally read. But it had the allure of people I know in it, and local geography as well. In the end—I'll just spill the beans: you weren't planning on reading it, were you?—Virginia McGinnis was found guilty on all counts: murder in the first degree, conspiracy, insurance fraud, and forgery, as well as "special circumstances," murder for financial gain. Way to go, jurors! She was sentenced in 1992 to life without parole and spent almost 20 years in prison before her death at age 74. 

And yes, it was made into a TV movie in 1994, starting Peter Horton as Keeney and Carrie Snodgress as Virginia. 5.9/10 on IMDb. I will not be watching it. I know what happened.

And now I can pack the book up to send back to John, and return to the dusty plains.