No spark of malice

the long version

"No Spark of Malice is the tale of the impact Martin Begnaud's murder and the ensuing trial had on his large and prominent family, on the Acadians - or "Cajuns" - of southwest Louisiana, and on the village of Scott Station at the end of the nineteenth century."--BOOK JACKET. "On April 22, 1896, the forty-five-year-old Begnaud was brutally murdered in his general store in rural Scott Station, Louisiana. He was bound, gagged, blindfolded, stabbed more than fifty times, and robbed of several thousand dollars."--BOOK JACKET. "Two men were soon arrested for the killing. But the evidence against them was purely circumstantial, and as the suspects insisted on their innocence through months of harsh treatment, some observers began to believe the true murderers were still at large. Ten months after Begnaud's death, the initial widespread shock and hysteria reemerged when the teenage Blanc brothers, Ernest and Alexis, were arrested for the crime. Polite, educated, and popular, the Blancs were orphans from France who had worked on a local plantation."--BOOK JACKET. "The aftermath of the murder of Martin Begnaud resulted in one of the most electrifying trials in the history of the American South. By intertwining a suspenseful account of a murder and its repercussions wth a thorough analysis of the history of the citizens the crime most affected, No Spark of Malice provides insight into a fascinating yet overlooked people, place, and era."--BOOK JACKET.