Almost Famous

One steamy June night in 1925, a woman shot an insurance exec to death. After ten women were arrested and, ultimately, released, a late-night tip led police to Norma West. Although she didn't look like the shooter, the exec's widow swore Norma was the murderer—just as she had sworn all ten of the other women were her husband's killer. Police charged her with the crime after her jailor noticed her five o'clock shadow. The DA banked on the jury convicting a "third-sexer," whether guilty or not. Missing her gig as a local cabaret chanteuse, Norma acted outrageously, flirting and camping it up with the reporters who stampeded her cell hoping for a scoop. One, Paul Sammy, a straight tabloid hack, decided to write her biography full of lies and half truths, hoping its popularity would give him a leg up at his paper. Drop-dead gorgeous Victor Winchester, who was tired of defending prostitutes for mafia-supported pimps, offered to defend her for the free publicity her clowning—and notoriety—provoked. Norma became a cause célèbre among Chicago's fairies, flappers, and sheiks; her trial a circus trigged by her antics; and her fate as much a product of Sammy's fantastical biography as Victor Winchester's legal hocus-pocus.