48 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamThe Innocent Man
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The Innocent Man opens with a description of the town of Ada, Oklahoma, population 16,000. Ada is "a friendly place, filled with people who speak to strangers and always to each other and are anxious to help anyone in need" (2). The close-knit community is more interested in church activities, local politics and high school football than national events.
After setting the scene, Grisham chronicles what is known about the events that took place on the night of December 7th, 1982—the night twenty-one-year-old Debbie Carter, a cocktail waitress at the Coachlight nightclub, was murdered. Through witnesses' accounts, we learn that Debbie had been socializing with friends, including Glen Gore, with whom she had gone to high school. Debbie is seen dancing briefly with Glen, then arguing with him, and later talking to him in the parking lot. After the bar closes, Debbie goes home, but at 2:30 a.m. she calls her friend Gina and asks her if she would come pick her up, because a visitor, whose name she does not give, is making her uncomfortable. A few minutes later, Debbie calls again and tellsGina not to come, that things are fine after all. The next morning, another friend stops by Debbie's place for a visit, and finds the apartment in disarray. Upon exploration, Debbie's body is discovered on the bedroom floor, naked and bloody.
The chapter goes on to detail the initial stage of investigation and evidence-gathering by Detective Dennis Smith, of the Ada Police, and Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) Agent Gary Rogers, two friends who had worked together on many cases before. They secure the crime scene and carefully preserve fingerprints, hairs, and other pieces of evidence, noting that the killer left several threatening messages written around the apartment in nail polish and ketchup. They then begin interviewing witnesses and identifying potential suspects. A large number of townspeople assist with the investigation, providing information, hair samples, fingerprints, and speculations. A notable exception is Glen Gore, who does not provide samples, and is interviewed only very briefly by the police. (Much later, Gore would change his story and claim that Debbie had been harassed at the bar by Ron Williamson on the night of her death.)
In the aftermath of the murder, gossip is rampant. The victim and her family are well known, with many friends in town, and the citizens of Ada are eager for the killer to be found, but the case moves slowly. Hair samples and fingerprints are sent away for analysis, but "[l]ike most crime labs, Oklahoma's was underfunded, understaffed, and under enormous pressure to solve crimes" (11). After almost a year with no solid leads, the investigators begin taking note of jailhouse chatter. Gary Rogers interviews Robert Deatherage, who had spent time in the county jail for a DUI. Deatherage recalls how his cellmate Ron Williamson had become upset when the topic of Debbie's murder came up, and suggests the police concentrate on Williamson as a suspect.
Chapter 1 Analysis
The first chapter of The Innocent Man sets the context and establishes the book's terse journalistic style. The chapter opens with a description of the setting, small-town Ada, Oklahoma, as a folksy and generally-likeable Bible Belt community. Within the first few pages, Grisham zeroes in on Debbie Carter and the night of her murder, the event that drives all of the book's subsequent action. The tone of Grisham's account of that night is reminiscentof an official report, or a newspaper article: just the facts. There is almost no dialogue, though there is an occasional editorial aside; for example, Grisham writes, "It was inevitable that the police would find their way to Ron Williamson; indeed, it was odd that it took them three months to question him" (11).
The crime scene is described in detail, and Grisham introduces many pieces of evidence in this chapter that will become important as the investigation progresses: hairs taken from the apartment, a bloody print on the wall, an itemization of injuries done to the body. The methods of rape and murder are described explicitly, but without sensationalism. Police officers and family members interact and react, but we see only their outward behaviors, and none of their inner thoughts. Heightening the resemblance to an official document, Grisham includes excerpts from actual police reports, such as the text of the initial statement given by Glen Gore.
Although stylistically suggesting reportage, the book does not give a completely neutral review of the facts. The narrative voice, from the beginning, plants seeds of doubt that undermine the official version of events that it describes. The reader is led to distrust Glen Gore, for example, from the first chapter, where Grisham writes, "Oddly enough, in the midst of all the fingerprinting and hair clipping on December 8, Gore fell through the cracks. He either slipped away, or was conveniently ignored, or was simply neglected. Whatever the reason, he was not fingerprinted, nor did he give saliva and hair samples" (8). Though Grisham rarely comes out and states his opinion, it's clear from passages like this one that the narrator thinks there's something fishy about Glen Gore.
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