Caryl Chessman was a small-fry criminal. But he became an international crime celebrity when he was condemned to die not for murder but for two sexual assaults committed during a Los Angeles crime ...

Joseph Rodota’s cogent new drama “Chessman” might just as easily be called “Brown,” though it would not evoke nearly as much curiosity. The case attracted worldwide attention at the time (the crimes ...

A medieval chess piece from the famed Lewis Chessman trove, the most revered collection of chess pieces in the world, first discovered on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides in 1831, is ...

In 1956 the author of Chessman and His Nine Lives on Death Row, Terrence W. Cooney, was appointed by the California Supreme Court to argue the death penalty of Caryl Chessman who pleaded guilty to two ...

RICHARD DRINNON is assistant professor of history at the University of California, and was recently Bruern Fellow in American Civilisation at the University of Leeds. His biography of the American ...

It’s a million-dollar find — right in their own home. One family’s discovery of a lost Lewis Chessman found in a drawer could fetch up to $1.2 million at auction. The game piece was bought for GBP5, ...

One reason Californians will be voting, again, about the death penalty, next month, is because of a man named Caryl Chessman. He was called the “Red Light Bandit,” and he was executed in 1960 for ...

A newly discovered medieval chess piece attributed to the Lewis Chessmen trove, which had been tucked away in a drawer for years after being purchased for just £5 (about $6) in 1964, sold for £735,000 ...

When an antiques dealer in Scotland bought an ivory chessman for £5 ($6) in 1964, he probably had no inkling that he had taken possession of one of the most famous chess pieces in the world. Stored in ...

Buck Busfield is pondering the finer points of one of the most important phone calls in California political history. It was Feb. 18, 1960, the eve of the long-delayed execution of Caryl Chessman. A ...