Anatomy of a Murder (Traver)

Author Bio
• Real Name—John D. Voelker
• Birth—June 19, 1903
• Where—Ishpeming, Michigan, USA
• Death—March 19, 1991
• Education—University of Michigan Law School
• Occupation—lawyer, prosecutor, justice of Michigan
   Supreme Court


Robert Traver is the pen name for John D. Voelker (1903–1991), an attorney, county prosecutor, judge, and author. Voelker based his most famous work, Anatomy of a Murder, on a homicide and trial that originated in Big Bay, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the early morning of July 31, 1952. He was the defense attorney for Coleman A. Peterson, a Lieutenant in the Army, who was charged with murdering Maurice Chenoweth. The alleged motive behind this murder was that Chenoweth raped Peterson's wife the prior evening after she accepted a ride from him. Voelker successfully defended Peterson who was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Voelker was born in Ishpeming, Michigan and spent most of his life there. He graduated from the University of Michigan law school in 1928 and practiced law for a time in Chicago, Illinois before tiring of city life and returning to Ishpeming to enter private practice. Later, he was elected to the office of Marquette County prosecutor. In 1957, he was appointed the 74th justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, and was subsequently re-elected to that position. Voelker retired from the court in 1959 in order to write full-time after the success of his novel Anatomy of a Murder and to fish at his beloved Frenchman's Pond.

Under the pen name Robert Traver, Voelker published a number of novels and short stories with legal themes, all with the small-town Upper Peninsula setting he was most familiar with. He chose to write under a different pen name in order to assure others that his agenda as a writer and a prosecutor were completely separate. He also published three books on fishing which are regarded as classics of the genre. (From Wikipedia.)