The Final Defenders

For the first time in her career, Cynthia Short let a folder of crime-scene photographs lie untouched on the corner of her desk, because she couldn’t bring herself to look at them.

Short had been a criminal-defense attorney in Kansas City, Missouri, for 12 years, and on the payroll of the Missouri State Public Defender’s Office for the past decade.

She had spent much of that time immersed in graphic records of the worst human conduct.

Even so, the case of Richard DeLong had shocked her.

DeLong, 34, was facing capital punishment for five counts of murder.

In January 1999, he had killed his ex-girlfriend Erin Vanderhoef—who was shortly due to deliver their child, a daughter they had named Hannah—as well as the three school-age children she’d had with two other men.

DeLong had entered their decaying clapboard house in Springfield, Missouri, on the morning of January 19 and strangled each member of the family using scarves and cords, hog-tying Erin and gagging two of the children.

When he was arrested several days later, he promptly confessed to each of the murders and immediately became the most hated man in Springfield.

Short wished she didn’t have to take the case, but it was her duty as a public defender.

When, after several weeks, she finally forced herself to look at the crime-scene photos, she saw that the bodies of the children were partly hidden by debris—clothes, a plastic lawn chair, an overturned lamp.

One of the boys, 10-year-old Chris, was still in bed; the other boy, 11-year-old Jimmy, had been left on the floor.

Vanderhoef herself lay on her side on a rug in the living room, her blue top riding up over her pregnant belly.

The youngest of the children, 8-year-old Darlene, was found in her sky-blue pajamas, tossed upside down onto a heap of garbage in the corner of her room, a jacket thrown over her face.

Short was then raising two young children of her own, and she wasn’t sure she would be able to hide her revulsion from a jury.