“Scoundrel” is a powerfully written, thoroughly researched true story of how Edgar Smith, while on New Jersey’s death row for the murder of 15-year-old Victoria Zielinski, won his freedom — even though he was guilty. Smith used a baseball bat and large rocks to kill his victim.

Smith would become a popular fiction and non-fiction book writer, a go-to-guy on all things prison-related, a media figure who appeared in TV talk shows and newspaper profiles, and a symbol of innocent people wrongly convicted.

That all lasted until Oct. 1, 1976, when Smith, lying in wait in a supermarket parking lot, dragged 33-year-old Lisa Ozbun into his car and, while driving with one hand, attempted to fatally stab Ozbun with his other hand. Ozbun survived because she fought back, kicked a hole in the windshield, managed to pull the car over, and alerted a nearby motorist.

For this crime, Smith would spend the remaining 40 years of his life in California prisons. He died in poor health in 2017 at age 83.

William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review and a leader of the conservative movement in America, was deceived by Smith into believing that Smith supported the conservative movement and that he was a law-abiding, non-violent person. Smith was an articulate writer. How could such a person have really committed the brutal crime for which Smith was convicted? So, Buckley championed Smith’s cause, fundraising for legal fees, hiring attorneys, and writing columns that depicted Smith as a miscarriage of justice victim.

Sophie Wilkins, an editor at........

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