Sunday Synopsis - The Good Wife by Clint Richmond (Texas True Crime)

 

The Good Wife: The Shocking Betrayal and Brutal Murder of a Godly Woman in Texas by Clint Richmond
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book. I chose it because it is set in Austin, the capitol of my home state, and having a daughter in Austin, we travel there frequently. I enjoy reading books whose settings are familiar. Add that this is a true crime, and it seemed like the perfect book for me. It wasn't as good as I hoped, but I did like it.

Roger and Penny Scaggs were the picture of what a Christian marriage should look like. Roger worked in two very successful tech businesses, while Penny stayed home to keep house, take care of their adopted daughter until she went off to college, and to give her seminars on how to be a godly wife. The pair traveled on business and vacation. He was the mild-mannered church elder, and she the adoring wife and mentor to younger women on how to be a Biblical wife. Although they had been married for 35 years, Roger was having an affair with a young woman from work, maybe not getting the sex life at home he once had for about a year.

Then one day Penny was brutally murdered, hit on the head with a heavy object multiple times and stabbed with a carving knife many times. Her husband found the body. He is almost immediately a suspect, as per usual. The woman with whom he had the affair closed her bank accounts, quit her job, and disappeared for several years.

**Little Spoiler** He is convicted, but I still have reasonable doubt. It is difficult to reconcile the two identities the prosecutors would have us believe... that this calm, intelligent, unflappable man could kill his wife so savagely and full of rage.

The book only had 377 pages, and a few of those were photos, but it seemed to drag on. The courtroom scenes were very tedious and monotonous and written in far too much detail. Far too long was also spent on some of the background of the people involved including the attorneys, the neighbors, and so on. It doesn't matter if one of the lawyers once represented Willie Nelson, and in this case, it added nothing to the story to mention it. That's one thing I didn't like about this author's writing. He would go off on a tangent when describing someone or something and ended up being repetitive as a result.

If you like true crime, it's an interesting case. I'm going to see if I can find updates to see if his mistress was questioned when she returned to Austin. Maybe she could help get to the truth, or maybe she did it! A lot of evidence pointed to Roger, but some evidence pointed to an unknown intruder. Roger passed away in June of this year (2022), so unless he made a dieing declaration, we will never know.

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