John D. Voelker and Anatomy of a Murder: Law, Doubt, and Justice in Michigan

In 1952, a saloon killing in a small Upper Peninsula town became one of the most important—and controversial—criminal trials in Michigan history.

The lawyer who defended the accused was John D. Voelker: former county prosecutor, defense attorney, future Michigan Supreme Court justice, and a gifted writer who would later publish the landmark legal novel Anatomy of a Murder under the pen name Robert Traver.

In this episode of Flint Justice, Arthur Busch examines:

• the real Big Bay homicide that inspired the book,
• how Voelker transformed a trial transcript into one of the most realistic courtroom novels ever written, and
• what Anatomy of a Murder still teaches us about prosecutors, defense lawyers, juries, and reasonable doubt.

This is not a story about tidy verdicts or cinematic courtroom speeches.
 It’s about ambiguity, discretion, community judgment, and the uncomfortable truth that justice is often shaped by what can be proven—not what actually happened.

For lawyers, judges, and communities like Flint and Genesee County, Anatomy of a Murder remains a mirror held up to the justice system itself.

Photography by Jim Hansen, LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress

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Transcript

The Mitten Channel: 0:00

You're listening to the Mitten Channel, Michigan Stories, Michigan Voices.

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Hi, I'm Arthur Bush. Thank you for joining us. I'm a lawyer with nearly 40 years of trial experience, both as a prosecutor and a defense attorney, just like our subject today, John D. Volcker. I first heard about Volcker not from law school textbooks, but from my classmates, twins, named Peter and Paul Strom from Escanaba, Michigan. Their father was a lawyer and a lifelong friend of Mr. Volcker's. In fact, Mr. Volcker was their godfather. The Strom brothers would tell us stories about their dad's fishing trips with Volcker, how this UP prosecutor and judge had become something rare, a lawyer who is also a serious writer and a devoted trout fisherman. I was fascinated. Here was somebody who refused to choose between law and the Michigan outdoors. He did both deeply. That struck me. Today on Flint Justice, I want to tell you about a man and why his most famous book, Anatomy of a Murder, Still Matters for how we think about justice. Most courtroom stories are about the verdict, guilty or not guilty, justice served or justice denied. But every working lawyer knows the truth, and that is rarely that clean. Trials are built out of half known facts, strategic choices, bargaining, and human beings under pressure. In the late 1950s, a small town Michigan lawyer took one real homicide case from the Upper Peninsula and turned it into one of the most realistic and unsettling legal novels ever written Anatomy of a Murder. That lawyer was John D. Volcker, writing under the pen name Robert Traver. He had been a county prosecutor, a defense attorney, and eventually a justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. And he understood better than most that a trial isn't really about what happened. It's about what you can prove and what a jury is willing to believe. Today, on Flint Justice, I want to walk through three pieces of this story. The real case, the book, and the man behind it. And then ask, what does it still say to prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges in communities like Flint and Genesee County? Our Minton Channel reporter Ellis Vance will continue by laying out the facts of the homicide. Alice.

The Mitten Channel: 3:06

Thank you, Arthur. Let's start in Big Bay, Michigan in 1952. This is a tiny community northwest of Marquette, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everyone's business. On a July night, Army Lieutenant Coleman Peterson walked into the Lumberjack Tavern and shot the bar owner, Maurice Chennewith. The story, as Peterson and his wife told it, was that earlier that evening, Chennewith had sexually assaulted Peterson's wife, Charlotte, after she had been drinking at the bar. Peterson didn't deny the shooting. The question wasn't, did he pull the trigger? The question was, what was in his mind when he did it? Volcker, who by then was no longer the county prosecutor but a local defense lawyer, took the case. He raised a rarely used defense at the time, temporary insanity, sometimes framed as an quote, irresistible impulse. The theory was that Peterson's emotional shock and rage over his wife's alleged assault overwhelmed his ability to control his actions. Legally, that's a narrow path. You're not saying he's permanently insane, only that in that moment he couldn't conform his conduct to the law. The trial drew intense local interest. Small upper peninsula town, saloon killing, sex, drinking, a uniformed soldier, every element that will later make anatomy of a murder so compelling is already here. In the end, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Peterson was committed briefly for evaluation, then released. Chenowith, of course, was dead. And the town kept arguing about what had really happened long after the courtroom went quiet. For Volcker, this case did not end with the verdict. He had trial notes, transcripts, and his own reflections, as a lawyer who had just walked a jury down a very narrow legal path. Those materials became the raw clay for the novel he would write a few years later. Mitten reporter Sarah James reports more about the man whose incredible life we share, John D. Volcker.

SPEAKER_01: 4:51

Thank you, Ellis. In 1958, under the name Robert Traver, Volcker published Anatomy of a Murder. On the surface, it's a straight-ahead legal thriller. A small-town defense lawyer, Paul Biegler, defends an army lieutenant accused of murdering a bar owner who may have raped the defendant's wife. If you know the Big Bay case, the parallels are obvious. But Anatomy of a Murder isn't just a novelization of the transcript. Volcker does several things that, for lawyers, feel immediately honest. First, he writes from the lawyer's point of view, not the detective, not the prosecutor, not the omniscient narrator. We sit with Beagler as he worries about jury selection, frets over whether his client is telling him the whole truth, and thinks strategically about what the judge will allow in and what will be kept out. Second, the book is obsessed with process. We get voix d'ir, evidentiary arguments, sidebar conferences, all the gritty texture that most courtroom dramas skip over because it's boring. Volcker trusts readers enough to say, this is what trial work really feels like. It's not all Perry Mason moments. Third, and maybe most importantly, the book refuses to resolve moral ambiguity for us. We never get a clear, authoritative answer about whether the wife is telling the full truth, or whether the defendant is manipulating the insanity defense, or whether justice is actually served. The jury delivers a verdict, but you, the reader, are left to decide what you think actually happened. That ambiguity is part of why lawyers still respect the book. It understands that a courtroom is not a lie detector. It's a human institution, constrained by rules of evidence, personality, and power. The novel became a bestseller, and in 1959, director Otto Preminger adapted it into a film starring James Stewart as the defense attorney, with location shooting in Marquette County, and even a cameo from Volcker himself. For many people, the movie is their first, and sometimes only, exposure to the idea that a criminal trial might be both fair and deeply uncertain at the same time. Ellis Vance will now share with us the man behind all of this.

The Mitten Channel: 6:49

Ellis. Yes, John Donaldson Volcker was born in 1903 in Ishpemming, an iron mining town in Marquette County. He grew up the son of Bavarian immigrants in a working-class Catholic home. The UP, its mines, saloons, woods, and streams, shaped his worldview. After local schooling and a stint at Northern State Normal School, he went to the University of Michigan Law School, then returned to the UP to practice law. In 1934, running as a Democrat in a heavily Republican county, he was elected Marquette County Prosecutor, the first Democrat in that office since the Civil War. As prosecutor, Volcker served for about 14 years, from 1935 to 1950, winning seven consecutive elections. He reportedly lost only one felony case in his last decade. He later joked that in a small town, there are only two reasons a prosecutor eventually loses. Either you've prosecuted too many voters or too many of their relatives. Even while handling that job, he wrote constantly. He adopted the pen name Robert Traver, using his mother's maiden name, so the public wouldn't think he was treating prosecution as a side gig. Early books like Troubleshooter, Danny and the Boys, and Small Town DA drew directly from Upper Peninsula Life and Law. The success of Anatomy of a Murder changed everything. The book's popularity and the film's critical acclaim suddenly made this UP lawyer a national figure. Around the same time, Governor G. Menon Williams appointed him to the Michigan Supreme Court, honoring a tradition that the Upper Peninsula should have a seat on the state's highest bench, Volcker served from 1957 to 1960, writing more than 100 opinions and bringing his small-town sensibility to big legal questions. And then he did something almost no one does. He walked away. He resigned from the Supreme Court to go back to Ishpemming to write and to fish. Because at his core, Volcker was also a passionate trout fisherman. Under the Traver name, he wrote classics of fishing literature, Trout Madness, Trout Magic, Anatomy of a Fisherman, Celebrating Solitude, Wild Water, and the Culture of the UP Volcker, wrote all of his books laboriously in longhand, most of them on yellow legal pads with a green felt pen. He did most of his writing during the winter months when thick ice covered his favorite fishing spots. Volcker's numerous articles on the joys of fly fishing and his books, Anatomy of a Fisherman, Trout Madness and Trout Magic, attest to his love of the outdoors. He wrote in Trout Madness, I fish because I love to, because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness. And not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant and not nearly so much fun. He died in 1991 at age 87, still very much a son of Marquette County. To sum it all up, Arthur Bush will share his thoughts about what Anatomy of a Murder says about law and justice, Arthur.

SPEAKER_00: 9:41

Thank you, Ellis. So what does all this say about law and justice? Especially for communities like Flint and Genesee County. One lesson is about role morality. Volker had been a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. In anatomy, he's unsentimental about both roles. The prosecutor is not a caricature villain. The defense lawyer is not a pure hero, each doing a job inside a contested system with imperfect information and their own ambitions. That's a useful corrective to the way we often talk about prosecutors today, as either saviors or monsters. Volcker reminds us the real question is, how does each actor use the discretion and power they have? Another lesson is about community narratives. The Big Bay case and the fictional version in Anatomy shows how quickly a town picks sides and builds stories around a crime. Who is respectable, whose word counts, whose pain is recognized. Flint and Genesee County know that dynamic all too well. Whether it's a police shooting, a high profile homicide, or the water crisis, the official record is only one version of events. Community memory and rumor are another. The courtroom sits in the middle, trying to turn messy human life into admissible evidence. Finally, Anatomy of a Murder is a meditation on reasonable doubt. The book forces us to sit with doubt about motives, about truth telling, and whether the law is capable of fully addressing harm. The discomfort is something every trial lawyer and every juror has to live with. For prosecutors in particular, especially those working in counties like Genesee, it's a reminder that a winning a case is not the same thing as achieving justice. And for defenders, it's a reminder of how fragile the protections really are, and how much depends on skill, resources, and sheer human chemistry in the courtroom. To sum it up, in 1952, saloon killing in a tiny upper peninsula town becomes a test case for the insanity defense. A local lawyer, John D. Volker, turns that experience into Anatomy of a Murder, a novel that refuses to give us easy answers about the truth and justice. That success lifted him onto the Michigan Supreme Court, but he ultimately chooses to return home, to write and to fish, rather than spend his life in robes. For lawyers, judges, and community members in Flint and across Michigan, anatomy of a murder is more than a period piece. It's a reminder of how much our justice system depends on fallible human beings doing their best, or sometimes not doing their best, within a structure that can never fully capture the complexities of real life. If you haven't read the book, it's worth going back to the source. Especially if your only exposure is the film. And if you work in or around the justice system, it's worth asking yourself case by case, what would the anatomy of this decision look like if somebody wrote it down? This has been Arthur Bush for Flint Justice. Thank you for joining us. If you like this episode and would like to hear more of them, please follow us. We'd appreciate your help. For now, thanks for listening.