Silent Witness

Whether you like courtroom drama, biographies, or the inside stories behind the news, it's all here in Silent Witness. Verna Sadock, courtroom sketch artist for NBC-TV, met notables from President Eisenhower to Oprah Winfrey, got a story from the Vatican while on vacation in Italy, and against all odds, made it into the Michael Jackson trial to sketch the proceedings. A truly remarkable and facinating woman! The landmark cases she covered from 1969 to 2012 exposed and shaped our culture included: the Chicago 7, Vietnam's My Lai Massacre, the trials of four Illinois govenors, the Michael Jackson trial, and the murder trials of John Wayne Gacy, Drew Peterson, and several organized crime figures. Legal buffs will love the behind-the-scenes stories she shares. Verna's sketches were seen on national television on the NBC evening news, in the newspapers across the country such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Sun Times. Silent Witness by Liz Samuel Richards gives an excellent picture of the woman behind the sketches. To understand her is to understand the country, both then and now, with its successes, and its disappointments. A single mother of two growing boys, she faced many of the same challenges women struggle with today, only she faced them as a pioneer. Verna Sadock was also a respected landscape, still life, and portrait painter, with works hanging in museums and personal collections worldwide. Loving children, she found real pleasure in bringing art to the children of Chicago's housing projects and seeing them smile as their drawings took shape under her enthusiastic and encouraging instruction --Back cover.