Joseph Knapp expected a sizable inheritance on the death of his great-uncle, eighty-two-year-old Captain Joseph White, but he hadn’t the patience to wait for the old man’s natural death. In 1830, he and his brother John hired a hitman to murder their benefactor. They might have gotten away with their scheme if they hadn’t been prosecuted by the great orator Daniel Webster, whose courtroom skill and persuasive argument set legal precedent and won their convictions.