Relentless: The Unraveled Mind of Isabella Martin, Queen of Grudges - Hardcover

In 1908, a hay barn in Weaverville Ca. is seen to be burning down in the cold January snow. When 16-year old John Martin was arrested on suspicion of arson, it seemed like an open and shut case of juvenile malfeasance. And when the client's mother arrived to represent him in court, she would walk into a courtroom overrun with curious eyes and ears.

Why was this? Because the defendant's mother had spent the previous sixteen years building her own dossier of bad will with the community-a community that already witnessed the grand-jury exhumation of her husband's body to preclude arsenic poisoning, and a failed attempt to forge a will in her brother-in-law's probate case in San Francisco. Her penchant for threatening malevolence was a known quantity-and thus-there had to be more to the case than just the turpitude of a minor.

As "Baby John" Martin spent time with authorities, he began to confess to a host of crimes far exceeding that of rudimentary property damage-to include the dynamite bombing of a judge's family in Alameda County, and all at the behest of his mother.

What would unfold would nearly bankrupt the courts, the system, and even the procedural norms within all of it-as one woman's relentless crusade for revenge, restitution and remuneration would come in the form of threats, affidavits, theatrical outbursts and lies. And by 1910, her court transcripts were the largest in California history. Had she been more competent, she would have been a serial killer with a household name. Instead, she was sent to San Quentin for life with limited, regional infamy. But the chaos she brought in her wake was legendary.