Winters' Time: A Secret Pledge, a Severed Head, and the Murder That Brought America's Most Famous Lawyer to Vermont

By: Jeffrey L. Amestoy

Published by Vermont Historical Society, 2025-09-16

In November 1926, Cecelia Gullivan, treasurer of the Cone Automatic Machine company of Windsor, Vermont, was brutally killed in her home. Local police quickly arrested Cone Automatic machinist John Winters on suspicion of the crime, and the trial that followed was sensational and swift. Convicted of murder, Winters’ appeal brought in an unexpected ally: America’s most famous defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, who took the case after Winters’ family called in a favor promised decades before.