When Women Kill by Alia Trabucco Zerán

Author:Alia Trabucco Zerán
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coffee House Press

During her incarceration at El Buen Pastor Correctional Facility, María Carolina Geel throws herself into what she knew best: writing. She writes and writes until she completes the book manuscript that she titles, without the faintest hint of sarcasm, Cárcel de mujeres (Women’s Prison). The question she must have asked herself, with the finished drat on her desk, was: should I publish it or not?

With an almost negligible initial sentence, and a fair chance for Geel to be released early for good behavior, the prosecution and defense stand before the Court of Appeals to plead their respective cases. Geel’s lawyer seems confident: “She will be absolved!” he tells the eager reporters. And his confidence seems justified. It is common for the court to confirm the decision from the trial court so, all going as expected, Geel should be out of prison in a matter of months.

But nothing in this case goes as expected. In this highly promising moment, on the cusp of walking free, back out onto the streets of Santiago, Geel decides to publish—with the prestigious press Zig-Zag—the first edition of Cárcel de Mujeres, a work written in prison by a woman whose very sanity was in doubt.

On reading the book, the prosecution immediately scales up their accusations. Cárcel de mujeres, Benjamín Montero states, confirms that Geel’s crime was premeditated and that, with an exhibitionist’s zeal, she murdered Pumarino in order to then write her book and achieve the fame she had otherwise failed to achieve. “We are quite used to those young existentialists, disciples of Jean-Paul Sartre, who show up in public all shabby, with beards down to the floor. And sometimes, Your Honor, we get writers like María Carolina Geel, who, having failed to shine within the literary pantheon, don hats to make themselves stand out. This is exhibitionism, is it not?” the lawyer provocatively alleges.

The Clarín newspaper takes the same position as Montero. “Cárcel de mujeres gives her away,” their headline reads, subscribing to the theory that Geel’s grisly intention was to achieve popularity, and that there was no fit of madness. Benjamín Montero even mocks Silva Jiménez’s supposed psychiatric illness: “The accused’s mental disorder was somewhat short-lived when considering that, four days after she committed the crime, she embarked on writing her book Cárcel de mujeres, which, as I understand, has earned her a substantial sum of money.”

The remarkable thing about this claim is not so much the sneering tone as the reference to “four days” after the crime—a date that is never mentioned by the press or in any of Geel’s statements during the trial. It is, in fact, a reference to the narrator in Cárcel de mujeres. In his allegations and claims, Benjamín Montero does not hesitate to conflate the author’s voice with that of her narrator, attributing to Geel’s literary work the confession she had withheld from the courts of justice.

For his part, Malaquías Concha finds himself with no choice but to turn his defense on its head. “My client is not mad.

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