Controversial Bingham Family Book to Be Released

Crown Publishers next week will publish a book that contains startling theories about the powerful Bingham family of Louisville, Ky. Earlier this year Macmillan Publishing Co. dropped the book project after challenges by the family.

The book, “The Binghams of Louisville: The Dark History Behind One of America’s Great Fortunes,” theorizes that family patriarch Robert Worth Bingham founded the family fortune in 1917 when he “murdered his second wife for money,” according to a statement by Crown.

Mary Flagler Bingham at the time was the richest woman in America, the heiress widow of the co-founder of Standard Oil. With the money he inherited from her death, Judge Bingham bought the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper and founded the Bingham dynasty, one of America’s most prominent Southern families.

Factual Challenge

When author David Chandler first finished the manuscript last spring, Barry Bingham Sr., Judge Bingham’s son, sent an extraordinary eight-pound factual challenge to the book to the initial publisher, Macmillan.

Bingham’s challenge attracted national attention both because his own daughter accused him of suppression and because he included what many considered a novel copyright argument, asserting copyright over written answers he had earlier given to Chandler.

Macmillan eventually dropped the book, citing “serious substantial disagreements” with the author’s interpretations, but insisting that it was not intimidated by legal considerations.

Crown said it also reviewed Bingham’s challenge but chose to publish.

“Crown’s edition is substantially the same book” as the one Macmillan dropped, the company said. It did make changes officials described as minor revisions.

Bingham attorney Leon Friedman said the family has not decided what, if any, further action it will take.