John D. Voelker; Lawyer Wrote Murder Stories

John D. Voelker, who utilized the legal skills he had honed in courtrooms to write one of the most intricate murder mysteries of the 1950s, has died.

Michigan state police said the jurist and author of 11 books, including “Anatomy of a Murder,” died as the result of an apparent heart attack he suffered while driving to his home near Ishpeming.

His Jeep hit a snowbank and he died Monday evening at a hospital in the rugged Upper Peninsula area of Northern Michigan.

Voelker was 87 and wrote as “Robert Traver”; Traver was his mother’s maiden name. Several of his books were about fishing but “Anatomy of a Murder” was based on a 1952 slaying in the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay, Mich., just north of Marquette.

The book was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and was quickly snapped up by Hollywood and made into a 1959 movie directed by Otto Preminger and starring Jimmy Stewart, George C. Scott, Lee Remick and Eve Arden.

Voelker reportedly patterned the defense lawyer in the case on himself--a small-town attorney portrayed by Stewart who successfully defends an Army officer who admits murdering a bartender who had raped his wife.

The defense is structured around an earlier, obscure case, in which a husband was acquitted because he had “an irresistible impulse” to kill after his wife was violated.

“He never would acknowledge the similarities and that it was a takeoff on the actual trial,” said Lynne Vadnais, who owns the Lumberjack.

The walls of the Lumberjack still are pocked with bullet holes from the killing and pinned with newspaper clippings of the murder trial and movie.

For 14 years, until 1950, Voelker served as prosecuting attorney in Marquette County. He was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1957, but retired after three years.

“John Voelker’s contributions to the Michigan Supreme Court far exceed the 99 opinions he authored during the three years he served on the court,” said Chief Justice Michael F. Cavanagh.

“People all over the world have enjoyed his prose and insights into the law and trout fishing in the 11 books he wrote before and after he served on the court,” Cavanagh said.

In a 1989 interview, Voelker said about his work: “Spinning yarns is a protection against the nuttiness . . . the greed, the hate, all around us. I’m a fisherman who likes to observe and tell yarns and so I told stories about things that I knew about.”