At 70, Bobby Lee Cook’s once-flaming red hair is almost as white as his scraggly goatee, but he still sports the lean, ruddy look of a lanky farm boy. He is settled in a turquoise leather chair in his dark-paneled law library, gold-rimmed spectacles cradled loosely in one hand, unlit pipe in the other.
The brazen barrister, regarded as one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the nation, is clearly amused by author John Berendt’s depiction of him as Uncle Sam in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” the best-selling account of murder and eccentricity in the historic Georgia city of Savannah.
“Well, I didn’t find any fault with it,” Cook says with a drawl as Southern as molasses-soaked biscuits. “I’ve been called a hell of a lot worse.”
The book has shown great legs, as they say in the publishing business. It has been on The New York Times’ best-seller list for a remarkable 165 weeks. It has even advanced careers. notably that of the black Savannah drag queen and nightclub performer Lady Chablis, who figures in its pages. And a movie is close at hand.
When the film version of “Midnight” debuts in December, fans of The Book (as it is called in Savannah) will no doubt flock to theaters to check out the largely non-fiction drama. They’ll see Kevin Spacey portraying Jim Williams, the wealthy antiques and art dealer accused of killing his gay lover. Lady Chablis will take the stage as herself.
But what viewers won’t see is the legendary Cook, who defended Williams in the first of four trials. That’s because only the last trial–in which he didn’t participate– survived the movie adaptation.
Ironically, the theatrical Cook has turned down several movie offers, and he is widely rumored to be the inspiration for the Andy Griffith character in the NBC television series “Matlock.”
Unlike the self-effacing Matlock, however, Cook is a man of stark contrasts. A true Southern gentleman who generously peppers his comments with expletives, he is at once guarded yet open, sharp-tongued yet gracious, cocky yet coy. Hot-tempered with those who cross him, tender with those he favors, he pummeled a state senator in 1949 while serving in the Georgia House of Representatives and, more recently, allegedly struck a police officer who pulled him over for allegedly running a stop sign.
This good ol’ boy is also an avid wildflower gardener with a penchant for European landscaping; a collector of first-edition books by Edgar Allan Poe; and a well-traveled connoisseur of fine wines.
Often compared to F. Lee Bailey, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes and Gerry Spence, Cook may be the most effective cross-examiner in the business, with steely blue eyes piercing the testimony of even the most solid witness for the prosecution. In 48 years of practicing law, he has tackled the toughest of cases and defended more than 1,000 clients, from pornographers, embezzlers and mobsters to high-profile clients like the Carnegies and Rockefellers, “Koreagate” businessman Tongsun Park, and former White House budget director Bert Lance.
Cook has defended more than 250 murder cases, winning all but two dozen, and has never lost one to the death penalty.
The trial he most enjoys talking about took place in a military court in West Germany in 1965. One night, a 23-year-old U.S. Air Force sergeant choked his wife to death with a webbed belt, then proceeded to loudly confess to a group of about 200 at the servicemen’s bar. Cook spent five months in dogged preparation — a trait he is well-known for — and argued the soldier suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, a brain disorder worsened by alcohol. The man was acquitted.
Cook is revered as a true “lawyer’s lawyer.” In 1984, he received the first-ever Tradition of Excellence Award from the Georgia State Bar, and in 1991 was listed as one of “The Best Lawyers in America” in a published poll of 10,000 attorneys.
In 1981, when Jim Williams was arrested for slaying his young lover in the low-country port of Savannah, he remembered hearing about Cook’s powerful reputation and gave him a call.
“He (Williams) was debonair and sophisticated. He was quite articulate,” says Cook. “He was extremely handsome. In fact, he had what I would call a Clark Gable persona.
“I liked him. Sometimes you have clients you don’t like. You have some that you have great distaste for. . . . But I was genuinely fond of Jim. I thought he was a nice, charming fella.”
The two had something else in common: A passion for antiques. As in-kind payment of his $50,000 fee, Cook selected a green leather drum table, a “very exquisite” mahogany day bed, and several other 18th Century collectibles from Williams’ gallery.
From the first meeting, Cook says, he believed Williams’ self-defense explanation. “I can sit down and talk to a client and say, `Tell me what happened. Tell me the truth. Don’t color it up. Don’t tell me what I want to hear.’ And I feel like I can generally tell whether it rings true or not. And his version as to what happened did have a very clear ring of truth in it. And it never changed at all.”
Despite Cook’s flamboyant defense, Williams was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
“That one didn’t turn out right,” Cook admits. “But hell, I have a saying that I don’t despair over defeats more than 24 hours, and I don’t relish victories more than 24 hours. You’ve got to get up and go on to the next day. The next thing that I was thinking about was finding a way to reverse the case, which I did, in the (Georgia) Supreme Court.”
Cook blames the outcome of the first trial, at least in part, on Williams’ high-brow attitude in court. “He had so much damn pride that it could be mistaken for arrogance.”
When the time came for the retrial, Cook was already trying a federal case and couldn’t get away. Williams turned to Savannah attorney Sonny Seiler (who plays the judge in the “Midnight” movie) but was convicted again.
After a second appeal, a mistrial, and a fourth trial in Augusta, Ga., Williams was finally a free man. He died of pneumonia soon after.
Another of Cook’s real-life retrials, if granted, could cause an even bigger media frenzy. And in an odd twist of fate, the new client shares the old client’s surname. Cook has filed a post-conviction habeas corpus petition for Wayne Williams, convicted in 1982 of two of the Atlanta child murders. The judge’s ruling, he says, “should come any day.”
“The state suppressed, did not turn over to the defense, vitally helpful evidence that could have been used to prove in fact that Wayne Williams was not the murderer he was made out to be,” Cook asserts. “It’s a fascinating case.”
Despite his millionaire status, Cook is idolized in the South as a sort of folk hero. He handles up to 20 percent of his cases pro bono, defending rural residents not unlike his first client, a farmer who in 1949 killed his brother in a quarrel over a turnip patch and paid Cook $50 for his hard-won acquittal.
Cook has remained here in Summerville, a small town of 5,500 residents, where he practices law in an office designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.
“I thought that I could be as good a lawyer in Summerville as I could be in Chicago or New York or Atlanta,” he notes with a wry grin, resting his pipe on an enormous round table fit for King Arthur. “And I’ve never been short on business.”
