Brothers described Vinetti as a man who was “a loner, moody, depressed,” who had been deserted by his own mother at the age of six months. The defendant’s father told him once: “Your mother had a choice between you and a pair of roller skates, and she took the roller skates.”

His attorney explained Vinetti’s extreme sensitivity to remarks about his height. He said that Betty Berry had taunted Paul about the two things that distressed him most: his mother and his height.

In many murder trials, the defendant does not take the stand in his own defense, but Long-tall-Paul Vinetti chose to do so. There, before a courtroom hushed...