Conn came face to face with evil when he prosecuted Lyle and Erik Menendez of Beverly Hills. The brothers were sentenced to life in prison for the August 1989 murders of their millionaire parents.
Neil LaBute wrote and directed the 1997 film "In the Company of Men." It was about a couple of dastardly and smooth-talking men who have affairs with a deaf woman, then make fun of her. "Let's hurt somebody" became one of the signature lines of the film, a kind of misogynistic mantra.
"I think, historically, men have had a freedom afforded them . . . that not everyone else has had," LaBute says. "Once someone has bound themselves -- on paper, a marriage, responsibility -- we hold them to a higher standard. We put an exclamation point on those things. We don't say a single guy is an adulterer. I think society looks more often at the married man because he's made this public stake: 'I'm willing to fulfill the obligations of this institution of marriage.' "
The intrigue with the bad husband? "We're fascinated," LaBute says, "with someone who says: 'The rules of society don't apply to me.' "
Of course the fascination with the wayward husband harks back to, if not Zeus, then certainly Henry VIII. The top bad-husband story of recent times is probably that of O.J. Simpson and his sensational 1995 murder trial. Simpson was acquitted of criminal charges in the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, outside her California home in 1994. "Since O.J.," says former prosecutor Conn, "there has been an overwhelming interest in the criminal justice system. Many of these cases that wouldn't have gotten as much attention now become front page news. People are looking at them for entertainment value."
There are those who believe that violence is sometimes just waiting to erupt, that behind the trickery, the deceptions, the lies, some men are moonlighting as charmers until things no longer are going their way.
"The truth is, for the longest time men have been able to get away with domestic violence," says Jeanine Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney, who has been prosecuting domestic violence cases for decades. "As a society, we didn't think a man was capable of killing a woman carrying his baby."
Pirro says she's heard the theories about men with a new baby and the attendant financial strain withering under the pressure of a money-obsessed society. "It is a life-altering experience," Pirro says of childbirth and burgeoning family responsibilities. "And sometimes when men can't deal with it, they blame their wives for their inability to adjust."
Richard Rhodes, author of "Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist," says the bad husband, more often than not, has been touched himself by some kind of domestic violence. The bizarre behavior is not as spontaneous as it might seem. "Violent people have a strong sense that they're superior to other people," Rhodes says. "Violence gives them a sense of superiority with the rest of the world."
Rhodes adds: "Their judgment at the time they decide to use violence is that this person they are doing it to deserves it. And it is much more important that they carry this act of retaliation out than to worry about what's going to happen tomorrow."
"This is all an age-old problem," says Susan Martin, a criminal defense attorney in Colorado, the state that has been bracketed dawn to dusk with coverage of everything Kobe. "More bad things happen in family units. The people we should fear are the people we love most -- husbands, spouses, neighbors. If you become victimized, chances are it's going to be someone in the family."
"You can call it the summer of the bad husband," says LaBute, "but it well might be the fall and winter of the bad husband, too."
