Stranger Than Fiction

When young students dream of becoming lawyers their imaginations conjure up thoughts of defending society's least fortunate and the unjustly accused. Author Richard Siracusa has lived that dream, for better or worse, as a sole practitioner with the freedom to make his own mistakes. A rare occurrence in today's institutionalized world, lawyers like Siracusa are a dead and dying breed-dinosaurs roaming the halls of justice, moving toward inevitable extinction.

Stranger Than Fiction: A Criminal Defense Attorney's Memoir, New York, New York is an anthology of the murder and mayhem that existed in the streets of New York City over the last thirty-five years of the twentieth century. His career features a series of strange and compelling stories, mostly taken from the twenty-six murder trials which he has tried to verdict. Why did he do it? Follow along as Richard Siracusa recounts his adventures.

About the Author

Richard Siracusa was born and raised in Auburn, New York. He attended Villanova University and received a Bachelor's of Science degree in 1964. Continuing his education, Siracusa took graduate courses in Psychology before entering the Marine Corps, and he received an honorable discharge in 1967. Receiving a Juris Doctorate from the New York Law School in 1974, he became a member of the bar in both New York State and the District of Columbia, holding offices in both jurisdictions. Unmarried and without children, Siracusa lives on the upper west side of Manhattan and has maintained an apartment in Washington, DC.

Siracusa has traveled extensively and attended performances at most of the famous opera houses of the world. A few of his greatest experiences: exploring the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, traveling through Greenland via dogsled, and boating through the Amazon jungle. Siracusa has run ninety-two full marathons on five continents, including Antarctica, and this year (2017) will mark the running of his twenty-seventh consecutive New York City marathon.

Stranger Than Fiction: A Criminal Defense Attorney's Memoir, New York, New York is the author's first memoir. Presently, Siracusa is completing a manuscript about the confessed central park jogger rapist who was his most notorious client.