The Imperfect Crime

To his neighbors in Houston's Afton Oaks section, Accountant Joseph Selby, 52, seemed a quiet, law-abiding and prosperous citizen. But Selby had a secret life. He spent a lot of time in the Negro district's "massage parlors," where the masseuses are really prostitutes.

Watching her husband over the years, Selby's wife Wilma found out about his other life. As he told it afterwards, she was forever suspecting him, inspected him nightly for telltale lipstick, once threatened to kill him. Instead, early last year, methodical Accountant Joseph Selby set out to hire somebody to kill Wilma.

Selby's six-month search for a murderer was filled with bizarre frustrations. He paid a woman named Lizzie Lee to find him a killer. Lizzie disappeared without doing the job. Selby next turned to Waitress Lillie Tillman for help, and she, too, failed to find a murderer for hire. So Selby paid Lillie to mail Wilma a box of poisoned chocolates. Lillie deceived him by mailing unpoisoned candy. In all, she took Selby for more than $2,000.

Selby then told his problems to Patra Mae Bounds, who worked at his favorite massage parlor, and she put him in touch with a Negro fortuneteller named Maggie Morgan. Wax-wigged Maggie Morgan got a promise of $1,500 from Selby and a key to his house, arranged for an acquaintance of hers to work in the Selby home as a maid. One day Maggie went to his house to study the layout and plan the murder, found Wilma Selby at home, coolly sat down at the piano to play and sing a hymn, Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross. Wilma and the maid joined in the singing.

Maggie Morgan finally found a man to do the job, a 300-lb. hulk named Clarence Collins. One evening Joseph dined by candlelight with his wife at the fashionable Colonial Club. After dinner, at his suggestion, Wilma dropped her husband off downtown, drove on home by herself. When Selby got home his wife was dead, shot twice with a .22-cal. pistol.

But for all his methodical planning, Joseph Selby had confided his ambitions to many people. In an Austin courtroom last week, he was found guilty as an accomplice in the murder of his wife and sentenced to life imprisonment.

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