Jeffrey Amestoy revisits a century-old Vermont crime and pens a modern page-turner

October 14, 2025  |  By Lisa Scagliotti

Winters’ Time cover. Courtesy photo

In November 1926, the brutal murder of a woman in her home in Windsor, Vermont, captured headlines. 

Police arrested John Winters and charged him with the crime of killing Cecelia Gullivan, treasurer of the Cone Automatic Machine company of Windsor, where Winters worked as a machinist. 

Winters was tried and convicted in a high-profile, sensational trial. Then came his appeal, in which he landed one of the most famous defense attorneys in the nation at the time, and the case headed to the Vermont Supreme Court. 

Now in 2025, the murder of Cecelia Gullivan and the trials of John Winters are again making headlines thanks to an investigative and creative project by former Vermont Attorney General and Supreme Court Chief Justice Jeffrey L. Amestoy.

The Vermont Historical Society in September published his book, “Winters’ Time: A Secret Pledge, a Severed Head, and the Murder That Brought America's Most Famous Lawyer to Vermont.”

Amestoy carefully researched and brings to life the record of the courtroom drama – that truly included the victim’s severed head – and the backstory of the case. The results have drawn praise from Vermont literary and scholarly heavy-hitters such as prolific crime-fiction author Archer Mayor and former Deputy Secretary of State, lawyer and historian Paul Gillies. 

Former Vermont Supreme Court Chief Justice and author Jeffrey L. Amestoy. Photo by David Goodman

In his recommendation, Mayor writes: “An extraordinary account of one of Vermont’s most lurid murder trials with its twists and turns, internecine convolutions, and high political drama, is revealed in perfect measure by the best of possible narrators.”

Gillies calls Amestoy “the perfect scholar to write this story” in his assessment of the Supreme Court story.

“That court had to work hard to ignore the reputation of America’s greatest advocate. Amestoy’s insight into the legal and social issues of the Winters case is grounded in his own experience on the court, and his understanding of the special pressures felt by his predecessor John H. Watson is particularly intriguing,” Gillies writes.

Amestoy, who lives in Waterbury, has done interviews recently with Times Argus Executive Editor Steven Pappas and reporter David Goodman for his Vermont Conversation podcast and radio broadcast. 

Read the Times Argus feature City Room: The right person to tell a Vermont story.

Listen to Amestoy discuss his interest in the story and his research for the book in his interview for the Vermont Conversation. 

Visit the Vermont History Society’s page about the book at vermonthistory.org.