“Certainly, if I tried to replicate this career, I would not have been able to have done it. It just kind of all happened,” said James Owen, nonprofit executive director, film columnist, and now published author.
Owen was born and raised on a farm in the Marshfield, MO area, decided to go to law school and has since had a robust career.
Owen clerked for the Court of Appeals in Springfield, as well as two area law firms. After this, he was appointed as a judge in Webster County.
“After I lost that election, I moved to mid Missouri where I worked for the Governor (Jay) Nixon administration [as] the ratepayer advocate before the Public Service Commission. I got fired by Eric Greitens, and about that time, I used my knowledge with energy policy to take over Renew Missouri.”
Owen has been working at Renew Missouri for over eight years now. At the same time, he continued his hobby of film reviewing.
“I had a blog in the early 2000 called Film Snobs, where I reviewed movies,” he said. “Then I was the on air film critic for KY3 for a couple of years while I was down in Springfield, and for 10 years, I have been the Columbia Daily Tribune film columnist.”
He said he can't explain how he's able to balance all of that.
“I don't let a lot of moss grow on me, so I just kind of just take it as it comes," he said.
Just over two decades ago, Owen was clerking at the Court of Appeals in Springfield. His judge was retiring, and he was considering going into private practice.
“I learned that this lawyer on the north side of town was looking for someone to kind of take over his practice, and I thought that sounded kind of interesting,” he said.
That lawyer was Rolland Comstock, the center of Owen’s new novel.
Owen sent Comstock a resume, which Owen said Comstock called him almost right away about.
After an interesting conversation about Owen’s schooling and Comstock questioning him about his knowledge of local authors, the two decided to meet.
As it turns out, Comstock had a three-story library built onto his house, in which was hundreds of thousands of dollars of books, many signed by the authors themselves.
In addition to the large amount of books, Comstock also owned a pack of hybrid-wolves which he said “guarded” the collection on his property.
“I just thought, 'well, this seems like a really interesting person to go work for,'" said Owen. “[But] I quickly learned when I went to work for him that he had a lot of chaos going on in his life.”
Comstock’s marriage of 38 years had just ended over his current wife discovering his sexuality, which had led them into a legal battle over the ownership of their home.
“Ultimately, I believe that fight over that house is what killed him,” said Owen.
On July 2, 2007, Comstock was shot and killed inside his home. No one was ever arrested or criminally processed for his death, but it was determined in a wrongful death lawsuit years later that his ex wife likely killed him, said Owen.
“Every time I would talk about Rolland or talk about this case, I would just hear people say it would make a really good book,” said Owen.
And so, he decided to write this novel using insights from his own experiences with Comstock as well as information from those close to him.
One of those people was Becky Frakes, close friend of Comstock and paralegal.
“Frakes worked with Rolland from 1974 up to when he died,” said Owen. “She was sort of his right hand on a lot of things, and I can't speak enough to how helpful she was in reading chapters, clarifying things, pointing me in different directions that I needed to go.”
“I don't look at this as necessarily that I wrote this book as a lawyer,” he said. “I wrote this book as I'm not a journalist, but I think it is a piece of fact finding, truth telling.”
“This has been a project that between everything going on in my life, it's taken me a while to sit down and do it, research it, talk to people and then just sit down to write it. But I do think that it's been a really rewarding experience,” said Owen.
“What my real hope is, is that people see Roland. I mean, a lot of true crime books focus a lot on the murderer, they focus a lot on crime,” he added. “This is a little unique in that it focuses on the victim. I hope people see it as a full bodied look at this individual who was kind of out of place where he was.”
“It was just unfortunate that he had all that going on in his life, and I think it shows how legal battles, legal fights can overtake a person. Law is [a] profession of conflict and sometimes a little bit of chaos,” Owen said.
Owen’s book is available for purchase online through many popular sellers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Walmart, as well as in person at several Springfield locations.
A book signing will take place Saturday, January 31 at ABC Book and Gifts from 1 to 3 p.m., as well as another event at The Story House Bookstore on February 19.
Owen can be found on X.