On a steamy dog day afternoon in 1993, Shirley Ann Crook, 46, of Fenton, Mo., was involved in a fender bender with a local teenage boy. By anyone's standard, Shirley was an excellent driver. Both she and her husband Steven drove semi tractor trailers for a living. The teenage driver was another story. Christopher Simmons, 17, was sadly typical of a lot of Fenton High School seniors. He came from a broken home, drank a lot, smoked grass, and his absenteeism was legendary. He couldn't care less about school or his future. Later he would blame all this on having...