daily reports. Midway through the trial the government's investigators discovered Burns' agents, and a mistrial was immediately declared. At a new hearing, Sinclair's defense was that he had had the jurors followed to protect them against federal influences and that in no case had the operatives made direct contact with the jurors. Sinclair was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to six months in jail, Day to four months' imprisonment, William J. Burns to 15 days' imprisonment, and Burns' son, William Sherman Burns, was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. The father immediately appealed, and the Supreme Court later reversed his conviction (Sinclair v. United States, 279 US 749 - Supreme Court 1929). Later life and death After his retirement from the Burns Detective Agency, Burns moved to Florida and for several years published detective and mystery stories based on his long career. He died of a heart attack in Sarasota, Florida, in April 1932. Burns was portrayed by actor Paul Dooley in the television miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan. Writings The masked war; the story of a peril that threatened the United States New York, George H. Doran Co. 1913 The Argyle case with Arthur Hornblow, Harriot Ford and Harvey O'Higgins New York, London, Harper, 1913 The crevice with Isabel Ostrander New York : Grosset & Dunlap, 1915 See also Palmer raids Teapot Dome Scandal Gaston Bullock Means The $5,000,000 Counterfeiting Plot Notes References Caeser, Gene. Incredible Detective: The Biography of William J. Burns. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Blum, Howard. American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century. New York: Crown, September 2008. Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri, The FBI: A History, University Press of Kentucky (2007), External links 1861 births 1932 deaths 20th-century American writers American mystery writers Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation People from Briarcliff Manor, New York United States Secret Service agents Writers from Baltimore Novelists from New York (state) 20th-century American male writers Novelists from Maryland