Born in Manhattan, New York City, Calissi spent his early years in an orphanage in Kearny, New Jersey.
Offered a college scholarship, he chose to decline it so that he could earn a living and graduated in 1941 from John Marshall Law School.
New Jersey Superior Court judge Morris Pashman upheld the ban, calling the book "sufficiently obscene to forfeit the protection of the First Amendment of the Constitution."
Smith was convicted in 1957 of the bludgeoning of 15-year-old honor student and high school cheerleader Victoria Ann Zielinski in Ramsey, New Jersey.
[4] Convicted of first degree murder in the original case and sentenced to death, Smith argued successfully for a new trial on the basis that his confession had been coerced.