On Long Island, a duck pond turned red with blood. In the Lower East Side, a torso wrapped in oilcloth floated by a pier. Near Harlem, severed limbs were found in a ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime turned up all over 1897 New York, but the police had no witnesses, no motives, and no suspects. The author of Sixpence House, and NPR's "literary detective" on Weekend Edition, Paul Collins brilliantly portrays America in the Gilded Age, as media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst made the case a publicity circus. A sensational love triangle emerged, followed by an even more sensational trial hinging on circumstantial evidence and a victim whom colorful defense attorney William Howe claimed wasn't even dead.