This book covers a Gilded Age murder and subsequent tabloid war between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Children found a torso, sans head, floating along in the East River. Police shrugged it off as a prank by medical students, until the next day when more pieces were discovered in the Harlem River. The way that the identity of the victim was uncovered was really wild, but I will not spoil it for those who are unfamiliar with this case and are interested in the book. I can assure you I would have never thought about checking any location such as that for a missing person, but someone certainly thought of it and helped to blow the case wide open. This book definitely took some turns I was not expecting. The Gilded Age was a really dramatic time.

I would also like to note that it seems crazy to me to do reenactments of the murder in the middle of Times Square, but I suppose the reenactments that we watch on True Crime shows is essentially the same thing. I find it equally crazy that MEDICAL STUDENTS would leave body parts from their cadavers laying around for shits and giggles.

I have the Audible version of this book, which I really enjoyed. If you are interested in the physical copy, it is a little less than 300 pages. I thought it was really well done. The research was sufficient. I really learned a lot about this case. I always like learning about older cases like this. I think it is really interesting to see how tabloid news has continued to feed off of scandal and tragedy all the way up to the present day. I know I have always picked up the tabloid magazines while waiting in the grocery store checkout, but TMZ has really left a bad taste in my mouth for things like this. I find them to be the bottom of the barrel and just scummy. Tabloids have a longer history that I ever considered, and this was a good book for learning about that.

 

It was interesting but a little too wordy for me.