Maureen K Wlodarczyk

Canary in a Cage: the Smith-bennett Murder Case Maureen K Wlodarczyk

 In August 1878, a Jersey City policeman is found bludgeoned and stabbed to death in his own bed, supposedly while his wife lay sleeping beside him unaware. Suspicion immediately falls on the wife and her suspected teenage paramour. Did a twenty-something Jersey girl from the rural farmlands turn city-girl killer?

Canary in a Cage: The Smith-Bennett Murder Case is historical fiction based on the true story of the violent killing of Officer Richard Harrison Smith whose wife Jenny Woolley Smith was accused of the murder, arrested and faced the hangman's noose along with a local boy hopelessly infatuated with her. Twenty years later, Jorden Lang, a young newspaper reporter at the time of murder, retells the story of the sensation that surrounded the killing and multiple trials and reveals a long-concealed secret confided by the accused wife in a jailhouse encounter.