Mel Heimer

The Girl in Murder Flat Mel Heimer

Somewhere in the elegance of Beekman Place, the stone refuge of the very rich, she lay naked and sprawled across an heirloom of a bed in the grotesque position of sudden and violent death.

She was beautiful Patsy Burton Lonergan, 22-year-old wife, mother--and sole heiress to seven million dollars.

She had been bludgeoned to death with a heavy brass candlestick handsomely inlaid with green glass. The room was a shambles.

The following dawn Toronto police took into custody Patsy Lonergan's husband, Wayne, a Royal Canadian Air Force cadet. He had two gashes on his chin.

Thus burst over the nation one of the most sensational and sordid cases in the annals of modern crime. The trial of Wayne Lonergran for the murder of his wife revealed a bizarre design for living that shocked even the most jaded -- a trial that erupted into a Roman circus when the morals of a generation of wealth were exposed to a world avid for the details.