Now a milestone of unsolved true crime, the Hall-Mills case began in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1922 and lasted for over a decade. The killer has never been found, and the case continues to fascinate true-crime aficionados. A bon vivant Episcopal minister, a not-so-virginal soprano in his choir. The wealthy wife. Her oddball brother. Their furtive maid. The snooping congregants. The bumbling detectives. And in the denouement, a trial, one of the more notable of America's Jazz Age, covered by the likes of Damon Runyon, Dorothy Dix, and James Thurber. All of it hanging on the dramatic testimony of a single, strange witness of questionable veracity, a farmer the tabloids came to call "The Pig Woman." Almost everyone in this labyrinthine mystery had at least one secret, sometimes more, and the biggest one remains almost a hundred years later. At Audible's request, business and true crime journalist Bryan Burrough reopened the case, digging deep into records of the time. His narration in a warm Texas accent lends immediacy and intimacy to a classic New Jersey true crime, as listeners follow his reconstruction of the fateful double-murder…and the botched prosecution that became a national media circus in its day. Read by the author
Author
Bryan Burrough joined Vanity Fair in August 1992 and has been a special correspondent for the magazine since January 1995. He has reported on a wide range of topics, including the events that led to the war in Iraq, the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, and the Anthony Pellicano case. His profile subjects have included Sumner Redstone, Larry Ellison, Mike Ovitz, and Ivan Boesky. Prior to joining Vanity Fair, Burrough was an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. In 1990, with Journal colleague John Heylar, he co-authored Barbarians at the Gate (HarperCollins), which was No. 1 on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for 39 weeks. Burrough's other books include Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmund Safra (HarperCollins, 1992), Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir (HarperCollins, 1998); and Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34 (Penguin Press, 2004). Burrough is a three-time winner of the John Hancock Award for excellence in financial journalism. He lives in Summit, New Jersey with his wife Marla and their two sons.
