It was carnival week again in Manhattan. This time a muscular corset-salesman had murdered a middle-aged art editor, assisted by the editor's adulterous wife.
The details, unusually gruesome, included poisoned whiskey, picture wire, binding, gagging, taking turns at skull-smashing with a window-weight, and $104,000 in life insurance.
The murderers had confessed separately and were reviling each other from their prison cells. Judd Gray, the corset-salesman, was pleading insanity and saying he had been led astray, debauched. Ruth Snyder, the wife, was professing horror and penitence, calling her paramour a low "jackal." Also there was even a child, Lorraine Snyder, aged 9, to heighten the emotionalism of the trial. Lorraine still believed her father and mother were temporarily away "on a trip."