Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.co.

com.uk-Uk.werew. Wondery.

Welcome to Dun & Dunn.

I'm Alicia, your hostess on this podcast journey, All Things, Dominic Dunn.

Today we are taking a trip back into the wartime 1940s for the scandal

that rocked Cafe Society at the time. If you are not familiar with the terrible and tragic murder

of Patricia Burton-Lonnergan at the hands of her husband, Wayne Lonergan, with an actual

candlestick, I will use Dominic's own introduction from his July

2000 ride-up from Vanity Fair on this case. A young attractive socialite Patricia

Lonergan is found naked in her bedroom bludgeoned and strangled to death. The accused, her wildly

handsome, devastatingly charming husband, Wayne, a fortune hunter,

whose lurid alibi shocks even New York's toughest police officers and tabloid reporters.

The murder and the subsequent trial were the media sensation of 1943 and 44 played out against the Cafe Society backdrop of the Stork Club and

El Morocco.

Dominic Dunn spins a rich tale of infidelity, decadence, and scandal, from Wayne's affair

with Patsy's father, to his elopement with the young heiress, to the struggle over her

inheritance, and their infant son. What? Whoa. What a lead in, right? The article Dunn writes

for Vanity Fair is titled The Talented Mr. Launergan. You can also find this article published under the title of

The Gigolo, the heiress, and the Candlestick from his book release called Justice. All sources

used in this story, just like every other done-and-done story, are available at doneand-done.com

if you would like to do any further research.

So how does this couple, a society girl and a jigiloh, get from an elopement to a grisly murder in less than two years?

...