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-Lonergan 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

done-and-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 grizzly murder in less than two

years? Let's investigate. Let's go ahead and meet our Jigolo Wayne. He's a middle class kid from outside Toronto, Canada. He's schooled by the nuns in a parochial school. Wayne will attend St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church. A little bit of a troubled history, though. Wayne's mother will make multiple visits to the Ontario Mental Hospital,

which is tough on Wayne and tough on his siblings too.

Wayne's aunt, who becomes sort of the family spokesperson,

will say that Wayne was a fine boy,

but only fell into trouble once he goes to New York City in 1938.

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