Welcome to Dun & Dunn. I'm Alicia, your hostess on this journey, All Things Dominic Dunn.

Investigators, sometimes I do get to sleuthing in my research, and well, this week, my sleuthing sends the investigation into a whole new direction.

There is an innate understanding to the writing of Dominic Dunn that is so deeply

seated in high society. And there are layers of knowledge and implication that you might not get

in one of his articles, but when you take in the whole collection of his work, the social

register, the 400, the families that play with power and crime and

privilege, all of it comes into play. And I would be remiss if I did not honor and appreciate

the tapestry of all of that. And in honoring some of the threads that are coming in our season,

figured it was a good time just to back up a wee bit to set the stage, so to speak,

about the connections and intricacies that are coming up as we work through just the Upper East Side in our New York state of crime season.

Honestly, all of these families are going to play in some way or another throughout our podcast

journey, not just in this season, but future seasons as well. It's time to get to know the scene.

Welcome to the social network. These episodes coming up are a little less true crime and a little

more high society, but you know I have to cover it all.

We have so much more true crime to cover, but it is the combination of all these spider

webs that make the stories so much more impactful.

It's the high society is the platform.

It's the structure on which the whole sorted web lies upon.

So today, our investigation will lead us a bit into early New York City, the Knickerbocker Society,

and its reigning queen, Caroline Shermerhorn Astor. Her friends call her Lena, but honestly,

she would like you to know that she is the only Mrs. Astor. Thank you very much, even though that's

not at all true. Getting to where we're going in this season becomes way more fun when we start

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