This is exactly right.

This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised.

He would have his own personal bootleger come with large trunks of gin.

Ward told the doorman of the building,

anytime this guy comes by with his trunk, just let him in.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the co-hosts of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right.

And throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world.

On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way,

amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters

who have investigated and reported on notorious true crime cases.

This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad,

and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their

stories. Our story this week is set in the 1920s in Westchester County, New York. It's a jazz age

mystery. A young ex-sailer is found dead on a desolate road, a suspect from a wealthy family admits to the murder, but he claims that he was trying

to protect a dangerous secret.

Author James Polchon's book, Shadowman, unravels a mystery more than a century old.

Well, let's go ahead and get into this case.

You know, you open the book with a discovery.

Why open it with such a, I feel, a grand opening when people love to sprinkle breadcrumbs everywhere and then really reveal the victim?

Yeah, I thought a lot about how to tell this story. That to me is fascinating.

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