The Witch of New York

Starred review from January 15, 2024
In this excellent work of true crime, historian Hortis (The Mob and the City) examines the case of Polly Bodine (1810–1892), who became infamous after she was accused of murdering her sister-in-law and infant niece. In December 1843, someone killed 24-year-old Emeline Houseman and her daughter, Eliza, in their Staten Island home before setting it on fire. Emeline’s father pointed the finger at Bodine, the last person seen with his daughter, theorizing that she’d killed the pair while trying to steal their silver. After Bodine gave conflicting alibis to authorities, she was charged with the murders. Her first trial ended in a hung jury, and the case was moved to Manhattan for a second trial. That jury convicted Bodine, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. A third and final trial held upstate ended in Bodine’s acquittal. Newspapers including the New York World seized on the story, stirring up public interest in the crimes and villainizing Bodine for her supposed avoidance of justice during her multiple trials. Hortis’s fastidious historical detail makes the episode come to life, and he successfully evokes contemporary tabloid scandals like the Amanda Knox trial without stretching the point too far. Fans of Daniel Stashower will love this. Agent: Scott Mendel, Mendel Media.

January 1, 2024
The sad, sordid story of the first American woman to face trial for capital murder. Mary Houseman Bodine (c. 1810-1892) was excoriated as "a fallen woman" and murderer before she was even tried in court for the deaths of her sister-in-law and infant niece in 1843. Having moved back to her father's house on Staten Island, after leaving her abusive husband and taking her two children with her, Bodine often stayed over at her brother's cottage, which was adjacent to her father's. On the night of the crime, with only a shaky alibi when the house next door burned down, and perhaps the last to have seen her sister-in-law alive, Bodine was quickly suspected of the murders and also robbery, compounded by her disappearing into Manhattan and apparently pawning items at shops around town. Hortis, a constitutional lawyer, crime historian, and author of The Mob and the City, looks at how the rivaling tabloids and their owners--including James Gordon Bennett of the Herald and Moses Yale Beach of the Sun--tried to outdo each other in sensational coverage of Bodine's story, relying on hearsay and fabrication to sell more papers. The author capably describes the melee of commerce and scandal that bristled in early New York City. The details that emerged--of Bodine's romance with an apothecary in Manhattan, the boss of her teenaged apprentice son, and her advanced pregnancy--added to the prurient interest at the time, as did articles by Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman and a witchlike wax figure in P.T. Barnum's museum. Hortis has combed the archives for material related to Bodine's three explosive trials, and the book ultimately ends in her acquittal in a Newburgh, New York, court in 1846; he makes palpable the shameful character assassination and "slut-shaming" that Bodine endured. A lively history of early New York through one woman's horrendous ordeal.

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February 15, 2024
Crime historian Hortis (The Mob and the City, 2014) revisits the nineteenth-century trials of Staten Island resident Polly Bodine, who was accused of murdering her sister-in-law, Emeline Houseman, and infant niece, Eliza, in 1843. Bodine's ne'er-do-well husband left her with two children and few prospects. Since divorce on the grounds of drunken abandonment wasn't an option, Bodine moved back in with her father and eventually began an affair with a pharmacist named George Waite. Her liaisons with him, which complicated her alibi, made her a prime suspect in the deaths of Emeline and Eliza. Bodine was the last to see them prior to the robbery and arson which took their lives. Bodine's case was seized on by rival newspapers, who capitalized on its sensational flavor. P.T. Barnum weighed in, characterizing Bodine as a witch. After a hung jury, a change of venue, and a third trial, Bodine was eventually acquitted. Hortis' narrative demonstrates the dilemma many women faced, lacking legal recourse, as well as the effect that tabloid journalism could have on a trial by swaying public opinion. A sure hit for true crime fans.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.