Crime: The Madam's Mark

Poets are fond of saying that life imitates art—but does it have to imitate television? The fact that it doesn't is perhaps the reason that 32-year-old Mark Fein last week was on trial for his life.

As the prosecution told it, Fein shot his bookmaker to death in October, 1963, to avoid paying off a $23,890 World Series bet on the New York Yankees, stuffed his body into a trunk, and persuaded a bosomy, redheaded prostitute named Gloria Kendal to dump the trunk in the Harlem River for him. Somehow, the body floated...