"Before the sensational cases of Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony--before even Lizzie Borden--there was Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder in our nation's debut media circus. On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emeline Houseman and her infant daughter, Ann Eliza. In a perverse nativity, someone bludgeoned...