Calvin Jay Washington was extremely restless as he sat on the steps of the house watching his lover’s young children play ball. He had agreed to babysit her three children as she went out into the streets, as the blacks called it, on a hot, humid night in downtown New Orleans. It was the kind of night that makes one do wild and crazy things and blame it the next day on a combination of the heat, the humidity, and the stench of the river. New Orleans is six inches below sea level, and sometimes the air doesn’t move.

Shortly after coming upon this story about the murder, one week later, to be precise, I was at my aunt’s house, still vacationing in New Orleans. She had a mutual friend visiting whose name was Lola and who just happened to be a criminal lawyer. She was about 30 years old, and I remember being impressed with her intelligence, as well as her bizarre sense of humor.

I am often asked why, out of all the crimes and murders that have happened in this world, I chose to write about this one.

I usually give as my stock and trade answer that I felt the psychology behind this crime would be very interesting. It involves two black men and a white woman, which raises some interracial issues, but there also is a huge difference in the ages of the young black men and the elderly spinster they raped and murdered.

The newspaper accounts of Gertrude Falcone’s murder shocked and fascinated me. It wasn’t sensationalized reporting that attracted me, but the sheer, unvarnished facts of this horrible crime that jumped out at me from the pages of the newspapers and compelled me to read every detail.