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 to death a mother and child in their home—and then covered up the crime with hellfire. When an ambitious district attorney...