On April 24, 1943 a fire started in the engine room of the Panamanian freighter SS El Estero. Fire can always represent a danger to a ship, but this fire offered particular concern. The El Estro was carrying more than thirteen hundred tons of high explosives, and was in New York Harbor.
The “Murder at the Regatta” was a story of jealousy, passion, and some say even madness that shocked and fascinated the nation, and changed the very nature of how murder was seen and prosecuted in the United States.