In the end, her husband’s fate was sealed by the Duval County medical examiner, who retrieved from a blunt indentation on Mrs. Bonneville’s scalp several sticky ligneous flakes that were later identified as bark particles from a sawed-off mahogany branch. The branch segment measured three feet long and seven inches in circumference on the day it was confiscated from the bed of Van Bonneville’s obsidian-flecked Ford F-150 pickup.

The “Hurricane Homicide” trial was broadcast live on Court TV and later featured during prime time on Dateline. Prosecutors depicted Van Bonneville as a philandering shitweasel who had conspired to do away with his loving wife and blame it on the storm. The motives were laid out as greed (a $75,000 life-insurance policy) and lust, Van Bonneville having acquired a new girlfriend who then went by the name of Jean Leigh Hill. Tall and smoky-eyed, her long languorous walk to the witness stand was the undisputed highlight of the trial.

Eugenie testified that she’d taken up with Van Bonneville believing he was a widower, having fallen for his claim that his wife had perished in a freak tanning booth mishap. It wasn’t until three days after the hurricane that Eugenie had spotted a newspaper story about the missing Mrs. Bonneville. The enlightening article included several quotes from her “tearful and apprehensive husband.” Immediately Eugenie located the one and only love letter that Van Bonneville had scrawled to her, and marched to the police station.

Scandalous headlines were followed by the obligatory book deal. Soon a ghostwriter arrived from New York to help Ms. Hill organize her recollections of the romance, although there wasn’t much to recollect. Eugenie had known Van Bonneville all of eleven days before the crime. They’d gone on one lousy date, to play putt-putt golf, and afterward they’d had putt-putt sex in the cab of his pickup. That it was enough to leave Van Bonneville smitten and dreamy-eyed had been mildly depressing to Eugenie.