Jessie Costello longed to escape her suffocating marriage.
The fun-loving young lady from Peabody, Massachusetts was the dancing definition of a flapper – bobbed hair, short skirts, a brassy personality. Yet by age 21 she found herself married to a stern Irish Catholic fireman named Bill. By age 30, she was a weary mother of four.
So the unhappy housewife struck up an affair with a married policeman named Edward McMahon. She nicknamed her beau “Big Boy” and struggled to keep their liaison a secret.
One day in February of 1933, a candy saleswoman rang the doorbell of the Costello home. Jessie invited the woman inside and soon agreed to purchase an assortment of sweet treats.
She left to get her purse – then let out an awful scream. “My husband,” she cried, “he’s dead!”