In August 1878, a Jersey City policeman is found bludgeoned and stabbed to death in his own bed, supposedly while his wife lay sleeping beside him unaware. Suspicion immediately falls on the wife and her suspected teenage paramour. Did a twenty-something Jersey girl from the rural farmlands turn city-girl killer? Canary in a Cage: The Smith-Bennett Murder Case is historical fiction based on the true story of the violent killing of Officer Richard Harrison Smith whose wife Jenny Woolley Smith was accused of the murder, arrested and faced the hangman's noose along with a local boy hopelessly infatuated with her.