A beautiful and ruthless lady from Ohio, Zeo Zoe Wilkins made her living as a gold digger, marrying a series of wealthy older men. She hired attorney Jesse James, Jr. to provide legal muscle to extract money from an ex-husband. On the night of March 15, 1924, she was brutally murdered in her Kansas City home. Deftly mixing historical conjecture with forensic fact, the author follows the opportunistic, eccentric, and troubled lives of Wilkins and James, while making a convincing case that their mutual avarice led to a murderous confrontation that bloody night.