"My wife's been shot! I've been shot!" — Millions of television viewers heard Charles Stuart's frantic call that he made to police on his cell phone. His beautiful wife, 7 mos. pregnant, lay dying next to him in their BMW. Charles Stuart was seriously wounded. — Stuart told police a terrifying story of an unknown assailant leaping into the car at a stoplight before shooting the couple. The outpouring of grief and sympathy for Charles Stuart came from every quarter - the media, public officials, the nation at large.

But it was all a deadly hoax. Three months after the death of Carol Stuart and the son she carried in her womb, Charles Stuart discovered that police were about to arrest him for the double-murder. That night he lept to his death in the Mystic River. In his wake he left a family in agony, a city in conflict, and an entire country asking, simply, why? What kind of monster hid behind the charming smile of Charles Stuart?