Mary Rogers

And Poe launched a new literary genre, the detective story, just a year later.

So this was 1841, and later the same year, there's a lady called Mary Rogers.

She was a very popular cigar store clerk in New York City when proper ladies didn't typically work in cigar stores, and then all of a sudden she disappeared.

And she was missing for three days, and they found her floating in the Hudson River off of Hoboken.

15 Minutes of Infamy with Marlon Bressie

In 1840, Mary Cecilia Rogers was a 21-year-old beauty who worked in a tobacco shop of John Anderson on a street in New York known as Broadway.

Her home was a boarding house run by her widowed mother, Phoebe, just a short walk from her place of employment.

And Anderson had hired Mary because he believed that the best way to pull in male customers from the street was to have a beautiful female face behind the counter.

Downing, as she had done countless times before since childhood.

But when Monday came and Mary still hadn't returned, Daniel went to the Downing residence, only to discover that Mary had never shown up there.

Daniel rushed to the offices of the New York Sun and paid for a newspaper notice announcing that Mary Cecilia Rogers was missing.

He knew there was no point in notifying the police, as major city police departments rarely wasted their time with missing persons cases in those days.

Tonight, Autolite combines fact and fiction.

The fact, the murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers in New York City.

The fiction, Edgar Allan Poe's solution of that crime, which he called The Mystery of Marie Roget.

Our star, Mr. Cornel Wilde.

In the darkening afternoon, inside a gray stone building, I invite you to attend another event I think you will find significant.

Ensign Robert Bryant Wilson.

You have been found guilty of the murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers.

It is the judgment of this court... that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead.