Homicide at Rough Point, the new book by best-selling HarperCollins author Peter Lance, based on Lance’s piece in Vanity Fair's July/Aug 2020 issue, solves the 54-year-old cold case murder of Eduardo Tirella, a gay Hollywood set designer whose career was just taking off when he told the notoriously jealous and vindictive billionaire Doris Duke that he was leaving her employ. Moments later, on October 7, 1966, Duke crushed Tirella to death under a two-ton station wagon outside the gates of Rough Point, her Newport, RI, estate. Ninety-six hours later, the local police declared the death an “unfortunate accident”, and Duke began spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in Newport, which has a storied history, from pre-Revolutionary times, through the Gilded Age, up through the 1960s.

One of the nation’s wealthiest resorts, Newport - home to the America’s Cups Races, tennis championships, and jazz and folk festivals - was the site of President Kennedy’s unofficial summer White House. In the book, Lance uncovers heretofore missing forensic evidence that proves Duke - then the heir to a vast fortune funded with profits from American Tobacco Company, Alcoa Aluminum, and Duke Power (now Duke energy) and reigning scion of the family that founded Duke University - not only acted with intent in the homicide, but conspired with local police at the time to cover up the crime.

A five-time Emmy Award-winning former correspondent for ABC News, Lance started working for The Newport Daily News as a cub reporter eight months after Tirella’s death and was obsessed for more than 50 years with solving the case. The result is a book with 105 images and 915 end-note annotations that sets the record straight and restores the reputation of Tirella, a war hero whom Duke's attorneys shamelessly denigrated. On December 24, 2020, AppleNews+ called Lance's VF piece the best true crime story of 2020 and Homicide, the book, has been at the top of Amazon’s list of Coming in True Crime ever since.

More information at: peterlance.com

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