The nonfiction book recounts an apparent double murder on Palmyra Atoll although only one body was ever found; the subsequent arrest, trial, and conviction of Wesley G. "Buck Duane" Walker; and the acquittal of his girlfriend, Jennifer Jenkins, whom Bugliosi and Leonard Weinglass had defended.

In contrast, the Grahams' ketch, the Sea Wind, was beautifully finished and impeccably outfitted, with an onboard machine shop equipped with a lathe and acetylene welding torch.

Walker was an ex-convict fleeing a drug possession charge and had come up with the idea of growing cannabis on Palmyra to support himself.

On September 11, 1974, after days of searching and waiting for the Grahams to return to their boat, Stearns said she and Walker scuttled the Iola and sailed for Hawaii on the Sea Wind.

Stearns was arrested in the lower level of the Hawaii Yacht Club for the theft of the Sea Wind,[1] but Walker was able to temporarily escape by using a motorized dinghy to race up the "400 row" of the Ala Wai Harbor.

In 1981, a South African couple visiting Palmyra found a human skull and other bones that had apparently fallen out of a World War II vintage metal box washed up on the beach after a storm.

During the voyage back to Hawaii, it was claimed that a large swordfish damaged the Sea Wind's hull below the waterline, necessitating her repair and subsequent repainting and renaming.

After Bugliosi argued that Buck Walker had committed the Palmyra murders himself without Stearns's participation or knowledge, and following her testimony at the trial, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

Bugliosi spends much of the book emphasizing the complexity of his legal work on the case and is surprised by Stearns's lack of gratitude after the verdict.