A look back at 'The Shooting of the Century' in the 1950s on LI's Gold Coast

He had once been declared the most eligible bachelor in America. She'd once been called "The Most Beautiful Girl in Radio."

Together, they were high-society stars, Ann and William Woodward Jr. Her, a woman who'd fled Pittsburg, a town tucked into the bottom corner of desolate, desperate east Kansas. Him, a Harvard grad, a U.S. Navy hero who had been awarded a Purple Heart in World War II, an heir to the Hanover National Bank, a blue blood playboy whose thoroughbred, Nashua, would be the horse of the year in America.

Then in the dark, early morning hours of Oct. 30, 1955, not long after arriving home from a dinner party in Locust Valley hosted by Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, Billy Woodward, 35, was dead. And Ann Woodward was a grieving wife who admitted shooting him.

By accide