Don’t miss this informative interview with Virginia McConnell at Vice.com

In her, The Belle of Bedford Avenue: The Sensational Brooks-Burns Murder in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Virginia A. McConnell explores what happened in decisive and painstaking detail. National headlines of the day read “Brooklyn is a Modern Sodom” and called the situation a “disgusting state of affairs.” But VICE talked to McConnell to find out how technology gave teens more freedom in the early 1900s, how the Bedford Avenue Gang were the jet-setters of their day, what led up to Walter Brooks being killed, and how what we now call “affluenza” led to murder.