“One man dead, another in hospital following Redfern double stabbing,” the headline read. I glanced over the story. It sounded seedy, brutal. As the news unfolded during the following days in August, it was revealed that the injured man was in a critical condition in hospital, that the stabbing was believed to have resulted from a drug deal gone wrong, and that police were searching for three suspects, two men and a woman.

Suddenly the focus of the reporting shifted: the woman was the daughter of a former premier, and came from a different world, of privilege, prestige and profile. The slant now became salacious. Juicy. It was the kind of morality tale the media is partial to: the fall from a great height, viewed through the prism of schadenfreude. It was that happiest of marriages, the crime beat exchanging vows with the society page.

Narratively speaking, the...