Speaker 1: It was a majestic summer evening in Manhattan in June
Speaker 1: nineteen o six. The scene was like something torn from
Speaker 1: the pages of The Great Gatsby. A few hundred of
Speaker 1: New York's pashaus citizens sat under the stars on the
Speaker 1: rooftop theater at the old Madison Square Garden. They were
Speaker 1: there for the premiere of a new musical. Stanford White,
Speaker 1: the wealthy owner of Madison Square Garden, sat at his
Speaker 1: reserved table in the front. The show was coming to
Speaker 1: an end with the final number. I could love a
Speaker 1: Million Girls, I heard him says good Luther was lone
Speaker 1: is rubbish. White cut a larger than life figure in
Speaker 1: turn of the century New York, and he was a
Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein of his age. He indulged his lavish appetites
Speaker 1: with impunity, and that included beautiful teenage girls. Oh good,
Speaker 1: love a million girls. Never girl a twin. I could
Speaker 1: love a John It's girl, and ask you more back.
Speaker 1: Stanford White's appetites were about to catch up with him.
Speaker 1: What I f that thing that I would love about
Speaker 1: the million girls? People in the audience thought that the
Speaker 1: gunshots were part of the show. At first, the music
Speaker 1: kept playing. I love the girl with legs along with
Speaker 1: Beau did you like you? Then there were a few screams,
Speaker 1: then panic. The magical evening atmosphere evaporated like a dream.
Speaker 1: A man wearing a black tuxedo, a white straw boater hat,
Speaker 1: and an overcoat far too heavy for a hot summer night,
Speaker 1: raised a pistol over his head. The man screamed, I
Speaker 1: did it because he ruined my wife. When thing good
Speaker 1: love Girl, it was an unforgettable night at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 1: One millionaire murdered another millionaire in a fit of rage
Speaker 1: and jealousy, and that was just the start of the madness. Girl.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to The Thread, a podcast from Ozzie. I'm
Speaker 1: Sean Braswell. This season we dig into some of history's
Speaker 1: most incredible criminal trials, ones that attempted to find a
Speaker 1: defendant not guilty by way of insanity. It's a criminal
Speaker 1: defense fraught with controversy, and it goes back over two
Speaker 1: hundred years. Our Thread this season began with the recent
Speaker 1: case of James Holmes, the young man who opened fire
Speaker 1: on a Colorado movie theater. In homes suffered from a
Speaker 1: variety of delusions, but experts and the jury at his
Speaker 1: trial determined that Holmes knew the difference between right and wrong,
Speaker 1: and he was therefore not legally insane when he committed
Speaker 1: the crime. Part of the reason that even mentally ill
Speaker 1: defendants like Holmes faced an uphill battle and pleading insanity
Speaker 1: is the public and legal reaction to the outcomes in
Speaker 1: two earlier insanity cases. In those two cases, which we
Speaker 1: covered in episodes two and three, both Ringa Bobbitt, who
Speaker 1: cut off her husband's penis with a kitchen knife, and
Speaker 1: John Hinckley Jr. Who nearly killed President Ronald Reagan with
Speaker 1: a gunshot, were found not guilty of any crimes by
Speaker 1: reason of insanity. In this episode, we turned back the
Speaker 1: clock more than seventy years to the nineteen o six
Speaker 1: murder of Stanford White on the rooftop of Madison Square.
Speaker 1: Guard White's killer was an eccentric businessman from Pittsburgh named
Speaker 1: Harry Thaw. Thaw's wealthy family was prepared to pay a
Speaker 1: million dollars to spare him from the electric chair. They
Speaker 1: were also prepared to embrace an unorthodox legal strategy. Harry
Speaker 1: Thaw's murder trial and his insanity plea transfixed the American
Speaker 1: public and reimagine the criminal law. America was at a
Speaker 1: key turning point in its history in the early years
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. Paula You're a Bureau is a
Speaker 1: professor of English and film studies at Hofstra University and
Speaker 1: the author of American Eve. I gave a recent talk,
Speaker 1: and I decided to describe New York City at the
Speaker 1: turn of the century as the city of the temples
Speaker 1: of power and temples of pleasure, and I would add progress,
Speaker 1: because it was the century of progress. Huge fortunes were
Speaker 1: made in areas like banking, oil, railroads, and steel by
Speaker 1: men with names like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and
Speaker 1: Henry Clay Frick. And people who made their fortunes such
Speaker 1: as Carnegie or Frick would usually moved to New York
Speaker 1: City from wherever they came from, simply because New York
Speaker 1: was the most exciting and the most interesting place to be.
Speaker 1: Simon Botts is a professor of history at the John
Speaker 1: J College of Justice and author of The Girl in
Speaker 1: the Velvet Swing. And so New York City became really
Speaker 1: the repository of a huge amount of wealth as these
Speaker 1: multi millionaires moved to the city, and when they came here.
Speaker 1: What they did was they hired architects to build them
Speaker 1: luxurious houses and mansions. Stanford White was one of those architects.
Speaker 1: He was determined to sort of remake New York in
Speaker 1: his own image. White design luxurious homes for wealthy clients
Speaker 1: like the Vanderbilts and the Astors and UH. In addition
Speaker 1: to private houses, he he designed a lot of public spaces,
Speaker 1: including UH probably the most famous things are that are
Speaker 1: still there as well to the Washington Square arch the
Speaker 1: original Penn Station, and of course Madison Square Garden, which
Speaker 1: was the sort of jewel in the crown of his
Speaker 1: achievements as in architect Madison Square Garden was a block
Speaker 1: long entertainment company lex in Manhattan. It had an enormous amphitheater.
Speaker 1: We're up to seventeen thousand spectators gathered for horse shows,
Speaker 1: boxing matches, and political meetings. There was a ballroom, a restaurant,
Speaker 1: a concert hall, an indoor theater, and an open air
Speaker 1: rooftop theater. A large nude bronze statue of the Goddess
Speaker 1: Diana loomed over the rooftop theater on top of a
Speaker 1: gleaming tower. Madison Square Garden made Stanford White a New
Speaker 1: York celebrity. He was very tall, he was very distinctive,
Speaker 1: he had striking red hair, and by all accounts, he
Speaker 1: was a very gregarious, charming, considerate individual. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, he had I think a self destructive tendency
Speaker 1: inside his character. White's character was also destructive to others.
Speaker 1: The woman at the center of the love triangle that
Speaker 1: would result in White's murder said that he had vicious
Speaker 1: tendencies he quote performed frequently without remorse, with the sense
Speaker 1: that he and his friends were immune to the laws
Speaker 1: of the land. That woman was Evelyn Nesbitt. She was
Speaker 1: born in a torrent in Pennsylvania, which was a suburb
Speaker 1: of Pittsburgh, and at least for the first ten years
Speaker 1: of her life it was a fairly traditional I think
Speaker 1: childhood Paula, You're a bureau again. But then her father
Speaker 1: died suddenly when she was eleven, and she and her
Speaker 1: mother and she had a younger brother, were thrown into poverty.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like a Dickens novel. Evelyn Nesbitt
Speaker 1: came to New York with her mother and brother in
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred. She was just fifteen Simon Barts, and immediately
Speaker 1: Evelyn got employment as a model, modeling for illustrators of
Speaker 1: magazines and newspapers, and also for artists. Nesbitt had a distinctive,
Speaker 1: effortless beauty that set her apart from the other models
Speaker 1: of her day. She had large, haunting eyes, a mysterious
Speaker 1: mona Lisa half smile, and an enchanting, angelic face. Everybody said,
Speaker 1: and now it's funny when you say it. Now she
Speaker 1: had a face to die for, which was, of course
Speaker 1: what what was going to happen? But her face was
Speaker 1: her fortune in Her face was on the Whitman sampler,
Speaker 1: and her faces on sheet music, and it was on
Speaker 1: anything you could put a picture on. Nesbitt became an
Speaker 1: American sweetheart, perhaps the nation's first true pin up girl.
Speaker 1: One Calumness dubbed her a modern Helen. But she wanted
Speaker 1: more than that. She decided she wanted to be a
Speaker 1: chorus girl. Like all young girls who come to the city,
Speaker 1: they want to be rich, they want to be famous.
Speaker 1: She managed to get into the chorus of the most
Speaker 1: popular show and broad at the time, which was called
Speaker 1: Flora Dora. Her mother lied about her age and said
Speaker 1: that she was eighteen when she was only sixteen. As
Speaker 1: a chorus girl, Nesbit became the object of even more
Speaker 1: men's affections. The owner of Madison Square Garden was no different.
Speaker 1: Stanford White saw her and was immediately sort of smitten
Speaker 1: with her. Unlike Nesbitt's other admirers, however, White had the
Speaker 1: means to pursue his crush. Stanford White invited her to
Speaker 1: lunch one day and gradually got to know her. And
Speaker 1: at this time Stanford White was forty seven years old
Speaker 1: and Evelyn Nesbit was sixteen years old. White celaborate seduction
Speaker 1: of the beautiful teenager began at his Manhattan bachelor pad
Speaker 1: on West Street, and that's where she met White for
Speaker 1: the first time. And he was showing around all of
Speaker 1: the beautiful rooms and things that he had decorated. It
Speaker 1: wasn't it was not a house that was known to
Speaker 1: his wife or his family. He called it one of
Speaker 1: his snuggeries. There were red velvet curtains and beautiful pieces
Speaker 1: of hand carved Italian furniture, fine paintings hung on the walls.
Speaker 1: After lunch, White invited Nesbit upstairs to see more of
Speaker 1: his home in art collections, including a very special room
Speaker 1: on the top floor of the building Simon Botz again,
Speaker 1: author of The Girl on the Velvet Swing. So the
Speaker 1: whole of the fourth floor is open. It's like a
Speaker 1: room that goes from the front of the building to
Speaker 1: the back of the building. So it's a very large room,
Speaker 1: and there's a swing with a velvet padded seat with
Speaker 1: velvet ropes descending from the ceiling. Paul You're Bureau again,
Speaker 1: author of American eve He showed her this red velvet
Speaker 1: swing that was put in the room so that you
Speaker 1: could push somebody on the swing, and then the uh
Speaker 1: in Evelyn's case, he put her on the swing that
Speaker 1: afternoon and he hung a Japanese paper parasol in the ceiling,
Speaker 1: and she pushed her to see if she could break
Speaker 1: it with her foot. And you can get all fright
Speaker 1: in about what that means, but but that was the
Speaker 1: introduction that she had to White. White lavished more money
Speaker 1: and attention on the young woman after that first encounter.
Speaker 1: It was all part of a well hound routine. Nesbitt
Speaker 1: later described it this way. On the witness stand, men
Speaker 1: like White reduced their methods to an exact science. He
Speaker 1: put her and her mother in an apartment, He sent
Speaker 1: her brother to school, He had her taking piano lessons.
Speaker 1: He was he was what seemed like a very paternal benefactor,
Speaker 1: and you realize now that he was probably grooming her.
Speaker 1: The courtship went on for a few months, then White
Speaker 1: made his true intentions known. He was, as Nesbit put it,
Speaker 1: a benevolent vampire. I think of him more like Roman Polanski,
Speaker 1: but I think of him as somebody who had who was,
Speaker 1: who was an artist and a genius and a lover
Speaker 1: of beauty. People knew that he had an eye for
Speaker 1: younger girls. One evening after her performance ended, Nesbit arrived
Speaker 1: at White's home for a dinner party, but to her surprise,
Speaker 1: only White was waiting for her. He was apologetic, isn't
Speaker 1: it too bad? He said that all the others have
Speaker 1: turned us down. White informed Nesbit that they would have
Speaker 1: their own party. He said to her, I want to
Speaker 1: show you another room. And she goes up this other
Speaker 1: set of stairs that she had never seen before, and
Speaker 1: there was this mirrored room with a mirrored bed and
Speaker 1: mirrors on the ceiling. There was a small table that
Speaker 1: stood next to an enormous four poster canopied bed. There
Speaker 1: was a bottle of champagne on the table and a
Speaker 1: single glass. White poured Evelyn a glass of champagne. She
Speaker 1: sipped it, she tasted it. She didn't like the taste,
Speaker 1: but he asked her to tasted some more, and she
Speaker 1: fell unconscious. And then she woke up later to find
Speaker 1: herself naked in bed, with Stanford White lying next to her,
Speaker 1: and Evelyn the way she describes it, as she said,
Speaker 1: I went into the room of virgin, but I did
Speaker 1: not come out one. No one knows for sure if
Speaker 1: the champagne was drugged or not. Evelyn later maintained that
Speaker 1: she had just had too much of it. Whatever the cause,
Speaker 1: the result was the same. She woke up naked in
Speaker 1: the bed next to Stanford White and screamed. Her suitor
Speaker 1: tried to console her. He said, tenderly, don't cry, kittens,
Speaker 1: it's all over now you belong to me. The next
Speaker 1: thing she knew was that she was essentially White's mistress
Speaker 1: and was now a fixture at his party's um and
Speaker 1: got to meet everybody, from Edison to Sitting Ball to Nijinsky.
Speaker 1: She was meeting all these incredible people. She was enjoying
Speaker 1: the high life, and he was buying her furs and
Speaker 1: jewelry nes but began dating her patron and protector. But
Speaker 1: the following year she met another wealthy man, one with
Speaker 1: his own score to settle against wit. When it's time
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Speaker 1: and listen for a change. Harry kay Thaw came from
Speaker 1: a wealthy Pittsburgh family. His father had made his money
Speaker 1: in mining and railroads. He was the heir to a
Speaker 1: forty million dollar fortune um and his His father had
Speaker 1: died when Harry was eighteen, and he knew that there
Speaker 1: was something wrong with Harry, and he told his wife
Speaker 1: that Harry should be put on on a strict budget
Speaker 1: in terms of an allowance. Something was definitely wrong with
Speaker 1: the young Harry Thaw. He would giggle when he heard
Speaker 1: about someone else's misfortune. He was known as Mad Harry.
Speaker 1: He once made the papers for chasing a man down
Speaker 1: the street with an unloaded shotgun because he believed he
Speaker 1: cheated him out of ten cents change. He went to
Speaker 1: Harvard and spent most of his time smoking and playing poker.
Speaker 1: There he was expelled on grounds of moral turpitude, but
Speaker 1: there was no need for him to get a degree
Speaker 1: because his annual allowance was eighty thousand dollars. He was
Speaker 1: basically a playboy. Saw was a tall man with a
Speaker 1: boyish appearance, a pug nose, and an often idiotic grin.
Speaker 1: One Pittsburgh newspaper said he looked like a peeled turnip.
Speaker 1: Thaw felt that he was too big for Pittsburgh, and
Speaker 1: so he said sites on New York. But his reputation
Speaker 1: really was in advance of him, and so he never
Speaker 1: got accepted into New York society. So he never got
Speaker 1: admission to any of the clubs. And usually that would
Speaker 1: be easy for a wealthy person to do. They would
Speaker 1: accept you. But he never got accepted, and he was
Speaker 1: always black balled. Part of it undoubtedly had to do
Speaker 1: with his personality. He had a very short fuse. He
Speaker 1: had a very angry temper. He would do things on
Speaker 1: a whim. For example, if if he was in a
Speaker 1: restaurant and he didn't like the service, he would pull
Speaker 1: the tablecloth and all the dishes and cutlery would come
Speaker 1: clattering down onto the floor. There were other incidents. Thaw
Speaker 1: drove his car through the plate glass window of a
Speaker 1: shop on Fifth Avenue after an argument with a sales clerk.
Speaker 1: But thaws family and his fortune were always there to
Speaker 1: bail him out of trouble whatever his reckless and crazy behavior,
Speaker 1: and he really did have a lot of psychological problems.
Speaker 1: He used to talk baby talk at the age of
Speaker 1: thirty six, thought could also be quite charming. And when
Speaker 1: Evelyn Nesbit's relationship with her benefactor Stanford White finally went south,
Speaker 1: Harry Thaw was there to pick up the pieces. He
Speaker 1: began to court Nesbit relentlessly. Thaw knew that Nesbit dated White,
Speaker 1: and he knew all about White's reputation as a womanizer,
Speaker 1: but he never heard about how White pursued her. They
Speaker 1: went on vacation together during the summer in nineteen o three,
Speaker 1: and on that occasion, Evelyn told Harry about the rape,
Speaker 1: and this was the first time she had ever told
Speaker 1: anybody about the rape. And from that moment on, Harry
Speaker 1: Thorpe became obsessed with Stanford White, and his persistent courtship
Speaker 1: of Nesbit proved successful. He asked her to marry him
Speaker 1: several times and then she finally agreed to marry him,
Speaker 1: which she did at the age of nineteen. And I
Speaker 1: think it's a symbolic that the she wore a black
Speaker 1: dress to the wedding. The newly weds moved back to
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh and settled down for a while. Harry Thaw seemed
Speaker 1: almost well, saying Harry and Evelyn enjoyed a few months
Speaker 1: of marital bliss in their hometown, But Thaw could not
Speaker 1: keep his mind off Stanford White and what he had
Speaker 1: done to his wife. For the last year, he had
Speaker 1: been becoming more and more obsessed with having her retail
Speaker 1: the story of how White had taken advantage of her
Speaker 1: in seduced her. Then, in the summer of nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: Harry and Evelyn stopped in New York on their way
Speaker 1: to a European vacation. Harry proposed that they see a
Speaker 1: show at a somewhat surprising venue, Stanford White's rooftop Theater
Speaker 1: at Madison Square Garden, and Evelyn said to herself, this
Speaker 1: is really weird, because I can't believe Harry would want
Speaker 1: to be anywhere near, knowing a building that was associated
Speaker 1: with me and with White. It was an unseasonably hot day,
Speaker 1: even for New York in June. That day, the hippopotam
Speaker 1: us in the Central Park Zoo collapsed and died from
Speaker 1: heat exhaustion, a story that would take a back page
Speaker 1: in the following day's newspaper to what was about to
Speaker 1: happen at Madison Square Garden. It's, you know, a hundred degrees.
Speaker 1: It's they're out in an outdoor rooftop theater, and Harry's
Speaker 1: wearing this heavy overcoat, which I think he did because
Speaker 1: he was concealing the gun, because he couldn't hide it
Speaker 1: very well in his texedo. Harry and Evelyn took in
Speaker 1: the performance. A little before eleven pm, the garden's owner
Speaker 1: emerged from his private residence to join the audience. Evelyn
Speaker 1: watched Harry, who stood up at Stanford White's appearance with
Speaker 1: a glazed look in his eyes. She suggested that her
Speaker 1: husband leave the show, and as they were going towards
Speaker 1: the exit, Harry broke away, went to the front of
Speaker 1: the theater, where Stanford White was sitting in his usual seat,
Speaker 1: and then, in front of hundreds of theater goers, pulls
Speaker 1: out his pistol and fires three shots and instantly kills
Speaker 1: Stanford White. Harry Thaw stood over his victim, and then
Speaker 1: he held the gun up and said I to anybody
Speaker 1: that was still around him, he said, I did it
Speaker 1: because he ruined my wife. Three chorus girls fainted on
Speaker 1: the stage floor. The orchestra kept playing. Harry rejoined his wife,
Speaker 1: and a distraught Evelyn cried, oh, Harry, what have you done.
Speaker 1: He kissed her on the cheek and said, it's all right, dear,
Speaker 1: I've probably saved your life. Harry was arrested and taken
Speaker 1: down the garden's elevator. He calmly lit a cigarette when
Speaker 1: he exited the building. Up next, the criminal trial and
Speaker 1: the love triangle that shocked America. Harry Thaw was forced
Speaker 1: to call in his family yet again to bail him
Speaker 1: out and to embrace an unprecedented but brilliant new legal
Speaker 1: defense strategy to save himself from the electric chair. Don't
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Speaker 1: your free trial of CBS All Access. Every decade has
Speaker 1: its trial of the century. When I've talked about this
Speaker 1: as being the trial of the century, there people say, well,
Speaker 1: there was Leopold and Loebe, and there's Madson, and there's
Speaker 1: o J And I said, well, okay, but this was
Speaker 1: the first trial of the twentieth century. Just a week
Speaker 1: after the murder, Thomas Edison Studio put out a hastily
Speaker 1: made film reenactment of the crime, which audiences across the
Speaker 1: country swarm to watch. Teddy Roosevelt, the President of the
Speaker 1: United States, worried that the trial would distract Americans from
Speaker 1: their work, and even tried to suppress the transcripts from
Speaker 1: the trial on the grounds that the sordid material would
Speaker 1: ruin public virtue. One newspaper columnist summarized it, A rich
Speaker 1: man has been killed, a rich man did the killing,
Speaker 1: and so a world sits up to hear the tale.
Speaker 1: In every red and tripping particular. It was the breaking point.
Speaker 1: It between the old and the new in terms of
Speaker 1: the Victorian era versus now, what would become you know,
Speaker 1: modern America with the media circus and people using their
Speaker 1: money and influence to try to get around the law.
Speaker 1: New York's district attorney was determined to put Thaw in
Speaker 1: the electric chair for the murder of one of the
Speaker 1: city's most prominent citizens. Thaws family hired a team of
Speaker 1: high powered attorneys to fight back, but there was one
Speaker 1: big obstacle. Harry Thaw. So his attorneys wanted to actually
Speaker 1: claim that he was insane when he fired the gun,
Speaker 1: but he said, to his attorney's no way, I'm perfectly
Speaker 1: saying I did. I did the act, and in fact
Speaker 1: I should have been given a medal for getting rid
Speaker 1: of this pedophile and this rapist. Well Harry, of course,
Speaker 1: Harry really was delusional because he thought after he shot White,
Speaker 1: that he was going to be hailed as the conquering
Speaker 1: hero who had saved all of the young women of
Speaker 1: New York from from Stanford White. So thaws attorneys had
Speaker 1: to put aside the sanity defense and try something else.
Speaker 1: And so in the trial, the attorneys what they do
Speaker 1: is they come in with the defense that is dictated
Speaker 1: by Harry thorwe which is that the homicide was justifiable.
Speaker 1: They settled on what might be called an honor killing defense,
Speaker 1: based on a kind of vigilante notion that there was
Speaker 1: an unwritten law that a man had the right to
Speaker 1: defend his wife's honor. It succeeded in many many cases,
Speaker 1: particularly in the Southern States, that if you were the
Speaker 1: husband of a woman who had been attacked, assaulted, or raped,
Speaker 1: you had the right to go and take your revenge
Speaker 1: on the the the assailant. The New York newspapers had
Speaker 1: a field day with it. But the unwritten law was
Speaker 1: essential to Thaw's defense. They even gave it a name.
Speaker 1: They called it, in Harry's case, Dementia americana, which is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite terms. And they hired all these
Speaker 1: alienists who were, you know, the precursor to psychiatrists who
Speaker 1: come in it a thousand dollars a day to testify
Speaker 1: that Harry was suffering terribly because of this dementia Americana.
Speaker 1: Thaw's lawyers tried to refocus the case away from Thaw's
Speaker 1: own conduct and onto the sordid behavior of the man
Speaker 1: whose conduct had prompted the crime, Stanford White. One of
Speaker 1: the first witnesses, was a cab driver who used to
Speaker 1: bring people to Madison Square Gordon, and when they asked
Speaker 1: if he was surprised about what happened, he said, no,
Speaker 1: I was just surprised that it that it was a
Speaker 1: husband that killed him. I always thought it would be
Speaker 1: a father. Shocking tales of White's prolific womanizing began to surface,
Speaker 1: and the dead man's conduct became a central part of
Speaker 1: Harry Thaw's defense. The thing, of course, if you say
Speaker 1: it's a justifiable homicide, why is it justifiable because Stunfield
Speaker 1: White raped Evelyn? But who is going to testify that
Speaker 1: the rape happened. There's only one witness by necessity, and
Speaker 1: that's Evelyn Nesbit, And so everything depended on her testimony.
Speaker 1: And she's only twenty one years old. And Evelyn finally
Speaker 1: decided she didn't want to see Harry go to the
Speaker 1: electric chair, so she gets up on the stand tells
Speaker 1: her story about what White did, and they were they
Speaker 1: were pushing her to say that he had drugged her
Speaker 1: and raped her, and um she went along with this story.
Speaker 1: America was gripped by Evelyn's testimony, so was the defendant.
Speaker 1: Several times Harry sat forward in his chair and gripped
Speaker 1: the table so hard his knuckles turned red. When she
Speaker 1: finished recounting the tail of her to flowering, he broke
Speaker 1: down and cried. Thanks in part to Evelyn's convincing testimony, however,
Speaker 1: many Americans came to see Harry Thaw as a kind
Speaker 1: of moral crusader, defending women like Evelyn against monsters like
Speaker 1: Stanford White. Harry became, as Evelyn herself put it, America's
Speaker 1: pet murderer. That status, however, was not enough to get
Speaker 1: him acquitted. Surprisingly enough, even though he went and shot
Speaker 1: a man in cold blood in front of a thousand people,
Speaker 1: it was a hung jury. In April nineteen o seven,
Speaker 1: after forty seven hours of deliberations, the jury announced it
Speaker 1: was hopelessly deadlocked. Guarding the guilt of Harry Thaw imagine
Speaker 1: if there had been a second O. J. Simpson trial,
Speaker 1: could the nation have handled another such spectacle well. In January,
Speaker 1: less than a year after the hung jury, everyone reconvened
Speaker 1: for the second trial of Harry k Thaw. This time,
Speaker 1: Harry's counsel was not going to take anything off the table.
Speaker 1: The next lawyer convinced mother thought, if you don't allow
Speaker 1: us to do to go with the insanity plea, he
Speaker 1: will be convicted. Make no bones about it. He is
Speaker 1: going to be convicted, and he will go to the
Speaker 1: electric chair. Pleading insanity was not much of a stretch either.
Speaker 1: Harry had such a smart gesh board of illnesses it
Speaker 1: was almost like where do you begin with this? And
Speaker 1: so they came up with the term of a brainstorm
Speaker 1: that Harry was suffering from a temporary brainstorm after Evelyn
Speaker 1: had told him one too many times about the her
Speaker 1: affair with White. But proving temporary insanity or a brainstorm
Speaker 1: was a look at matter. You know, it was unusual.
Speaker 1: This whole notion of the insanity defense was not something
Speaker 1: that was really well known in there were such a
Speaker 1: a bias against the notion of any kind of mental illness,
Speaker 1: of any of insanity. You know, this is the age
Speaker 1: where people would be locked up away from side. There
Speaker 1: was no attempt to try to cure people of mental illnesses.
Speaker 1: At this point. Thaw and his family pulled out all
Speaker 1: the stops when it came to demonstrating thaws mental instability. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: there were plenty of witnesses willing to testify to it.
Speaker 1: Simon Botts again, the defense was really to present witnesses
Speaker 1: from way way back, many many witnesses from all different
Speaker 1: periods of Harry Thaw's life who would testify to Thor's
Speaker 1: eccentric and irrational, apparently irrational behavior. And so you would
Speaker 1: have nursemaids who would say that when Harry was a
Speaker 1: child he was uncontrollable. You would have teachers come in
Speaker 1: from his schools who were saying that he never learned anything,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But what was truly insane
Speaker 1: was the amount of money that Thaw's family spent on
Speaker 1: a team of twelve expert witnesses. It costs close to
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars a day for each of the dozen
Speaker 1: psychiatric experts. The defense desperately wanted to show that Thaw
Speaker 1: was temporarily unmoored from reality. That his unstable personality merely
Speaker 1: acted impulsively when he was confronted by his wife's mistreatment
Speaker 1: at the hands of Stanford White. The real sticking point
Speaker 1: was whether Thaw planned White's murder. It's very difficult to
Speaker 1: know whether the murder was premeditated, and it's an important point,
Speaker 1: of course, because it was premeditated and it's intentional than
Speaker 1: Harry Thorne knows what he's doing. Thaw was obsessed with
Speaker 1: Stanford White and often had him followed by detectives. He
Speaker 1: almost certainly knew that White would be present at the
Speaker 1: show that night. He carried a gun inside a heavy
Speaker 1: overcoat on a sweltering summer evening. But Thaw also started
Speaker 1: to leave the theater that night with Evelyn before he
Speaker 1: turned and decided to go after White. And there was
Speaker 1: no question about his motive for the murder, and that
Speaker 1: he did it in a fit of rage. This time,
Speaker 1: the jury deliberated for just twenty four hours. The jury,
Speaker 1: in fact, they agreed with the defense and they came
Speaker 1: back with a verdict that he was not guilty by
Speaker 1: res of insanity. Harry thaws acquittal on grounds of insanity
Speaker 1: was hardly the end of his troubles. He was convinced
Speaker 1: that he would just say he had a temporary brainstorm
Speaker 1: and then he would get off. That was not the case.
Speaker 1: They put him in the in the asylum up state
Speaker 1: for the criminal insane, and it took him another six
Speaker 1: years to get out. It was a very unhappy situation,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine. Varry thought, who of course, thought
Speaker 1: he was perfectly sane and thought he had done the
Speaker 1: world a great favor by killing Statford White. Harry and
Speaker 1: Evelyn eventually divorced after the trial. Her life and career
Speaker 1: would never be the same. She descended into alcoholism and
Speaker 1: drug abuse. She lived with a pet Boa constrictor. She
Speaker 1: went from celebrity to curiosity. For a brief period, she
Speaker 1: went into vaudeville. She was in singing in nightclubs. Um
Speaker 1: She had gotten into a morphine addiction because she had
Speaker 1: hurt herself all those years of modeling she had. She
Speaker 1: had developed problems with her neck in her back before
Speaker 1: her death in nineteen seven. Her life became the basis
Speaker 1: for the nineteen fifty four film The Girl in the
Speaker 1: Red Velvet Swing, starring a young actress named Joan Collins
Speaker 1: as Evelyn Harry Thaw continued to insist that he was
Speaker 1: never crazy long after he was released from the asylum.
Speaker 1: He even wrote a book about it. When I discovered
Speaker 1: this transcript the original typed manuscript of his book, it
Speaker 1: has all of his notes and more Ginnale on it
Speaker 1: and scrawled across it in giant letters, he wrote, I
Speaker 1: was not insane, which I just think is just hilarious.
Speaker 1: The case of Harry Thaw was not the first celebrity
Speaker 1: love triangle to end in murder and captivate the American
Speaker 1: public with illegal to fans based on insanity. Harry Thos
Speaker 1: lawyers had a precedent to point to from nearly half
Speaker 1: a century earlier. Next week, on the thread the murder
Speaker 1: of Barton Key, the Playboys, son of Francis Scott Key,
Speaker 1: the author of the American National Anthem, it was said
Speaker 1: that he once reportedly bragged that he only needed thirty
Speaker 1: six hours with any woman to get her to do
Speaker 1: whatever he wanted. But one of those women happened to
Speaker 1: be the wife of a very powerful and mentally unstable congressman.
Speaker 1: People often portray Ki is a victim, but yeah, you
Speaker 1: know Key, you could kind of argue was a little
Speaker 1: bit of a scumbag too, and I think, uh that
Speaker 1: this might be one of those stories where there really
Speaker 1: are no good guys. Barton Key was shot to death
Speaker 1: in broad daylight by a sitting US congressman just yards
Speaker 1: from the White House. Yeah. I mean literally, if it
Speaker 1: was an episode of House of Cards, you wouldn't believe it, right,
Speaker 1: But it really happened. I heard him says, good, that
Speaker 1: is rubbish. Memersla wars met us. Now now my heart
Speaker 1: is made us up of stuff. It mols beat your west.
Speaker 1: A pretty girl can't look hi way we do? Oh good?
Speaker 1: Love a million girls and never girl a twin. I
Speaker 1: would love a jarnest girl and ask you more. I
Speaker 1: would love a germ girl, a girl with golden girls?
Speaker 1: What a fact? That thing that I would love about
Speaker 1: the million girls. The Threat is produced by Robert Coolo,
Speaker 1: Sofia Perpetua and me Sean braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show.
Speaker 1: This episode features raw Hide performing I Could Love a
Speaker 1: Million Girls. To learn more about the Thread, visit AUSI
Speaker 1: dot com, Slash the Threat all one word, and make
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to the thread on Apple podcast, follow
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