WEBVTT - America's Pet Murderer 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.200 It was a majestic summer evening in Manhattan in June 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:06.480 nineteen o six. The scene was like something torn from 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:09.360 the pages of The Great Gatsby. A few hundred of 0:00:09.360 --> 0:00:12.520 New York's pashaus citizens sat under the stars on the 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:16.360 rooftop theater at the old Madison Square Garden. They were 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:28.360 there for the premiere of a new musical. Stanford White, 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:31.440 the wealthy owner of Madison Square Garden, sat at his 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:34.600 reserved table in the front. The show was coming to 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:37.080 an end with the final number. I could love a 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:42.920 Million Girls, I heard him says good Luther was lone 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:49.320 is rubbish. White cut a larger than life figure in 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.199 turn of the century New York, and he was a 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:56.240 Harvey Weinstein of his age. He indulged his lavish appetites 0:00:56.280 --> 0:01:02.240 with impunity, and that included beautiful teenage girls. Oh good, 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:06.680 love a million girls. Never girl a twin. I could 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:10.120 love a John It's girl, and ask you more back. 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.440 Stanford White's appetites were about to catch up with him. 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:17.400 What I f that thing that I would love about 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:25.800 the million girls? People in the audience thought that the 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:28.880 gunshots were part of the show. At first, the music 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:33.360 kept playing. I love the girl with legs along with 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:37.520 Beau did you like you? Then there were a few screams, 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:44.399 then panic. The magical evening atmosphere evaporated like a dream. 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.640 A man wearing a black tuxedo, a white straw boater hat, 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:50.640 and an overcoat far too heavy for a hot summer night, 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.240 raised a pistol over his head. The man screamed, I 0:01:55.280 --> 0:02:00.720 did it because he ruined my wife. When thing good 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:10.200 love Girl, it was an unforgettable night at Madison Square Garden. 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.040 One millionaire murdered another millionaire in a fit of rage 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:22.680 and jealousy, and that was just the start of the madness. Girl. 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:32.600 Welcome back to The Thread, a podcast from Ozzie. I'm 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.800 Sean Braswell. This season we dig into some of history's 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.239 most incredible criminal trials, ones that attempted to find a 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:43.079 defendant not guilty by way of insanity. It's a criminal 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:45.840 defense fraught with controversy, and it goes back over two 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:50.000 hundred years. Our Thread this season began with the recent 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.080 case of James Holmes, the young man who opened fire 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:57.000 on a Colorado movie theater. In homes suffered from a 0:02:57.080 --> 0:02:59.880 variety of delusions, but experts and the jury at his 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.359 trial determined that Holmes knew the difference between right and wrong, 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:07.040 and he was therefore not legally insane when he committed 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.440 the crime. Part of the reason that even mentally ill 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.400 defendants like Holmes faced an uphill battle and pleading insanity 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.000 is the public and legal reaction to the outcomes in 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:22.200 two earlier insanity cases. In those two cases, which we 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.480 covered in episodes two and three, both Ringa Bobbitt, who 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:27.960 cut off her husband's penis with a kitchen knife, and 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.440 John Hinckley Jr. Who nearly killed President Ronald Reagan with 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:35.320 a gunshot, were found not guilty of any crimes by 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:42.680 reason of insanity. In this episode, we turned back the 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.960 clock more than seventy years to the nineteen o six 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.400 murder of Stanford White on the rooftop of Madison Square. 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:53.680 Guard White's killer was an eccentric businessman from Pittsburgh named 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:57.280 Harry Thaw. Thaw's wealthy family was prepared to pay a 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:00.600 million dollars to spare him from the electric chair. They 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:05.040 were also prepared to embrace an unorthodox legal strategy. Harry 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:09.240 Thaw's murder trial and his insanity plea transfixed the American 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:19.520 public and reimagine the criminal law. America was at a 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.000 key turning point in its history in the early years 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.919 of the twentieth century. Paula You're a Bureau is a 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:28.680 professor of English and film studies at Hofstra University and 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:31.880 the author of American Eve. I gave a recent talk, 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.800 and I decided to describe New York City at the 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:38.200 turn of the century as the city of the temples 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:41.600 of power and temples of pleasure, and I would add progress, 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.640 because it was the century of progress. Huge fortunes were 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:48.600 made in areas like banking, oil, railroads, and steel by 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.080 men with names like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.920 Henry Clay Frick. And people who made their fortunes such 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.599 as Carnegie or Frick would usually moved to New York 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.640 City from wherever they came from, simply because New York 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.039 was the most exciting and the most interesting place to be. 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:07.719 Simon Botts is a professor of history at the John 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.200 J College of Justice and author of The Girl in 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.880 the Velvet Swing. And so New York City became really 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:16.279 the repository of a huge amount of wealth as these 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:20.440 multi millionaires moved to the city, and when they came here. 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.160 What they did was they hired architects to build them 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:27.480 luxurious houses and mansions. Stanford White was one of those architects. 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:30.279 He was determined to sort of remake New York in 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:34.000 his own image. White design luxurious homes for wealthy clients 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:37.640 like the Vanderbilts and the Astors and UH. In addition 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.680 to private houses, he he designed a lot of public spaces, 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:44.280 including UH probably the most famous things are that are 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.800 still there as well to the Washington Square arch the 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:52.359 original Penn Station, and of course Madison Square Garden, which 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:54.719 was the sort of jewel in the crown of his 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.559 achievements as in architect Madison Square Garden was a block 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:03.000 long entertainment company lex in Manhattan. It had an enormous amphitheater. 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:06.560 We're up to seventeen thousand spectators gathered for horse shows, 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:11.240 boxing matches, and political meetings. There was a ballroom, a restaurant, 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:15.080 a concert hall, an indoor theater, and an open air 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.960 rooftop theater. A large nude bronze statue of the Goddess 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:22.120 Diana loomed over the rooftop theater on top of a 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:26.360 gleaming tower. Madison Square Garden made Stanford White a New 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.800 York celebrity. He was very tall, he was very distinctive, 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:36.480 he had striking red hair, and by all accounts, he 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:43.680 was a very gregarious, charming, considerate individual. But at the 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:48.560 same time, he had I think a self destructive tendency 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:52.840 inside his character. White's character was also destructive to others. 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:55.200 The woman at the center of the love triangle that 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.120 would result in White's murder said that he had vicious 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:03.119 tendencies he quote performed frequently without remorse, with the sense 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:05.360 that he and his friends were immune to the laws 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:14.520 of the land. That woman was Evelyn Nesbitt. She was 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.360 born in a torrent in Pennsylvania, which was a suburb 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.400 of Pittsburgh, and at least for the first ten years 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.520 of her life it was a fairly traditional I think 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:27.240 childhood Paula, You're a bureau again. But then her father 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:31.200 died suddenly when she was eleven, and she and her 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:35.080 mother and she had a younger brother, were thrown into poverty. 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:37.720 It was sort of like a Dickens novel. Evelyn Nesbitt 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:39.320 came to New York with her mother and brother in 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:44.400 nineteen hundred. She was just fifteen Simon Barts, and immediately 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:51.280 Evelyn got employment as a model, modeling for illustrators of 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:56.560 magazines and newspapers, and also for artists. Nesbitt had a distinctive, 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.200 effortless beauty that set her apart from the other models 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:02.920 of her day. She had large, haunting eyes, a mysterious 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:08.040 mona Lisa half smile, and an enchanting, angelic face. Everybody said, 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:10.120 and now it's funny when you say it. Now she 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:12.240 had a face to die for, which was, of course 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.000 what what was going to happen? But her face was 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:17.520 her fortune in Her face was on the Whitman sampler, 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.160 and her faces on sheet music, and it was on 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.040 anything you could put a picture on. Nesbitt became an 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.400 American sweetheart, perhaps the nation's first true pin up girl. 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.440 One Calumness dubbed her a modern Helen. But she wanted 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:32.679 more than that. She decided she wanted to be a 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:35.520 chorus girl. Like all young girls who come to the city, 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:37.400 they want to be rich, they want to be famous. 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:41.680 She managed to get into the chorus of the most 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:43.440 popular show and broad at the time, which was called 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:46.320 Flora Dora. Her mother lied about her age and said 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.080 that she was eighteen when she was only sixteen. As 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.880 a chorus girl, Nesbit became the object of even more 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:56.120 men's affections. The owner of Madison Square Garden was no different. 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.960 Stanford White saw her and was immediately sort of smitten 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.640 with her. Unlike Nesbitt's other admirers, however, White had the 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:08.040 means to pursue his crush. Stanford White invited her to 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:11.560 lunch one day and gradually got to know her. And 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.920 at this time Stanford White was forty seven years old 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:20.160 and Evelyn Nesbit was sixteen years old. White celaborate seduction 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.440 of the beautiful teenager began at his Manhattan bachelor pad 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.840 on West Street, and that's where she met White for 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:29.600 the first time. And he was showing around all of 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.960 the beautiful rooms and things that he had decorated. It 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:35.240 wasn't it was not a house that was known to 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.920 his wife or his family. He called it one of 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.760 his snuggeries. There were red velvet curtains and beautiful pieces 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.800 of hand carved Italian furniture, fine paintings hung on the walls. 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:49.760 After lunch, White invited Nesbit upstairs to see more of 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.760 his home in art collections, including a very special room 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.720 on the top floor of the building Simon Botz again, 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:58.520 author of The Girl on the Velvet Swing. So the 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:01.160 whole of the fourth floor is open. It's like a 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:03.280 room that goes from the front of the building to 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:05.240 the back of the building. So it's a very large room, 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:09.800 and there's a swing with a velvet padded seat with 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:14.200 velvet ropes descending from the ceiling. Paul You're Bureau again, 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.240 author of American eve He showed her this red velvet 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.000 swing that was put in the room so that you 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.080 could push somebody on the swing, and then the uh 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:24.960 in Evelyn's case, he put her on the swing that 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.680 afternoon and he hung a Japanese paper parasol in the ceiling, 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:30.840 and she pushed her to see if she could break 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:32.559 it with her foot. And you can get all fright 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.200 in about what that means, but but that was the 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.559 introduction that she had to White. White lavished more money 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:41.160 and attention on the young woman after that first encounter. 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:44.560 It was all part of a well hound routine. Nesbitt 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:47.600 later described it this way. On the witness stand, men 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:51.400 like White reduced their methods to an exact science. He 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:53.880 put her and her mother in an apartment, He sent 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:56.680 her brother to school, He had her taking piano lessons. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:11:00.679 He was he was what seemed like a very paternal benefactor, 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:03.719 and you realize now that he was probably grooming her. 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.440 The courtship went on for a few months, then White 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:11.240 made his true intentions known. He was, as Nesbit put it, 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.080 a benevolent vampire. I think of him more like Roman Polanski, 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:17.680 but I think of him as somebody who had who was, 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:19.920 who was an artist and a genius and a lover 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:22.280 of beauty. People knew that he had an eye for 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:26.480 younger girls. One evening after her performance ended, Nesbit arrived 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.400 at White's home for a dinner party, but to her surprise, 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:33.640 only White was waiting for her. He was apologetic, isn't 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:35.480 it too bad? He said that all the others have 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.880 turned us down. White informed Nesbit that they would have 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:41.319 their own party. He said to her, I want to 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:44.200 show you another room. And she goes up this other 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:46.520 set of stairs that she had never seen before, and 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:48.720 there was this mirrored room with a mirrored bed and 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:51.400 mirrors on the ceiling. There was a small table that 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:55.320 stood next to an enormous four poster canopied bed. There 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.440 was a bottle of champagne on the table and a 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:02.199 single glass. White poured Evelyn a glass of champagne. She 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:05.200 sipped it, she tasted it. She didn't like the taste, 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:09.240 but he asked her to tasted some more, and she 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:14.160 fell unconscious. And then she woke up later to find 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:18.360 herself naked in bed, with Stanford White lying next to her, 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.280 and Evelyn the way she describes it, as she said, 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.079 I went into the room of virgin, but I did 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.720 not come out one. No one knows for sure if 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.959 the champagne was drugged or not. Evelyn later maintained that 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:32.800 she had just had too much of it. Whatever the cause, 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.880 the result was the same. She woke up naked in 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.480 the bed next to Stanford White and screamed. Her suitor 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.760 tried to console her. He said, tenderly, don't cry, kittens, 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:47.280 it's all over now you belong to me. The next 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.520 thing she knew was that she was essentially White's mistress 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:53.960 and was now a fixture at his party's um and 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.760 got to meet everybody, from Edison to Sitting Ball to Nijinsky. 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.679 She was meeting all these incredible people. She was enjoying 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:02.439 the high life, and he was buying her furs and 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.440 jewelry nes but began dating her patron and protector. But 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.680 the following year she met another wealthy man, one with 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:31.719 his own score to settle against wit. When it's time 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:34.400 to make a hire for your small business, naturally you 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:37.000 want to find the best person for the job. Odds 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:40.080 are that person is on LinkedIn. 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He was the heir to a 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:05.360 forty million dollar fortune um and his His father had 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:08.640 died when Harry was eighteen, and he knew that there 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:11.480 was something wrong with Harry, and he told his wife 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:15.120 that Harry should be put on on a strict budget 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.280 in terms of an allowance. Something was definitely wrong with 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.920 the young Harry Thaw. He would giggle when he heard 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.360 about someone else's misfortune. He was known as Mad Harry. 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:27.040 He once made the papers for chasing a man down 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:30.040 the street with an unloaded shotgun because he believed he 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.240 cheated him out of ten cents change. He went to 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.160 Harvard and spent most of his time smoking and playing poker. 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:39.760 There he was expelled on grounds of moral turpitude, but 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:41.640 there was no need for him to get a degree 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:45.560 because his annual allowance was eighty thousand dollars. He was 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.440 basically a playboy. Saw was a tall man with a 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:52.440 boyish appearance, a pug nose, and an often idiotic grin. 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:55.680 One Pittsburgh newspaper said he looked like a peeled turnip. 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:59.240 Thaw felt that he was too big for Pittsburgh, and 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.560 so he said sites on New York. But his reputation 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:05.960 really was in advance of him, and so he never 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.720 got accepted into New York society. So he never got 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:12.040 admission to any of the clubs. And usually that would 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.680 be easy for a wealthy person to do. They would 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.080 accept you. But he never got accepted, and he was 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:19.800 always black balled. Part of it undoubtedly had to do 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:23.080 with his personality. He had a very short fuse. He 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.000 had a very angry temper. He would do things on 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:29.240 a whim. For example, if if he was in a 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:33.280 restaurant and he didn't like the service, he would pull 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:37.760 the tablecloth and all the dishes and cutlery would come 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.640 clattering down onto the floor. There were other incidents. Thaw 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:43.800 drove his car through the plate glass window of a 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:47.000 shop on Fifth Avenue after an argument with a sales clerk. 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:51.040 But thaws family and his fortune were always there to 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:54.920 bail him out of trouble whatever his reckless and crazy behavior, 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:57.400 and he really did have a lot of psychological problems. 0:17:57.560 --> 0:17:59.359 He used to talk baby talk at the age of 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:02.480 thirty six, thought could also be quite charming. And when 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:06.720 Evelyn Nesbit's relationship with her benefactor Stanford White finally went south, 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:09.560 Harry Thaw was there to pick up the pieces. He 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:13.800 began to court Nesbit relentlessly. Thaw knew that Nesbit dated White, 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.720 and he knew all about White's reputation as a womanizer, 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:20.040 but he never heard about how White pursued her. They 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:24.800 went on vacation together during the summer in nineteen o three, 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:30.520 and on that occasion, Evelyn told Harry about the rape, 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:32.960 and this was the first time she had ever told 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:38.000 anybody about the rape. And from that moment on, Harry 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:42.720 Thorpe became obsessed with Stanford White, and his persistent courtship 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.720 of Nesbit proved successful. He asked her to marry him 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:50.119 several times and then she finally agreed to marry him, 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:53.879 which she did at the age of nineteen. And I 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:57.240 think it's a symbolic that the she wore a black 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.480 dress to the wedding. The newly weds moved back to 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:03.840 Pittsburgh and settled down for a while. Harry Thaw seemed 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:14.160 almost well, saying Harry and Evelyn enjoyed a few months 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:16.960 of marital bliss in their hometown, But Thaw could not 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:19.359 keep his mind off Stanford White and what he had 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:21.639 done to his wife. For the last year, he had 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.280 been becoming more and more obsessed with having her retail 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.119 the story of how White had taken advantage of her 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.359 in seduced her. Then, in the summer of nineteen o six, 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:33.640 Harry and Evelyn stopped in New York on their way 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.919 to a European vacation. Harry proposed that they see a 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:41.280 show at a somewhat surprising venue, Stanford White's rooftop Theater 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:46.120 at Madison Square Garden, and Evelyn said to herself, this 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:49.200 is really weird, because I can't believe Harry would want 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:53.480 to be anywhere near, knowing a building that was associated 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.800 with me and with White. It was an unseasonably hot day, 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.960 even for New York in June. That day, the hippopotam 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.639 us in the Central Park Zoo collapsed and died from 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.679 heat exhaustion, a story that would take a back page 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:08.399 in the following day's newspaper to what was about to 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:11.880 happen at Madison Square Garden. It's, you know, a hundred degrees. 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:15.159 It's they're out in an outdoor rooftop theater, and Harry's 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.359 wearing this heavy overcoat, which I think he did because 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:20.399 he was concealing the gun, because he couldn't hide it 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:22.960 very well in his texedo. Harry and Evelyn took in 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.440 the performance. A little before eleven pm, the garden's owner 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:30.160 emerged from his private residence to join the audience. Evelyn 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.280 watched Harry, who stood up at Stanford White's appearance with 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:36.439 a glazed look in his eyes. She suggested that her 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:40.520 husband leave the show, and as they were going towards 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:43.439 the exit, Harry broke away, went to the front of 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:48.199 the theater, where Stanford White was sitting in his usual seat, 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:54.080 and then, in front of hundreds of theater goers, pulls 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:59.040 out his pistol and fires three shots and instantly kills 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:04.639 Stanford White. Harry Thaw stood over his victim, and then 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:08.120 he held the gun up and said I to anybody 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:09.720 that was still around him, he said, I did it 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:13.359 because he ruined my wife. Three chorus girls fainted on 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:17.840 the stage floor. The orchestra kept playing. Harry rejoined his wife, 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.359 and a distraught Evelyn cried, oh, Harry, what have you done. 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:24.800 He kissed her on the cheek and said, it's all right, dear, 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:29.359 I've probably saved your life. Harry was arrested and taken 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.639 down the garden's elevator. He calmly lit a cigarette when 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:36.760 he exited the building. Up next, the criminal trial and 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:40.440 the love triangle that shocked America. Harry Thaw was forced 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:42.640 to call in his family yet again to bail him 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:46.879 out and to embrace an unprecedented but brilliant new legal 0:21:46.920 --> 0:22:06.080 defense strategy to save himself from the electric chair. Don't 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:09.040 miss the new CBS All Access original series that will 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:12.040 make you ask yourself, what dimension are you? 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The Twilight Zone is now 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:57.120 streaming exclusively on CBS All Access. New episodes every Thursday. 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:00.760 Cross over into another dimension. Visit c S dot com 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:05.119 slash thread t z to redeem your free trial today 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:09.280 that CBS dot com slash thread t z to redeem 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:14.160 your free trial of CBS All Access. Every decade has 0:23:14.160 --> 0:23:17.280 its trial of the century. When I've talked about this 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:19.360 as being the trial of the century, there people say, well, 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:22.280 there was Leopold and Loebe, and there's Madson, and there's 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:24.119 o J And I said, well, okay, but this was 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:27.280 the first trial of the twentieth century. Just a week 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:30.240 after the murder, Thomas Edison Studio put out a hastily 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:33.480 made film reenactment of the crime, which audiences across the 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:37.240 country swarm to watch. Teddy Roosevelt, the President of the 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:40.520 United States, worried that the trial would distract Americans from 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:43.320 their work, and even tried to suppress the transcripts from 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:46.200 the trial on the grounds that the sordid material would 0:23:46.320 --> 0:23:50.680 ruin public virtue. One newspaper columnist summarized it, A rich 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:53.240 man has been killed, a rich man did the killing, 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:55.760 and so a world sits up to hear the tale. 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:59.920 In every red and tripping particular. It was the breaking point. 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:02.080 It between the old and the new in terms of 0:24:02.440 --> 0:24:05.720 the Victorian era versus now, what would become you know, 0:24:05.800 --> 0:24:09.240 modern America with the media circus and people using their 0:24:09.240 --> 0:24:11.840 money and influence to try to get around the law. 0:24:12.240 --> 0:24:14.840 New York's district attorney was determined to put Thaw in 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:17.159 the electric chair for the murder of one of the 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:20.760 city's most prominent citizens. Thaws family hired a team of 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:23.960 high powered attorneys to fight back, but there was one 0:24:24.000 --> 0:24:29.080