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Hi Crimes of the Centuries listeners.Every now and then a case I've covered has some kind of development, whether it's new to everyone or just new to me.
Maybe an author will explore a new angle or something that had been accepted as true is found to not be after all.
The journalist in me wants to update and correct, but that's not really feasible when an episode has been out a long time, and so I've decided to do occasional bonus episodes on Fridays that I'll call Friday Follow-Ups.Today marks the first one.
I'm returning to Season 1, Episode 11, which is a fascinating case about America's first it girl, Evelyn Nesbitt, the man who assaulted her, and the other man who killed him years after the fact.
I included this case in my book Crimes of the Centuries, The Cases That Changed Us, and when I fact-checked more contemporary news sources, I found that some of my original sources had been incorrect.
when they said the case marked the first time a jury was ever sequestered.That was apocryphal, a supposed fact that had been ascribed to the case again and again, so many times that people accepted it as truth and kept re-reporting it.
But it wasn't true.So here's the episode updated so that matters addressed.Welcome to Friday Follow-Ups.Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they earn the label crime of the century.
But the stories that made headlines in decades past aren't necessarily remembered today.I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author.And in each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.
This is Crimes of the Centuries. The crowd that had gathered on the roof of Madison Square Garden the evening of June 25th, 1906, had settled in for the second act of a new musical comedy called Mam'selle Champagne.
The high society folk attending the premiere were listening to the chorus sing a deceptively risque number called I Could Love a Million Girls.
Near the front of the audience was Stanford White, one of New York City's most famous architects, a millionaire and well-known theater aficionado.As the cheery number continued, a strange-looking man haltingly approached White's table.
He was strange because he was wearing a heavy winter coat despite the hot June weather. The man's stare was fixed on White as he pulled a pistol from his coat, pointed it at White, and fired three shots.
For a split second, the stage and crowd went silent, the latter trying to rationalize what they'd seen as having been part of the performance.Someone even laughed.But then reality set in.One of the bullets had torn White's face off.
As people started to scream and scatter, the gunman raised the pistol over his head to show he was no threat to anyone else and yelled, that man ruined my wife. And so began one of the most bizarre and scandalous cases of the early 20th century.
This man killed Stanford White.Yes, here's Harry K. Thaw.And here in 1915, he's released from Mattawan Hospital for Dux Cameramen.Harry Thaw, central figure in most notorious crime of 1906. Shooting is over Evelyn Nesbitt.
Public sympathy is at first for victim White.But during trial, sympathy shifts to Evelyn's protector, Harry Thorne.
Though this story climaxes with the death of one man at the hands of another, at its center is a woman.Actually, really still more of a girl than a woman at the time.
And to understand how her life intersected with the two men's, you have to back up seven years before the shocking murder. It was 1899, and America was on the cusp of shedding its Victorian ways and entering a new era.
As the year drew to a close and the new century began, a teenager with large brown eyes and perfect skin was being shuttled from one run-down home to another with no clue that she was poised to become one of America's most famous faces.
This is Paula Uribeuro, professor of English and film studies at Hofstra University.She wrote a book about this case called American Eve.
She was the first it girl of the 20th century, even before people knew what it was.She was sort of the prototype of what we would consider a supermodel.
The supermodel's name was Evelyn, and she made headlines for her looks alone.
One Wire story printed throughout the country in early 1901 read, New York artists declare that Miss Evelyn Florence Nesbitt is the prettiest girl of 15 years who has ever posed for them.
Posing for fine artists and advertisements alike, she really was like a supermodel, one who would soon cross over into acting too, because who wants to just be a pretty face when they actually have some talent?
But in a world long before Me Too, men got away with some pretty crazy and downright criminal behavior.
And Evelyn Nesbitt's unrivaled beauty not only drew the attention of some unsavory men, but ultimately put her at the center of a sordid murder tale covered worldwide.
Her face was her fortune, and it was also to die for, literally, in White's case.
Evelyn was the firstborn to parents who were decidedly middle-class, maybe even at the lower end of that.Her father, Winfield Scott Nesbitt, was a lawyer, though not a particularly ambitious one.
He did well enough to keep a roof over the family though, which expanded a couple of years after Evelyn was born to include her younger brother, Howard.You might've noticed I didn't give birth years there.That's because there's some debate
Once Evelyn started working, her mom began lying about her age to keep anyone from feeling skeevy about hiring a very young girl.
That, matched with Evelyn's birth records being destroyed at the county level, means we're not 100% sure whether she was born in 1884 or 1885, though Euroburo thinks it's 84.
Regardless, Evelyn's birthday is consistently given as December 25th, making her a Christmas baby, and an appropriately ethereal one at that. What dad Winfield lacked in ambition, he seemed to make up for in other ways.
He was actually pretty progressive in how he treated his daughter, talking about how when she was old enough, she could go to Vassar.
Her father had been encouraging her to read and she loved reading.
She was very smart.He encouraged her to read books of all sorts. By the time she was 10, the family's modest house included a mini library just for Evelyn.
Howard, the little brother, was a mama's boy, and Evelyn, definitely a daddy's girl, which made what happened in 1896 all the more heartbreaking for Evelyn.Her father died suddenly that year at age 40.
Her father died when she was about 10 or 11 and left the family absolutely impoverished.It was like something out of a Dickens novel.
Evelyn later described how she watched in horrified silence as repo men came to their house and hauled out their belongings bit by bit.Those books that Evelyn had treasured were among the first things to go.
The family's furniture and everything else was sold for next to nothing, as was the house.And from that point forward, the trio would call a series of nearly empty rooms and dilapidated boarding houses their home.
Mrs. Nesbitt was depressed as hell about the situation.I mean, she went from being not rich, but stable, to genuinely never knowing when she would be able to pay her rent and feed her kids.
She would break down in tears regularly, throwing herself onto the bed and crying, what will become of us? This had an inadvertent effect.It didn't give her kids room to grieve or to worry.
When it became too much and they themselves got emotional, their mother would react with such melodrama that they learned it was better to just bottle it up.To avoid adding to their mom's despair, they swallowed their trauma.
Mrs. Nesbitt was a good seamstress.She made most of the kids' outfits.So she tried to get work designing and making clothes, but fashion was a pretty elite field to enter.
Most people who broke in had a lot of experience, or they had worked as an apprentice, or maybe they'd even studied in Paris, that sort of hoity-toity stuff. Mrs. Nesbitt was just a mom who made nice clothes.
She eventually found a job at Wanamaker's, one of the country's first department stores.And in the earliest known effort to pass Evelyn off as older, she aged both her children up a few years so they would also be hired at the store.
Evelyn was 12 when mother took her out of school.Even with all three members of the family bringing in a little money each week, the trio struggled to make ends meet. They sometimes could afford just a single meal a day and a piddly meal at that.
Mrs. Nesbitt sometimes shuttled the kids off for weeks or even months at a time to live with relatives, sometimes really distant ones the kids barely knew.And then she'd find some sort of footing and reclaim them.
Once, Evelyn's birthday came and went while at a virtual stranger's house.Evelyn found a stray cat and pretended that it'd been given to her as a birthday gift. just to solve the sting of having been forgotten.
Meanwhile, her brother Howard was kind of a sickly kid.
He often stayed with relatives even longer than Evelyn, in part because he seemed to fare better in country air than in city, but also because he was younger and smaller, so finding him a job was extra tough.
As the 1890s drew to a close, Evelyn and her mom moved to Philadelphia.
And while they were in Philadelphia, she was literally on the street looking in a shop window.And a woman artist at the time sort of was taken aback by her.
The next thing Evelyn knew, the woman had approached her and asked if she'd like to sit for a portrait.Evelyn didn't know what to make of this, but the woman seemed safe and the sitting would pay.So she came back later with her mom in tow.
There were two unique things about Evelyn that made her an ideal model straight away.For starters, she was incredibly photogenic.
I mean, it feels stupid to talk about anyone, much less a teenage girl, in completely superficial terms, but she really did have great features.Her eyes seemed wiser than they should at her age.
When she stared down the camera or the artist, the end result felt like she was boring right into you. The second trait that made Evelyn stand out was her ability to look both aloof and alluring, innocent and seductive at the same time.
And yeah, I realize it's kind of gross to call such a young girl seductive looking, but this story has some gross parts to it.Anyway, Evelyn had thick, dark, tousled hair that went long down her back.She was really versatile in how she looked.
When she wore it up, she could be a socialite.Down and must, she could look like a peasant girl.
She looked much older when they put makeup on her.Sometimes she looked much younger.She could look young and innocent.Certainly the way that they could dress her and make her look changed from one image to the next.
Mrs. Nesbitt soon realized that Evelyn alone could make more sitting for artists than all three Nesbitts could make combined at their crappy department store jobs, and even more if they moved to New York, which they did.
Mrs. Nesbitt quit working to serve as a manager of sorts for her daughter.
To speak to just how enduring Evelyn's photos are, here's a modern photographer named Ed Vorosky talking about one particularly famous image shot by the photographer Gertrude Stanton.
Ever since the first time I laid eyes on this, this image, it was, it just intrigued me.It just grabbed my, it just etched itself into my, my brain.And I've always been kind of curious as to why that was the case.
Brodsky talks a bit about how the black and white image in which Evelyn's wearing a sort of peasant top dress with her shoulders exposed evokes a sense of nostalgia, which might be true today, but that's not why it got so much attention in 1903 when it was taken.
Peasant dress aside, it wasn't nostalgic when it was shot.If anything, Evelyn's direct-to-camera stare was ahead of its time.In the shot, she has a slightly upturned face,
this direct stare, and this dainty picture casually held in her hand, which drew the viewer's eye down her bodice and into her lap.Just a teenager, Evelyn was commodified.Women wanted to be her because of her looks.Men wanted to control her.
And she was living very much in a man's world, a fact emphasized by her own family's upheaval when her father died.And without a man in the house, the family foundered.
What a strange existence she must have led as she heard from artist after artist how beautiful, how lovely, how perfect she was.
And she became almost an overnight success.I mean, artists, fine artists, painters, sculptors were intent on getting her to model for them.
And then soon after that, it became advertisers, you know, everybody from Coca-Cola to Whitman Sampler to her face was everywhere and in the newspapers and on magazine covers and things like that.
Even though people didn't necessarily know her name yet, they knew her face.
You'd think all of this would have spoiled her in some way, but she was genuinely just a little girl.She loved playing with toys.
She sat cross-legged or with her legs pulled up beneath her, a habit her mother would admonish as improper, not ladylike. But she was also disciplined enough to hold different physically demanding poses hour after hour.
Her face appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan.She adorned products like beer trays and playing cards and postcards.
She became a favorite.I mean, people started collecting them the way I guess you would think of, you know, kids collecting baseball cards did when I was young.
Evelyn preferred photography to paintings because the post holding wasn't as strenuous.Plus, it was around this time that advertisements were starting to use photographs of young women to sell stuff.So Evelyn could make decent money.
And it wasn't great.We're not talking Cindy Crawford level rates here. But she could charge $5 for a half day's work and $10 for a full day, which translates to about $300 in 2020.
New York was expensive living then, as it is now, so that didn't stretch far enough to buy a house or anything.But it was certainly a step up for a girl born near Pittsburgh who sometimes could only scrounge one meal a day.
And once she became a model for Charles Dana Gibson and was the Gibson girl, that was sort of the thing that solidified everything for her.
When Evelyn decided she wanted to act, she didn't give up modeling.I mean, really, she couldn't.While she got paid to perform on stage, she was by no means a leading lady, and her family had come to rely on her income.
She made sure rehearsals and shows could work around her schedule so that she could do both.
Her first role was as a Spanish maiden in a musical comedy called Floradora, which had debuted in London in 1899 and done well there, then opened at the New York Theater in 1901.
It ran on Broadway for 552 performances, the third longest run on Broadway at the time. It was hugely popular.One of its numbers was a huge show tune hit called Tell Me, Pretty Maiden.
Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?
There are a few, kind sir, but simple girls and proper tunes.
Then tell me, pretty maiden, what these very simple girlies do?
For Evelyn, this all felt like a fairy tale compared to the life she'd led before.She went from being a nobody to being praised and sought after and paid.
She figured if she worked hard and made some important connections, she could ensure that she'd never risk going hungry again.What she didn't know was that while on stage, she had caught the eye of a man who would forever change her life.
Stanford White was a 48-year-old man when he first spied Evelyn Nesbitt on stage as a Floridora girl in 1901.By then, he was well-known throughout the city.
He'd been born to a Shakespearean scholar named Richard Grant White, who had studied at the University of the City of New York, now more simply called New York University, and was a respected literary and musical critic.
Stanford White was the second of two sons in the White family.He never went to college, but was drawn to architecture.
Eventually, he worked his way to become the principal assistant to one of the era's most successful architects, a Louisiana-born man named Henry Hobson Richardson.White earned his own reputation as a genius and an artist.
White was the premier architect who was part of the McKim, Mead & White firm that had built, among other things, Madison Square Garden, Tiffany's, Metropolitan Museum, Pennsylvania Station.I mean, the list is sort of tremendous.
One of the highest profile buildings White worked on was the reconstruction of the University of Virginia Rotunda, which originally had been designed by Thomas Jefferson, but was gutted by a fire in 1895.
White's redesign, which wisely included a fireproof tile dome, was finished in 1899.This is from a documentary called Treasures of New York, Stanford White, hosted by Dick Cabot.
Pretend that you're on Jeopardy.Here's the answer.
He was known not only for his soaring architectural genius and the magnificent buildings he created, but for a fabulous personality, a life marked by adventure, high romance, and not incidentally, murder.
And so the question would be, who is Stanford White?
Who is Stanford White?Well, it turned out that a lot of people thought they knew him, but really, they had no idea. What they knew were the buildings, of course, and the basics.He was married with one child, a son named Lawrence Grant White.
He had a ridiculously bushy mustache that came to silly points on the sides and was so full that it covered his mouth in photographs.In contrast to his unruly facial hair, he kept his head hair cropped short.
He was known as a cultured man, a patron of the arts. He loved the show Floridora on its own, but the real draw was the beautiful Spanish maiden on the stage played by Evelyn.So eventually he arranged an introduction.Evelyn was 16 at the time.
Stanford White was old enough to be her father, and at first he approached her as though a surrogate one. at their first meeting.
He said, let me show you something.And they went up a couple of flights in this, what he called his snuggery, was one of the apartments he had around the city.
And on the top floor was this very high ceiling with a red velvet swing attached to the ceiling and Japanese paper parasols sort of dangling from the ceiling.
And he put her on the swing and encouraged her to swing back and forth and to go as high as she could and try to break the parasols with her feet, which of course, again, a Freudian can make a great deal out of that.
White took great interest in Evelyn's career and said he saw a lot of potential in her.He paid to have one of her front teeth fixed.
It was the only flaw spoiling her perfect face, he said, and plied her with gifts, fox wraps, diamond rings, even silly toys.She liked those after all, and he seemed to love watching her play with them like a child.
White quickly entangled himself in Evelyn's family.He moved them into the Wellington Hotel and personally decorated the place for them.Evelyn's room was described in a 1947 retrospective as, quote, completely furnished in her favorite colors.
He'd done it in red and white.White satin walls, red velvet carpets, a huge white bearskin on the floor, end quote.White sent Mrs. Nesbitt extra money each week and footed the schooling bill for Evelyn's brother, Howard.
Mrs. Nesbitt was thrilled to see this man care for her daughter as though she were his own.One day, White made a suggestion.
White had said to her mother, you know, it's never good to leave your family for too long.You should go back and visit them.And he had been sort of grooming her all along and he had been taking care of her and her mother.
He had set them up in an apartment. all but under the guise of being very patronizing, being very father-like.
Mrs. Nesbitt agreed and was thrilled when White made all the arrangements for her to see her extended family.When she left Evelyn in his care, she insisted, With Mrs. Nesbitt away, White arranged for some more photo shoots.
One of her most famous ones, in which she is asleep in a kimono on a white bear rug, was made during this time.
A few nights after that, he told Evelyn, I'm having a party at the apartment and you should come after the show.So Evelyn comes and sees that there's nobody there.And he says, oh, isn't it terrible?Nobody else could come.But that's all right.
You know, we can have our own party.Well, one night during that trip, White gave Evelyn a glass of champagne and then another.
Prior to that, she had been to numerous parties at Madison Square Tower, and he always told her she could only have one glass of champagne.
But on this particular night, there was a bottle of champagne there and one glass, and she was the only one drinking.And keep in mind, again, that she's 16 years old.
Tipsy, she decided she should head home and began putting on her coat.But White didn't want her to leave.
White said, I want to show you a room that you've never seen.And he took her up the stairs to one of the floors.And in that room, it was a mirrored bed in a room that had mirrors everywhere.The floor, the ceiling, a mirrored bed.
He offered yet more champagne, which tasted bitter and made Evelyn feel sick.She passed out.And when she woke up, she was naked in his bed.
She'd been raped the way that Evelyn describes it.She says, I went into that room a virgin, but I did not come out one.
I'd like to think in today's world there would be no ambiguity about what happened to this 16-year-old girl who loved to play with toys and delighted in swinging.
But this was 1901, and White was pretty easily able to convince her that the sin was theirs to share and that it must be kept a secret, lest Evelyn's reputation be ruined.He told her, now you belong to me.
Because as we all know, once a woman's been with a man physically, she becomes his property.I can't even say that sarcastically, it's just too gross.
But really, back in this time, so much emphasis was put on a woman's supposed purity that Evelyn felt trapped.
She couldn't undo what had been done, and she knew that a lot of men would consider her used goods, even if her deflowering had been by rape.
Also, White had groomed her and had arranged things so that Mrs. Nesbitt and brother Howard relied on him financially. Anyway, Evelyn was shocked and horrified and traumatized and also pliant.She and White continued a relationship.
The subsequent sex was consensual.Evelyn became White's mistress.Later, in court, she would describe how he had pushed her on the red velvet swing in his apartment while she wore nothing but the pearl drop necklace he'd given her as a gift.
She considered herself his lover, affectionately calling him Stanny.She didn't really piece together that he had a pattern of pursuing other young showgirls and was certainly by today's standards an outright pedophile, though there were clues.
Similar pictures of other young girls shot in the same backgrounds as he was arranging for Evelyn, for example.She was naive enough to think that she was special and eventually feel something she assumed was love for the guy.
As naive as she seemed to be about his pattern, she did notice that he paid attention to other women.And, like most insecure people in their first big relationship, she didn't like it.So she occasionally would try to make him jealous.
She had a brief romance with John Barrymore, that's Drew Barrymore's grandfather, who would go on to become a famous actor, but at the time was just a cartoonist from a super rich family.He met Evelyn at one of White's parties.
The two dated enough that they were mentioned in the gossip columns.Mrs. Nesbitt was bothered by the relationship. And John Barrymore at the time pretty much mooched off his family.He drank too much and had a reputation as a playboy.
Still, he and Evelyn legitimately hit it off.He was dashing and charismatic and age-appropriate, but there was a problem.
As rich as his family was, he himself didn't seem to have much ambition, which reminded Mrs. Nesbitt of her smart but rudderless late husband, which in turn reminded her of boarding houses and poverty.
Mrs. Nesbitt decided to put an end to the relationship by temporarily sending Evelyn away.Stanford White, of course, helped foot the bills.That relationship with Barrymore quashed.
Evelyn returned to New York and was again in demand, both acting and modeling.Her relationship with White continued, but it turned out that it had a limited shelf life.
It didn't actually last very long.I always argue that it's because two things.She turned 17. And she was also, as I said, she was smart and precocious and very much aware of her power, I guess.
And I think in her still adolescent mind, she thought that White was going to leave his wife for her.And when that was not the case, he saw it as problematic.
White liked his lovers young, naive and unquestioning.
He was catching on that Evelyn wouldn't stay any of those things for much longer.
As Evelyn's relationship with Stanford White fizzled, she realized she'd caught the eye of another theater lover.A man named Harry Kendall Thaw started pursuing her in the oddest, most red flag heavy kind of way.
First, like White, he basically stalked her at the theater, coming to show after show just to see her perform.And then when he decided he wanted to meet her, he began sending her letters purporting to be a man named Mr. Monroe.
The first time he met her for a luncheon, He dropped to his knees and kissed the hem of her dress.Evelyn at first found him silly and weird, but she was still flattered.
He seemed to fall for her hard, and he showered her with the types of gifts that White had given.He wasn't quite a contemporary, but he was 18 years younger than White, so certainly more in range.
What Evelyn didn't know was that Thaw had a history of mental health issues.
Harry Thaw, he was called Mad Harry.And some people say that he was the person who gave rise to the term playboy in the way that we know it here in America.
His father had been a coal and railroad baron, making Harry Thaw heir to a $40 million fortune.It seems Thaw's dad wasn't a dummy either.He kept an eye on his son, giving Harry a reasonable $2,500 a year to spend.
He just didn't see Harry as responsible or stable.And he had good reason.
So Harry, you know, famously used to light his cigars with $100 bills and was incredibly aberrant in his behavior.
But as had happened in Evelyn's life, tragedy struck the Thaw family.
His father died when he was 18.And so Harry was the oldest child.And his mother, who was Thaw's second wife, doted on him to the point where I think she created a monster.And so from the time that he was young, Harry had everything handed to him.
Whenever he got in trouble, his mother paid for him to get out of trouble.
You might be wondering, what kind of trouble?Well, buckle up.
Harry himself, under assumed name, would rent out apartments in New York City and invite these young chorus girls, girls who wanted to be on the stage, to his apartment.
And then he would beat them with dog whips and he would handcuff them and pour boiling water on them and teach them a lesson.
What's more, he was obsessed with Stanford White. a man who had obtained the kind of acceptance in high society that Thaw wanted for himself.
He twisted meaningless events and total coincidences in his head to convince himself that White was at fault for him being shunned from men's clubs and such.
Though in reality, it was probably his own weirdo behavior, like the time he chased down a cab driver with a shotgun because he thought he'd been billed 10 cents. He once was expelled from college for threatening students and teachers.
When Thaw trapped a bellboy in his London hotel room and beat him naked with a writing whip, his mother paid $5,000 to make the problem go away.I mean, the Thaws weren't just rich, they were stupid rich.
After his dad died, Thaw's mom upped his allowance to a whopping $80,000 a year.That's $2.3 million in today's money for doing nothing. Your bureau doesn't think it's a coincidence that Thaw set his sights on White's mistress.
I absolutely firmly believe that he was obsessed with White before Evelyn even came into the picture because Harry wanted to be part of New York society and he wanted to join all of these clubs and White was either a member of or had actually designed the clubs.
like the Players Club and the Lambs Club and the Metropolitan Club, the University Club.And these were all places that Harry wanted to be seen and be recognized.
And because he was just this weird guy from Pittsburgh, the New York social set really wanted nothing to do with him.
Harry Thaw's mother was more than a mere enabler.She was also paranoid about her son being branded mentally ill, in part because other family members had mental issues too, and back then, the stigma was even stronger than it is today.
His mental health issues apparently included obsessiveness. and Stanford White was the focus of his.He paid private investigators to dig up whatever they could on the man.
So he well knew that White was considered Evelyn's benefactor and the rumors were rampant about White's infatuation with young women.So he decided it was his job to free Evelyn from this awful man and make her his.
Evelyn consistently dismissed him and had the support of her mother in doing so, but then Evelyn got sick.It began with dull stomach pains that progressively got worse.The pain was so searing that she started throwing up.
Mrs. Nesbitt tried to reach White for help, but couldn't find him.So she desperately reached out to Thaw instead.Thaw arranged for one of the country's best doctors to rush to Evelyn's aid.
It was just in time to save Evelyn from being killed by her burst appendix.After that, he took Evelyn and Mrs. Nesbitt on a European trip, supposedly so Evelyn could heal, though she didn't do much healing.
It's when they go to Europe that Harry drives the wedge between Evelyn and her mother, very much the way we know that abusers do, right?I mean, they managed to then separate the person from their family and friends and isolate them.
And this is what Harry did, literally isolated her when they were in Europe.And one night, apparently coked up, he beat her and raped her.
What happened that night was this. Evelyn knew that Thaw wanted to marry her, but she also knew that her relationship with White would be a wedge between them.
Despite the fact that Thaw had frequented brothels worldwide, he had made it clear that the woman he married should be virginal.Because of that, she turned down his first proposal.
He had persisted and she wanted to say yes, but she didn't want to start their marriage with a lie.
So she made the biggest mistake of her life by telling Harry while they were in Paris what White had done to her.
It did not go well.Thaw began to pace and sob.He decided that the champagne White had given her the night of the rape had been drugged, which is possible, and he demanded that she sign a written document saying so.
Evelyn didn't think White had drugged her drink and obviously had an emotionally confusing relationship with the man, so she refused. In a 1903 affidavit, Evelyn told police that because she refused that night, Thaw beat her.
The beatings began during the trip abroad, ostensibly to help Evelyn recover from her appendectomy, but being beaten for hours on end didn't help her recuperate much. Eventually, Evelyn made it back home to New York.
She refused to talk to Thaw and learned from Stanford White and his acquaintances that Thaw had his own history of mistreating young women.Evelyn returned to Stanford White.But Thaw didn't give up.He wrote her love letters.
His mother reached out to her and somehow convinced her that the rumors about him abusing other women weren't true, even though she knew firsthand that he'd violently beaten her.
Regardless, Evelyn's resolve finally crumbled, and she agreed to see him.On Christmas Eve 1903, she was supposed to meet Stanford White, who'd arranged a romantic night for her 19th birthday.Thaw intervened. In his mind, he had saved her.
Maybe Evelyn thought that too.She married him in 1905, two years after telling police about him beating her.
Now, why would Evelyn then, two years later, marry him?That's the $64,000 question.The way I see it is she's still only 19 years old.She has no education.There's no support system for her.Does that not happen still today?I mean, we have abused women.
It's one of the great tragedies, I think, when you see, and it's not just women from lower classes or however people want to characterize it.You see intelligent women who are in abusive relationships
It seems, too, that Evelyn thought Harry's obsession with White would end when they married.I mean, after all, if you're vying for a woman, getting her to end that relationship and marry you is kind of winning, right?But that wasn't the case.
And after she married Harry, when he, I guess she mentioned to him, you know, that, oh, I had a
my teeth fixed, Harry had her go to his dentist and had him undo all the stuff in her mouth just because he was under the impression that Whitehead had paid to have her teeth fixed.
Thaw and Evelyn had been married just more than a year when, one night in late June 1906, the couple ended up atop the Madison Square Garden.Now this isn't the building we know today.
The current Madison Square Garden was built in 1968 and is actually the fourth building to bear that name.The first was built in 1879 and had been leased to P.T.Barnum for 11 years, but it wasn't very practical year-round because it had no roof.
That one was demolished, and Stanford White's firm built Madison Square Garden No.It stood 32 stories and was the second tallest building at the time.White, who you'll remember was married, kept a bachelor's pad inside of it.
The apartment was in the rooftop restaurant, where White and other fancy folk gathered to watch the premiere of Mamzell Champagne. Evelyn was with Thaw that night.
The two were headed to Europe for a vacation, but before they left, Thaw bought tickets for the new show and the two went to the restaurant called Cafe Martin.
They'd only been married for a year.When they came to New York intending to go on their second honeymoon, I guess you could say, Thaw kept obsessing over the fact that White had had his wife first when she was 16 and White was 48.
White wasn't supposed to be there that night.He was supposed to be in Philadelphia on a business trip.But at some point, he appeared and was seated.
Restaurant patrons later said they had noticed Thaw glaring at White, though they surely didn't know why or what might come of it.
It's never been established if Thaw was triggered by the suggestive song, I Could Love a Million Girls, or if the lyrics were just coincidentally perfect for the murder of a sex fiend rapist, but whatever the case, that was when Thaw approached with his pistol and opened fire.
After shooting White dead, Thaw held the gun over his head and emptied the remaining bullets.He then walked across the room to his wife.Good God, Harry, Evelyn said.What have you done?Thaw replied.It's all right, dear.
I have probably saved your life. Thaw was arrested and held in a jail wing called Murderer's Row, but he was no ordinary prisoner.
There's a photo of Thaw in his jail cell, dining at a cloth-covered table, his tie tucked into his button-up shirt to keep it clean, several plates full of food are laid before him, as well as a crystal pitcher and a silver teapot.
Over his shoulder, there should be a jail cot, but instead, you can see a brass bed with extra blankets.
When word spread about the murder, it spread in conjunction with Thaw's reported justification that White had not only had a sexual relationship with the young and lovely Evelyn Nesbitt, but that he'd raped her while she was unconscious.
And this shaped Thaw's defense. His lawyers at first wanted to plead him not guilty by reason of insanity, but Mamathas said, no way to that, stigma and all.So they compromised.
They pleaded him not guilty by arguing he'd followed the unwritten law that requires a man to protect his wife.
Harry's lawyers tried to use this defense.They called it Dementia Americana, the unwritten law, that he was driven crazy by the fact this man had defiled his wife.And so he had every legal right to kill him.
I mean, any reasonable person would be infuriated in learning that their spouse had been raped by anyone.And this is 1906, when women were seen more as adornments than as people.This is 14 years before we could even vote.
Key to Thaw's defense was what he had learned about White from Evelyn, so she was a star witness.It made for salacious headlines on front pages across the country.
Evelyn gets on the stand and talks about all of the things that she did with White and photo sessions and, you know, naked riding on a swing, all of this.And no one had ever heard anything like this before.
No one had read anything like this, certainly not the general public.
And so here it was every day in the newspapers and they were printing excerpts from the trial and Teddy Roosevelt, as the president was trying to stop them because he said it was corrupting the morals of the nation.
A Western Union office was set up next to the courthouse so reporters could file nationwide.It was so high profile, in fact, that the judge in the case ordered the jury to be sequestered.
Now, over the years, some journalists, including this one, began reporting that this marked the first time an American jury was sequestered, but that's not true.It was just repeated so often that it had enough citations to seem true.
Your Bureau included it in her very well-researched book, but when I fact-checked it to include in my 2024 book, Crimes of the Centuries, The Cases That Changed Us, she and I chatted over email and determined, well, geez, it's not the case.
Your bureau wrote me, quote, since my research was pre-internet, I have no idea where and how I came across that bit of information.And I'm not sure if others who write about the case just repeat a myth or a fact, end quote.And that checks out.
American Eve was published in 2009. Newspapers.com, where I found references to many other sequestered juries, didn't appear online until 2012.Nevertheless, the amount of attention and newsprint this trial garnered was virtually unprecedented.
Now when White was first killed, public sentiment was on the victim's side, but once Thaw's motive was explained, the sympathy shifted.
Because what honorable husband wouldn't gun down a man who'd slept with his wife, much less a man who did so without consent? Harry Thaw became an American hero.
Once he explained why he had killed White by saying, quote, for the sake of wife and home, end quote.Soon after, a popular song was released by that name.
For the sake of a wife and home He must spend all his days A life for a life is the stern law's demand, Unmerciful law which so few understand.
The first jury hearing the case against Thaw sat through weeks of testimony, but couldn't reach a verdict.The trial ended with seven jurors voting for murder in the first degree and five voting for acquittal.
The case was leveled again, however, and after five days of testimony and 25 hours of deliberation, Thaw was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity in 1908.He was spared life in prison, but he was sent to an asylum.
In 1913, he escaped for a day and, according to the Newberry Herald and News of South Carolina, drove madly in an automobile for 50 futile miles through the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire.
He was captured by immigration officers in Colebrook, New Hampshire, where scores of people visited as though there were a circus in town.Evelyn visited for years. In 1910, she gave birth to her one and only son, Russell Thaw.
She said he was conceived during a conjugal visit.Harry Thaw, however, disputed this.Regardless, Evelyn made raising her son a front and center priority.
She didn't want to make the same mistakes her mother had made with her, and son Russell eventually became a renowned pilot. Harry Thaw was released from the asylum in 1915 and divorced Devlin.
Two years later, he was arrested for horse whipping a young high school boy named Fred Gump.The Thaw family paid the Gumps $100,000 in damages, and Thaw went back to an asylum for seven more years.
He was released in 1924 for good and died of a heart attack in 1947. Evelyn had falling out with both her mother and her brother Howard, who blamed her for White's death, even though it was Thaw who pulled the trigger.
Howard was especially upset because he'd come to see White as a father figure.Evelyn wrote two memoirs, one in 1914, the other in 1934.
In 1955, she was paid $30,000 for her life story, which led to the Joan Collins movie, The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing.
The world was shocked breathless when America's richest playboy, Harry K. Thaw, walked to the table of Stanford White, America's most renowned architect, and shot him dead with a solid gold revolver.I did it because he ruined my wife.
Few persons knew exactly why he did it, but nearly everybody knew over whom he did it.
The year the movie came out, Nesbitt gave an interview in which she said she had never loved Harry Thaw.In fact, she hated him.But she still loves Stanford White.
She remarried once, that too ended in divorce, and mounted a few attempts at comebacks, such as in the 1930s when she would sing at clubs.
Now you may wonder, what's the reason for this great big smile?
But the public could never quite separate her from the scandal, and her comeback never came.Everywhere she went, she was recognized and mobbed, but she only got the headache that comes with fame and None of the fun.
Her obituary in the New York Times read, quote, life taught her the price and rewards of a celebrity.Though she made a fair living from recalling her vicissitudes, women mobbed her and sometimes cut off her curls for souvenirs.
She went shopping in a department store and had to be rescued from aggressive admirers, end quote.In 1922, she was evicted for not paying her rent and attempted suicide by poison.Four years later, she tried again.She once said,
Stanny White was killed, but my fate was worse.I lived.But that's not the end of her story.Because no matter what was thrown at her, Evelyn fought through it.
Partly because of her modeling career, she started to develop back issues and, you know, the medicine at the time.So she got hooked on morphine and then she overcame that.
She became a single mother at a point in time when that was, you know, anathema and people were horrified.
She sort of managed to overcome every obstacle that was in her way and ended up, you know, having a ceramic studio in California, having a family, being a grandmother, living her life, and even being a consultant for the
The film that they did, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, when she was in her 70s and someone asked her about the scandal, she would reply, oh yeah, that was when I rocked civilization.Evelyn died quietly in a nursing home in 1967 at age 82.
Her tombstone in Culver City, California, makes no mention of her early days as an it girl and supermodel.It describes her simply as mother.
To research this story, I read Paula Euriburo's book, American Eve, which is written really well and I'm not just saying that because she agreed to be interviewed for this episode.It's a good book.
I also read a ton of newspaper accounts, first from the early 1900s when the crime occurred and then in later years when retrospectives were published.
Because we could only find chic music and not a recording of the song For the Sake of Wife and Home, We asked the awesome Charlie McCarran to record a subversion.To hear the whole song, go to our website at www.centuriespod.com.
Crimes of the Centuries is a production of the Obsessed Network.To learn more about its shows, go to obsessednetwork.com.This case was researched by me, Amber Hunt, and produced by Garrett Tiedemann.Original music is by Bruce Hunt and Andrew Higley.
Other music comes from Blue Dot Sessions.If you like us, help us out by rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts. For more information or to recommend a case, go to centuriespod.com.On Instagram and Twitter, we're at CenturiesPod.
And check out the Crimes of the Centuries podcast Facebook page.
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