Mark J. Phillips - Trials of the Century: A Decade-by-Decade Look at Ten of Americas Most Sensational Crimes

The turn of the twentieth century represented the crest of what has become known as the Gilded Age in America. The country was rapidly industrializing and the economy rising faster than ever before. It was the era of railroads, oil, and high finance, of Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. There seemed to be no limit to the amount of money a person could acquire, or to what he could spend it on. The Gilded Age elite lived lives of conspicuous consumption and extravagance, full of high culture, sumptuous parties, easy leisure pursuits, and overindulgence. New York was the center of this world. Leonard Jerome, a financier, once threw a party at Delmonico's at which every woman in attendance was gifted a gold bracelet. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, whose husband was the president of the Illinois Central Railroad, once threw a dinner party for her dog, which attended wearing a $15,000 diamond collar.

But gilded literally means to be covered only with a thin layer of gold. Not everyone had such massive personal fortunes and such sparkling leisurely lives. The majority of families in America lived on less than $1,200 a year, and sweatshops and tenements were sprouting up in every city in the country.they were partially enchanted, partially disgusted, but always fascinated with them.

On June 25, 1906, Harry Kendall Thaw, the millionaire of Pittsburgh, and his young, breathtakingly beautiful wife, Evelyn Nesbit, attended a performance of Mamzelle Champagne at the Roof Garden Theatre of Madison Square Garden. Also in attendance was the much-acclaimed architect Stanford White, seated at a table in the front row. In the middle of the chorus's rendition of I Could Love a Million Girls, Thaw calmly approached White's table, pulled a revolver from an overcoat pocket, and fired three shots into his head, killing him instantly. He deserved it, Thaw explained, he ruined my wife and then deserted the girl.

With these three gunshots, Harry Thaw launched not only a lengthy murder trial but also a media spectacle and nationwide obsession, the pop culture legacies of which have lasted for decades. His public prosecution, coinciding with the explosion of newspaper readership, was the beginning of a century of American fascination with media-driven murder trials, sex, celebrity, and publicity.

The complicated story of this crime began five years earlier in the summer of 1901, when young Evelyn Nesbit, a bit player in the popular Broadway show Florodora, first met the famed Stanford White. Evelyn was then sixteen and White forty-eight. Evelyn was born in 1884 in Tarentum, Pennsylvania. Her father died when she was eight years old, and her mother, tasked with the care of two children, struggled to make ends meet. She shuttled Evelyn and her younger brother, Howard, around Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, opening and closing a sequence of unsuccessful boarding houses and trying other odd jobs, including dressmaking. At age fourteen, Evelyn quit school and worked as a stock girl to help support the family.

Harry K. Thaw (center, bow tie) with unidentified gentleman. From the Library of Congress.

About this time, Evelyn met John Storm, a well-known artist in Philadelphia. He was immediately taken with her beauty, for even as a young girl Evelyn was admired for her stunning good looks. She had smooth olive skin, large, heavy-lidded dark eyes, and her thick copper-colored hair fell in long curls. Storm began using her as a model for his work. He introduced her to a variety of industry professionals, and she began appearing in books, magazines, and newspaper advertisements. Hoping to capitalize on that modest success, the Nesbits moved to New York City in 1901, where Evelyn continued to model for artists and photographers, including Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson Girl. Evelyn gained substantial publicity and was finally cast as a Spanish dancer in Florodora. Since she was only sixteen, the other cast members called her the baby or the kid.

As for Stanford White, he was even then one of America's

In the summer of 1901, Emma Goodrich, a fellow chorus girl in Florodora, brought Evelyn to an intimate lunch party at White's apartment. Clearly smitten with her, White spent the next few months inviting Evelyn to lunches at his apartment and sending her expensive gifts. He met Mrs. Nesbit, who seemed to approve of him despite his reputation and allowed young Evelyn to spend a considerable amount of time with him. White fawned over the beautiful, young Evelyn. He paid for her

One night while Mrs. Nesbit was in Philadelphia, White invited Evelyn to a dinner at his apartment. Assuming it would be a small party, Evelyn was surprised to find that she was the only guest. They ate and drank champagne. White showed her around his lavish apartment, and, before the night was over, he seduced her. In the trial that was to follow, Evelyn would claim that he had gotten her drunk on champagne and taken advantage of her, that she only knew what transpired when she awoke naked in his bed. However, in her memoir, she claims to have been head over heels in love with him and remembers on this night feeling that this, then, was what love meant.

This tryst set off what would become an extended and not-so-secretive affair between White and Evelyn. After nearly every Florodora show, Evelyn would meet White and his friends for supper and stay late at his apartment, where he showered her with expensive jewelry and pushed her on the red velvet swing, Evelyn often wearing nothing but his jewelry. She accompanied him to parties at his studio in the tower above Madison Square Garden and often spent the night there, curled up on fur rugs while he worked on his designs. White moved Evelyn and her mother from their boarding house to an opulently decorated apartment in the Wellington Hotel, opened accounts for them at the New Amsterdam Bank and the Mercantile Trust Company, paid their bills, and gave them a twenty-five-dollar weekly allowance.

However, by 1902, Evelyn had rocketed to stardom and become a widely recognized celebrity. She had the lead role in a new musical called The Wild Rose, for which avid fans reportedly threw at her feet flowers with fifty-dollar bills wrapped She was said to be one of the most beautiful women of the day, and she had countless male admirers.

One of these admirers was Harry Kendall Thaw. Dark-haired and of average build with wide, saucer-like eyes and a youthful face, Thaw, born in Pittsburgh in 1871, was the son of a wealthy railroad family. Even in the context of New York society he was rich beyond imagination. He purportedly lit his cigars with one-hundred-dollar bills.

In January 1902, Thaw began sending flowers to Evelyn backstage under the pseudonym Mr. Monroe. He bribed a chorus girl in the show to persuade Evelyn to meet him for tea, and it was only at this meeting that she learned of Thaw's true identity. But Thaw was smitten. He continued to call on her at her hotel and send flowers and gifts.