Thaw was apprehended within moments by Patrolman Anthony Debes, whose foot post covered Madison Square Garden.\u00a0 At the Nineteenth Precinct, Thaw initially provided the desk sergeant with a false name, but before long his identity was discovered, and the lurid details behind his crime became front-page news.<\/p>\n
His wife, Evelyn Nesbit, was, by age sixteen, New York City’s most famous model.\u00a0 Photographs of her dressed in skimpy virginal attire, with auburn hair cascading down her bare shoulders, began to appear on penny postcards and in national periodicals.\u00a0 Her innocence and beauty captivated millions of men and one in particular, Stanford White, who had a penchant for virtuous adolescent girls and a wallet large enough to attain them.\u00a0 His first spotted her performing a bit part in a Broadway musical.\u00a0 Since Evelyn was a minor, White befriended her mother. He convinced Mrs. Nesbit that he only had her daughter’s best interests in mind and began to shower her with gifts.\u00a0 Evelyn soon became smitten by her much older, married benefactor, whom she affectionately called “Stanny”.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Harry K. Thaw, a younger and more wealthy suitor, began vying for Evelyn’s attention.\u00a0 Thaw wanted desperately to marry her.\u00a0 When White learned of their budding relationship, he warned Evelyn that Thaw had experienced several psychotic episodes in the past that his family fortune had made disappear.\u00a0 But Thaw kept that side of himself hidden from Evelyn.\u00a0 Shortly before her eighteenth birthday in 1903, he squired on her, along with her mother actiing as a chaperone, on a grand tour of Europe.\u00a0 Thaw’s plan was to get Evelyn away from White to determine the extent of their romantic involvement.<\/p>\n Halfway through the monthlong sojourn he persuaded Mrs. Nesbit to return home.\u00a0 When she did, he rented a secluded castle for himself and Evelyn in the German countryside.\u00a0 Once they were alone, Thaw convinced Evelyn to open up about her relationship with White. She reluctantly admitted that White had taken her virginity during a night of heavy drinking.\u00a0 Thaw became so unhinged by her disclosure that he violently raped her.\u00a0 In the months that followed their return to America, Thaw begged Evelyn to forgive him and that he was a changed man.\u00a0 She finally believed him. The two were married in April 1905 and settled down in his family mansion in Pittsburgh.\u00a0 Although they were far away from New York City, Thaw could not get past the fact that White had defiled his bride.\u00a0 He began to formulate a plan to make White pay for what he had done.<\/p>\n Thaw took to carrying a pistol, ostensibly for his own protection, but he had other ideas for it.\u00a0 He made arrangements to take Evelyn on a voyage to Europe in the summer of 1906.\u00a0 The night before boarding the ocean liner, Thaw agreed to take Evelyn to see a new show at Madison Square Garden.\u00a0 A combination of happenstance and bad timing put White and Thaw on a collision course that evening.\u00a0 Thaw noticed White’s arrival and immediately excused himself.\u00a0 The chorus had just finished singing the song “I Could Love a Thousand Girls” when Thaw walked up behind White and fired his revolver three times.\u00a0 White keeled over on the table.\u00a0 Silverware and wineglasses crashed to the floor.\u00a0 During the pandemonium, Thaw casually made his way to the elevator, where he was arrested by Patrolman Debes.<\/p>\n Thaw pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.\u00a0 He\u00a0was remanded to the Tombs prison, where his wealth insured that he would dine on stake from Delmonico’s washed down with the finest Scotch money could buy.<\/p>\n The newspapers proclaimed Thaw’s 1907 murder trial “the Trial of the Century.”\u00a0 The star witness was his beautiful wife, Evelyn.\u00a0 The entire country was riveted to her testimony; unbeknownst to most of them, Thaw’s mother had made financial arrangements with Evelyn to insure she portrayed her schizophrenic son in the best possible light.\u00a0 The first trial resulted in a hung jury, the second in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.\u00a0 Thaw spent the next several years in a sanitarium, where he enjoyed regular conjugal visits with Evelyn.\u00a0 Security was so lax that at one point he escaped and made his way to Canada.\u00a0 Eventually he was captured and returned to the United States.<\/p>\n On July 15, 1915, his lawyers finally won Thaw’s freedom.\u00a0 One of the first things he did upon his release was divorce his wife.\u00a0 Thaw would go on to thave many run-ins with the law.\u00a0 As for Evelyn, her ex-husband’s penny pinching ways made her life miserable.\u00a0 Before she passed away in 1967 at the age of eight-one, Evelyn told a reporter, “Stanny was lucky he died.\u00a0 I lived.”<\/p>\n Culled from:\u00a0Undisclosed Files of the Police<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n So I was getting ready to share an excerpt from\u00a0Murder Has a Public Face<\/a>\u00a0by Larry Millett, a collection of crime and punishment photos in the Speed Graphic camera era taken in the St. Paul, Minnesota area, when I realized this sad story happened in my very own neighborhood!\u00a0 Here’s the tragic tale:<\/p>\n The 1920s in the Twin Cities ended with a wrenching murder case that preoccupied the press and the public for weeks.\u00a0 The victim was 12-year-old Dorothy Aune, whose body – wrapped in two gunnysacks and bound with rope and wire – was found on August 14, 1929, along railroad tracks near Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis.\u00a0 The girl, who lived nearby, had disappeared the previous evening after leaving home to walk to a corner grocery store. Somewhere along the way, she was kidnapped, raped, and strangled to death, after which her body was dumped along the tracks, where two icemen making their rounds discovered it at 6:30 in the morning.<\/p>\n Both Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers covered the murder at great length, highlighting their stories with numerous photographs showing the crime scene, members of Aune’s family, and police investigators at work.\u00a0 The Minneapolis Tribune immediately offered a $1,000 reward for information leading the murderer’s arrest while voicing its outrage over the brutal crime:\u00a0 “The slaying of this 12-year-old girl was conceived in the heart of a fiend, and was executed with a bestial, cowardly ferocity which has sickened and depressed the entire city.”\u00a0 Despite a massive police dragnet that harvested scores of suspects, the crime was never solved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I did some research and found some additional photos of… Where her body was discovered:<\/em> Dorothy’s Home:<\/em> And a map of the body location: So about a month ago or so, I decided to walk a few blocks to Dorothy’s home and then, using the map provided, I tried to find the site where her body was found. It wasn’t so easy because so much has changed since Dorothy’s day.\u00a0 For one thing, the railroad tracks are long gone and a bicycle path marks that area now.\u00a0 I feel pretty confident that I was able to find the approximate location where Dorothy was sadly dumped all those years ago.<\/p>\n Dorothy’s house as it looks today.\u00a0 It really hasn’t changed much. Another angle: The area where Dorothy’s body was found – possibly near where that rock is now found (perhaps it’s marker?)\u00a0 Hundreds of bicyclists pass by this area every day during warm months.\u00a0 I wonder how many know about Dorothy?\u00a0 Not many, I’d reckon.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/122022-1.jpg\")
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\nEvelyn Nesbit: the Original “Gibson Girl”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nStanny<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nRich bastard Harry serving “hard” time<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nElderly Evelyn<\/em><\/p>\nMinneapolis Tragedy Du Jour!<\/h3>\n
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\nPolice and onlookers at scene of Dorothy Aune’s murder, Pioneer Press, Aug. 15, 1929<\/em><\/p>\n
\nPoor Dorothy<\/em>
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