November 6, 2025 • 40 mins
Before O.J., before Menendez, before every “trial of the century” that would follow—there was Harry K. Thaw. The millionaire playboy who gunned down famed architect Stanford White in front of hundreds of witnesses at Madison Square Garden. His crime? Passion. Jealousy. Madness. Or maybe all three.
In this Crimes & Consequences episode, we take you inside the scandal that rocked the Gilded Age: a love triangle dripping in sex, secrets, and society’s hypocrisy. From Thaw’s obsession with showgirl Evelyn Nesbit to the shocking courtroom circus that defined American media’s hunger for spectacle—this is where tabloid true crime was born.
In this Crimes & Consequences episode, we take you inside the scandal that rocked the Gilded Age: a love triangle dripping in sex, secrets, and society’s hypocrisy. From Thaw’s obsession with showgirl Evelyn Nesbit to the shocking courtroom circus that defined American media’s hunger for spectacle—this is where tabloid true crime was born.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
This episode maintained content of a graphic nature, including descriptions
of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hi. I'm Shannon. Hi I'm Tanya, and we are Crimes
and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast. Hey Shannon, Hello, Hello, Hello,
how are you, Tanya. I'm doing great.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I would like to just give a little shout out
to a new listener that we have. Her name is Rose,
and she works with my husband, and she said she
loves us. He loves your laugh, she loves our story telling.
And I just wanted to say, hello, Rose.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hey, Rose, I'm so glad you're with us. Yes, pass
us around like a nice blunt, a wonderfully packed blunt.
So how is your week, my friend?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Oh, you know it's been okay. They have changed some
of my job duties out.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh I remember you were telling me this.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Now I feel about it yet. It started, but we
were told yesterday, me and the other attorneys that I
work with on my team. So we'll see, We'll see
how it goes. I don't know how to feel about it.
Like I said, maybe it'll be a good thing. So
I'm gonna try and keep a positive attitude about it.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I love that. Yeah, you know you have to. I'm good.
You know, a little guy was not feeling too well
the other day, so oh then I wasn't feeling too well.
But everyone's doing good and we're ready for Halloween. We
carved pumpkins. Well, I have to do that tomorrow, Tanya.
I have not got pumpkins in years, Heldbrook, you know,
(02:12):
a quarter of a century. I haven't gone to a
pumpkin patch in about twenty five years. And this is
not an endorsement, but I went to Shrams off of
twenty five and they have a farm and it's, oh
my gosh, there's selection of pumpkins. I dropped nice money
on some gorgeous, good pumpkins than my family. You know.
We have a carving contest and a painting contest. You
(02:35):
submit and then we have people vote, and yes, so
it was so it was just so freaking awesome, and
I'm glad. I'm at a point in my life where
I can appreciate things now. You guys, I can't encourage
you enough. Make it to fifty five and then keep
going because you are gonna feel so much more in
touch with yourself.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
But I'm lunking in my fifties. I just don't give
a fuck, thank you, And it's anything I don't be
how I look. Yes, Like there's a lady on Instagram
she's like in the I Do Not Care Club. Have
you've seen her videos?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Oh? I do follow the club.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I don't care if you don't like it when
I show up in my pajama pants, this is what
you're getting.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You are going to need to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
You're gonna have to deal with it. So I agree
for I Do Not Care Club. You're a menopozal and
metopausal women.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I remember when I had turned forty. One of my
clients I was doing nails, she had just turned fifty
and I was telling her just how I was kind
of like Milestonia dealing with turning forty. And she's like, oh,
she goes. My birthday was just in February. Wait till
you turn fifty you will not care. And I thought,
did you hear a word I said about how I'm
dealing and grappling with forty and you're telling.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Me fifty fifty fifty fifty?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
But she was right, She is so right. You don't
get it till you get here.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
So yeah, because I don't care what people think about
them preach, they can fucking keep off a short peer
or whatever is whatever Grandpa used to say, Yeah, whatever
Grandpa used to say.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So anyway, what do you got for us today?
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I got a good story about money and about crime
and about believing that you're the sword of the Lord. Ooh.
I wonder if I should make a T shirt about that.
I could design something and put it in our and
our Sword of the Lord, and then put the the
(04:39):
story that I'm about to tell you. So you're all right, well, Tanya,
when you're born into money, the law doesn't speak to
you the same way. It bows, It negotiates, it apologizes
for the inconvenience. And in the late eighteen hundreds, on
the edge of Pittsburgh's industrial empire, that was the word
(05:00):
the Thaw family built for themselves. Steel money, railroad money,
coal money, money so deep it didn't just change what
you could buy, it changed what you could get away with.
And this is where our story begins, not on the
rooftop in New York City with a gunshot, not in
a courtroom, but in a house where a little boy
(05:23):
was raised to believe he was important enough to kill
for his pride. This is the life and damage of
Harry Kendall Thaw, the millionaire who shot an architect in
front of hundreds of witnesses and still walked out of
the court without a murder conviction. He was called insane,
(05:44):
he was called romantic, he was called righteous, and he
wasn't any of those things. He was dangerous. This is
the story. This is the slighted millionaire. Harry Kendall Thaw
was born February twelfth, eighteen seventy one, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania,
what's now Pittsburgh. It's like, I think if they call
(06:06):
it North Side Pittsburgh. He was the child of the
Gilded Age, and that phrase really mattered back then. Gilded
didn't mean golden, it meant covered in gold, pretty on
the outside, rotting underneath. His father, William Thaw Senior, had
money that made other men nervous railroads, coal, steel shipping.
(06:30):
He wasn't new money. He was threat level money, the
kind of man who didn't just buy land, he bought leverage.
And Harry's mother, Mary Sibbet Copley Thaw was just as
formidable in a different way, hard, pious, possessive. She believed
two things, very deeply, that God had chosen her family
(06:52):
to sit above everyone else, and that Harry was hers.
Now this becomes important later. The thought house was impressive, ornate,
crowded with servants, filled with guilt, mirrors, and carved furniture,
but emotionally it was cold. Even as a child, Harry
was described as nervous, unmanageable, unsettling. He didn't just misbehave.
(07:18):
He tested how far he could go. At five years old,
he reportedly locked a housemaid in a pantry because she
told him no. At eight, he hurled a heavy inkwell
at a tutor's head so hard it split the man's scalp.
When confronted, he didn't seem upset, he seemed amused. Teachers
would later write that he couldn't sit still, couldn't tolerate criticism,
(07:42):
and would fly into sudden tantrums that felt out of
proportion to the trigger. We'd have language for that now.
Back then they called him high strung, sometimes erratic. Quietly
in the kitchen. The word was not right, and Mary
hated that word, so instead of consequences, she called him
(08:05):
delicate instead of structure. He was allowed indulgence instead of discipline,
he got protection, and when his father died in eighteen
eighty nine, Harry was set loose, with almost no restraint
left standing. After William Thaw's death, the family fortune was divided,
but let's be clear, divided still meant millions and millions
(08:28):
in eighteen nineties money. Harry's allowance alone, just his allowance
was raised by his mother to about eight thousand dollars
a month. In today's monny, that's like paying your unstable
twenty year old two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
year to stay calm and not embarrass you in public.
For Harry, it didn't buy calm, It bought range. He
(08:51):
tried Princeton, he tried Harvard. He bounced from school to
school like a lit match in a linen closet. Harvard
especially still tell stories about him. He would host what
were basically champagne brunch orgies in rented hotel suites. He'd
hire sex workers, chorus girls, sometimes just board society daughters
(09:13):
who were curious about being bad. For an afternoon, he'd
shower them with jewelry and furs, and then, just as fast,
turned viciously mocking one classmate said, Harry couldn't feel important
unless someone else in the room felt small.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Oh he's one of those guys, Yes.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
One of those guys. He was expelled from Harvard in
eighteen ninety four for quote, conduct unbecoming a gentleman. That's
a Gilded age polite speak for gambling, debts, drugs, violence,
and behavior so predatory people were even afraid to write
it down in minutes. His response to Harvard kicking him out,
(09:55):
he bragged that the school couldn't handle him, not the
other way around. This is the shape of his psychology
from the start. If you reject me, you've wronged me.
And if you've wronged me, I'm entitled to destroy you.
After Harvard, he went to Europe, and the stories from
Europe were almost cartoonishly decadent. Private dinners in Paris, where
(10:18):
he'd hire full military marching bands just to play for
him and a couple of women. He picked up opium
and morphine binges that ended with doctors being bribed not
to report them, Rumors of having women tied up, humiliated, photographed,
paid off, and every time something got close to scandal,
(10:38):
his mother Mary reached for her check book and smoothed
it over. That's important. His mother wasn't oblivious, she wasn't naive.
She was invested in the myth of her son. The
family name had to stay stainless, and she was perfectly
willing to launder blood to keep it that way. She
called him my boy. Well into his thirties, she told
(11:02):
people he was misunderstood. She told lawyers they were to
protect Harry as they would a prince. That's not a metaphor,
that's a quote from her instructions. This was the soil.
Harry Thaw grew in power without consequence, money without ethics,
rage without limits, and all of it wrapped in a
(11:24):
story where he was always always the injured party. Before
the murder, before the trial, before the headlines, there was
a chorus girl, and her name was Evelyn Nesbitt. At
sixteen years old, Evelyn was one of the most famous
faces in New York City. She posed for magazine covers,
(11:44):
department store ads, and theatrical posters. She was so intensely
photographed that illustrators used to say, if you're drawing a
beautiful girl, you're drawing Evelyn, whether you mean to or not.
She was called very publicly the most beautiful girl in America,
and she was a child. At the same time, New
(12:06):
York had another kind of celebrity, Stanford White. Stanford White
was an architect, but architect really doesn't cover it. He
wasn't a contractor. He was the taste maker of Manhattan.
He designed Madison Square Garden, the Washington Square arch mansions
for the Astors, the Vanderbilts. He curated not just buildings,
(12:31):
but lifestyles for the rich people of America. He was
also quietly a predator. When Stanford White wanted a girl,
he didn't chase her down a dark alley. He sent flowers,
He sent invitations, he sent carriages, he sent dinners in
private rooms, and he sent glamour. First he met Evelyn
(12:51):
when she was still a teenager working on stage. He
invited her up to one of his private apartments, a
salon decorated in sad velvet and mirrors, red velvet, specifically
with a literal velvet swing suspended from the ceiling. Reporters
later branded it the red velvet Swing, and that one
(13:12):
detail burned itself into twentieth century scandal culture. That night,
he gave her champagne. She later said she woke up
the next morning without her clothes, disoriented, and he was there.
This was the most important trauma in this entire story,
and it's what Harry would eventually weaponize, because when Harry
(13:35):
Thaw met Evelyn, he walked in already furious. He'd already
heard stories about Stanford White's reputation. He already resented White
for exactly two reasons. One, Stanford White had access to
elite New York social clubs that always found ways to
block Harry Thaw. Money wasn't enough. Taste mattered, and Harry
(13:59):
had without taste. Two, White had touched a girl Harry
wanted to possess. Now, I'm going to say that again,
and I'm going to say it the exact way Harry
believed it. Harry did not see Evelyn as a woman
with her own body and choices. He saw her as
something of his, something spoiled, to use his word, something
(14:22):
to purify. He pursued her like a man trying to
buy redemption gifts, hotels, private travel. He told her he'd
loved her, he would protect her, and he would marry
her and make her respectable. But it never felt protective
to her. It felt like prosecution. He grilled her on
Stanford White. He demanded details. He said he needed to
(14:46):
understand what had been done to her in order to
forgive her. And then when she cried, and she did cry,
when she told him, he would break down, sobbing himself,
and then raise and then beg her. Life with him
was a hostage negotiation from the very beginning. He followed
(15:07):
her to London, to Paris, to backwater towns in between.
At one point she tried to get away from him.
She took work in Europe, quietly thinking distance would dissolve him.
He bought a ticket and showed up where she was staying, shaking, pale, dramatic,
telling her God sent him and that she was the
(15:27):
only pure thing in his life. I'm the only man
who can love you without sin. He told her. That's
not romance, that's pathology. They married on April fourth, nineteen
o five. The papers didn't call it pathological. They called
it a fairy tale, The Millionaire and the chorus girl.
(15:47):
That's not what Evelyn lived. She later said that the
honeymoon was closer to captivity. Harry berated her about men
she'd known. He demanded her sexual history like evidence. He
prayed aloud for her ruined virtue. He slapped her when
he thought she looked at another man too long, and
(16:07):
he would force her to stay in hotel rooms while
he went out in public. She said later, I married
one madman to escape another. That line alone could have
ended the story, but it didn't because Harry wasn't content
just to take Evelyn away from Stanford White. He wanted
to take Stanford White off the map. On June twenty fifth,
(16:30):
nineteen oh six, New York City, Madison Square Garden, not
the Madison Square Garden you know, the original one, the
one Stanford White designed and had a rooftop theater, open
air electric lights glowing over cafe tables and champagne buckets.
The city's elite loved it. Performers, song and dance, reviews
(16:54):
or lost comedy. It was rich people fun. That night's
show was a naughty little review called Mamselle Champagne. It
was light, flirty, silly. The final number was called I
Could Love a Million Girls. Stanford White was there, like
he always was, in his signature white suit and straw hat,
(17:14):
sitting at his usual table. Owner of the room, relaxed.
Harry Thaw was there too, he wasn't relaxed. Witnesses remembered
his eyes first. They said his eyes looked lit from
the inside. He was wearing a long black overcoat in June,
in heat on a rooftop. He refused to take it off.
(17:36):
Evelyn was with him, visibly uncomfortable, trying to read him,
not sure how to stop what she could feel was
already happening. As the final number started, the performers came out.
The crowd leaned forward, men in tuxedos with cigars, women
fanning themselves with programs. Harry stood. He crossed the space
(17:58):
between their tables. He pulled a thirty eight revolver from
his pocket, and without a word to White, he fired
three shots. One hit Stanford White in the face. Blood sprayed.
White's body snapped back, then dropped out of his chair.
The white suit was no longer white. Screams, chaos, men
(18:18):
ducking under tables, women grabbing at pearls, fainting, shouting. Somebody yelled,
my god, he's killed them. Somebody else yelled, it's Harry Thaw.
He shot Stanford White and Harry. Harry didn't run, he
didn't shake, he didn't hide the gun. He lifted the
pistol in the air like he was signaling a referee,
(18:39):
and said, loud enough for witnesses to repeat in sworn statements,
I did it because he ruined my wife. He had
it coming. Then he turned to Evelyn and very calmly
told her, it's all right, dear, I've saved you. Saved her. Yeah, yeah,
as if she had been a problem to solve, you know,
(19:00):
mm hmm. By morning, America new front page every city
Worth mentioning millionaire kills architects. The rush to print was rabid.
Some headlines read like porn, some like pulp novels. One
of them said, a shot that tore the mask off society.
(19:20):
Oh I do love a good title.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I know, I'm like who I'm reading? That would have
made me want to read it.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Ohay, sweat be right up. Because what the public saw
in the moment wasn't just a jealous husband shooting a
love rival. They saw behind the drapes. They saw what
these wealthy men who built their city skylines and their
reputations were also drugging teenage showgirls in velvet rooms and
(19:48):
fighting over them like property. It was moral rot dressed
in opera clothes, and everyone wanted to watch the fallout.
Harry was immediately arrested. He was denied bail, but arrested.
Didn't look like what you're imagining. Welcome to the Tombs.
The Tombs was New York City jail. This gorgeous, suppressive
(20:12):
granite fortress. It was where Thaw was held while he
awaited trial for a first degree murder. And in the Tombs,
Muddy bought comfort. Harry had a brass bed, brought in
his own clothes, a rug, a writing desk, hot meals
delivered from Delmonico's Cigars. It was basically a hotel suite
(20:34):
that locked from the outside.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
It makes me think I think al Capone had something
like that on Alcatraz.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
This decadence. Yes, reporters loved this. They would come in
to interview him and describe him lounging in silk, sipping coffee,
talking about himself like he was the borl center of
the universe. I'm not a criminal, he told a reporter,
I'm a Christian man defending woman who That sentence right
(21:01):
there is what made the trial of the century. Because
Harry wasn't saying I've lost control and I'm sorry. He
was saying I killed him, and you're welcome. This is
so new. January nineteen oh seven, Manhattan Criminal courts building
the line to get into Thaw's trial formed before dawn.
(21:25):
People dressed up to watch a murder trial like it
was opening night at the Metropolitan Opera. Mink stoles, white gloves, corsets,
top hats, society wives sat next to Butcher's shop clerks.
No one wanted to miss this. Harry entered court every
day like it was his entrance, perfectly dressed, fresh haircut.
(21:46):
He'd nod to the gallery as if they were friends
who'd all come to support him. His mother, Mary became
her own character. She was nicknamed the Queen Mother of
Pittsburgh in the papers. She sat directly behind him, staring
down anyone who dared look like they disapproved of her son.
She'd already spent obscene money on his legal team. She
(22:08):
wasn't going to let a jury take him away. The
District Attorney, William Travers Jerome, opened with intent, this was
not a noble act, this was execution. Jerome called Harry
a homicidal egotist, and he said what Harry did was
not chivalry, it was vanity with a gun. But Harry's
(22:28):
team had a different plan. They weren't going to say
he didn't shoot Stanford White. That was impossible. Half of
New York saw it happened. They were going to say, yes,
he killed him, but his mind snapped in that instant.
They called it a brainstorm. Temporary insanity, not insanity like
this man belongs in a cell for life, insanity like
(22:52):
in the heat of defending a woman's honor, his brain
short circuited like a fuse popping and he didn't know
what he was doing. Right. That sounds weak now, but
in nineteen oh seven, it was genius because because you
know what they needed to make it work. They needed Evelyn.
Evelyn Nesbit, not even in her twenties yet, took the
(23:15):
stand in front of a packed courtroom and the entire
nation's attention, and told the story women were never supposed
to say out loud. She told the jury how years
before Stanford White had gotten her drunk, brought her into
that red velvet apartment, let her fall unconscious, and when
she woke up she was bleeding and he was smiling.
(23:37):
In nineteen oh seven, an unmarried woman talking publicly about
being drugged and sexually assaulted by a powerful man was
not just unheard of, it was dangerous. Reporters were literally
trembling to jut every word. Men in the courtroom coughed
into their hands to hide their faces, women openly cried,
(24:00):
and Harry sat there like a saint at his own canonization, pale,
still jaw tight, as if he were hearing this all
for the first time, instead of having demanded those same
details privately and obsessively for years. The defense's message to
the jury was simple, what would you do if a
(24:21):
man violated your young wife? Are you going to punish
Harry Thaw for defending her honor? Prosecution tried to cut
through it. They brought up the honeymoon, the isolation, the control,
the slaps, the screaming sermons he'd give Evelyn about her purity.
They brought up the fact that Evelyn wasn't exactly being defended,
(24:43):
she was being owned. But the public wasn't ready in
nineteen oh seven to understand coercive abuse in a marriage.
They were, however, very ready to cheer a man who
shot a degenerate libertine in defense of a girl. After
forty seven hours of deliberation, the jury came back divided.
(25:03):
Seven wanted to convict him, five wanted to acquit hung
jury mistrial. The newspapers called it proof that chivalry wasn't dead.
It wasn't chivalry, it was theater, and the star had
just bought himself an encore. The second trial began in
nineteen oh eight, and this time Harry's lawyers dropped the pretense.
(25:25):
They didn't call him a hero. They called them sick.
They brought in alienists what we call psychiatrists today to
talk about family history, emotional disturbance, moral insanity. That's a
real phrase from the era, moral insanity meaning you know
the difference between right and wrong, but you would lack
(25:46):
the internal breaks to care. One doctor testified that Harry
suffered homicidal mania triggered by moral shock. This is where
the phrase are you making this up as you go along?
Pops in my head, but loosely translated, he went temporarily
insane because a bad man hurt a good girl and
(26:09):
this noble boy's brain couldn't take it. That's what it meant.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Good defense, not bad nineteen oh seven.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yes, the prosecution tried to drag the frame back to
earth by bringing people in the prosecution tried to drag
the frame back to earth by bringing in people who
had seen Harry off stage, servants, hotel staff girls. One
maid said Harry wants beat a woman with a riding
crop for smiling at another gentleman. Another claimed he shot
(26:39):
at electric bulbs in a hotel lobby just to watch
them shatter and frighten people. There were whispers, very quiet,
never fully committed under oath because of Mary's legal reach
about Harry being violent towards animals, that he would lash
out at anything small in living when he felt mocked
or ignored. That tells you a lot. The jury didn't
(27:01):
love them, but they did something more dangerous than love.
They excused him. Verdict not guilty by reason of insanity.
No prison, no gallows, instead confinement to Madawan State Hospital
for the criminally insane. Now, if you're picturing a padded
cell and electroshock wiped that, Mattawan for Harry Thaw was
(27:24):
not punishment, It was upgraded captivity. He arrived in a
tailored suit with monogram luggage. He tipped attendance. He brought
in rugs and oil paintings and had roast dinners delivered.
He smoked cigars. In bed and wrote letters to the
newspapers about quote, the nobility of my act. One of
the orderlies called him, bitterly the asylum King, and Harry
(27:47):
liked that because for Harry it was never enough to
be alive and unhanged. He needed to be adored. He
needed to be special. He needed the world to believe
that God, the law, and society had all silently agreed. Yes, Harry,
you are the righteous instrument here. Wow, that is talk
(28:09):
about the world on your shoulders here, no kidding. But
the doctors who had to live with him, they wrote
something different in their notes. The nurses said he had
rages and that he issued threats, that he called himself chosen.
One wrote he believes Heaven has made him its sword.
Another wrote, he mistakes entitlement for morality. That is Harry,
(28:32):
though in one line entitlement disguised as morality. August nineteen thirteen,
front page everywhere, Harry Thaw escapes from insane asylum. It
sounded made up, It wasn't. He bribed an attendant, he
put on a chauffeur's coat. He just walked out of Mattawan.
(28:52):
A car was waiting, and he was driven north into Canada.
He checked into a hotel in Montreal under the fake
name mister ht Randolph, tipped like royalty and ordered champagne
like nothing at all was unusual. He was captured days
later in Sherbrooke, Quebec. When Canadian authorities entered his suite,
Harry was reportedly at the piano playing the star spangled banner.
(29:16):
They told the theater of it all, you know, I
do like drama sometimes. They told him he was under arrest.
He didn't beg He smart and said you're late. I
was beginning to think you'd forgotten me. Reporters loved it.
They reprinted that line in papers across the US and Canada.
(29:39):
He fought extradition, claimed Canada had no right to send
him back because he was a quote gentleman, unlawfully held quote.
That was his angle always he was not a criminal.
I am not a criminal. I am mistreated. Eventually he
was returned to New York underguard, with a crowd waiting
to jeer and sheer in almost equal parts. Some people
(30:02):
actually shouted we love you Harry, as if he were
a matinee idol who'd just been gone too long, and
backing custody security tightened and he lost some privileges, but
not in the belief, not the delusion. And interviews he
doubled down quote I'm not insane, i am misunderstood. The
(30:23):
public perception started to flip here. He was no longer
the romantic avenger. He was drifting toward what we now
call celebrity, criminal, famous for being famous, interviewed because he
was outrageous, And when he finally maneuvered his way out, declared,
restored to sanity, and walked free in nineteen fifteen. He
(30:44):
didn't return quietly to private life. He escalated it. By
the time psychiatrists tried to summarize Harry Thaw, they kept
returning to the same word insult. Harry didn't just hate
being rejected. He experienced rejection as an attack that required retaliation.
You told him no, you humiliated him, You embarrassed him,
(31:07):
then you endangered him. Someone else had something he wanted access,
a woman, respect, and to Harry, that was theft. By
the time psychiatrists tried to summarize Harry Thaw, they kept
returning to the same word insult. Harry didn't just hate
being rejected. He experienced rejection as an attack that required retaliation.
(31:30):
You told him no, You humiliate him, You embarrassed him,
you endangered him. Someone else had something he wanted access,
a woman, respect, And to Harry, that was theft, and
that's why Stanford White had to die. In Harry's mind,
White didn't just sleep with Evelyn. White humiliated Harry by
(31:51):
beating him at his own game, taste, influence, acceptance. Harry
could buy women, drugs, hotel floors, or orchestras, but he
couldn't buy respect in certain rooms. Stanford White could, and
that dug into him like a thorn that tunneled under
his skin and never stopped moving. One of the psychiatrists
(32:12):
who testified in his trial, doctor Britton Evans, wrote afterward,
Thaw's mind is divided between delusion and entitlement, an unstable
balance that collapses when his pride is threatened. So let's
talk about that balance. On one side, delusion, Harry really
honestly believed he'd been chosen by God, morality, decency, pick
(32:34):
your word, to cleanse Evelyn's life. He saw himself as
the champion of ruined womanhood, as if women were objects
that existed to be graded and defended like property lines.
And on the other sign his entitlement. Harry could not
process being told he was wraw. Ever, he didn't accept
this promise. He didn't believe other people had the authority
(32:57):
to judge him. He would rather burn the system than
lose within it. That combination is one of the most
dangerous psychological cocktails we've seen in violent men. Righteousness plus
ego plus no breaks. He used Evelyn's trauma to justify
his violence. He called his rage honor, and he called
(33:17):
his control protection. It's classic abuser reframing. And I want
to say this clearly, Evelyn Nesbit was not saved by
Harry Saw. She was turned into evidence. He took her
worst pain, put it on stage, and he used it
to walk free. This is also the first time in
American mass media history that a woman's rape testimony was
(33:41):
weaponized in a courtroom to excuse a man's homicide of
another man, not in secret, not whispered, but splashed on
front pages nationwide. So that's the legacy, that's the scar.
And Harry loved every second of it. He wasn't ashamed,
he was proud and famously said years after, under the
(34:02):
same circumstances, I'd kill him again. That's not insanity, that's conviction.
So now we go to the part of the story
people don't like to talk about, because, after all, the theater,
after the Trial of the Century, after the escape from
Mattawan and the declaration that he was restored to sanity,
Harry Thal walks out in nineteen fifteen, thinking he's invincible.
(34:26):
He bought a mansion in Pittsburgh, resumed his decadent habits
and through lavish parties again old money, new jazz, same demons.
And then in nineteen sixteen, he takes a nineteen year
old boy named Fred Gump Junior to a New York
hotel under the pretense of helping him break into show business.
What happened next is ugly. The boy later testified that
(34:49):
Harry locked him in a room, beat him with a whip,
forced him to pose naked, and threatened him if he screamed.
When that boy escaped, bruised and bleeding, it finally land
in papers again, Thaw again, millionaire madmen assaults boy. When
police came for him, Harry tried to kill himself. He
shot himself in the head, or tried to. The bullet
(35:12):
grazed his skull, and he lived. Of course, he lived,
he was sent again to an asylum, this time not
the Gentleman's Wing. This time they were done pretending he
was charming. He stayed under lock with fewer luxuries, and
he stayed there for years eight years. He eventually got
out in nineteen twenty four, and this time the glow
(35:32):
was gone. The country had moved on Prohibition, jazz, bootleggers,
organized crime. America had new villains. By then, Harry Thaw
was old scandal, a relic. He retired to an estate
in Virginia. He patrolled his land at night with a gun.
He slept with a weapon in reach. He became paranoid,
(35:53):
convinced enemies were after him. He wrote screeds about morality
and the corruption of women. He insisted publicly that murdering
Stanford White had been a public service. In nineteen twenty six,
he even self published a book called The Trader, where
he rewrote himself as a tragic hero and painted Stanford
White as a demonic corruptor. Almost no one bought it. Meanwhile,
(36:20):
Evelyn Nesbitt, the girl at the center of this storm.
The girl dragged into the stand and turned into exhibit a.
She spent her later years working small clubs, taking stage
jobs when she could get them, teaching dance classes. But
she was alive. That's not the same as being unscarred.
When she was asked much later in life whether she
(36:40):
forgave Harry Thaw, she answered, like this, forgive You don't
forgive a hurricane, you survive it. Harry Thaw died in
Miami in nineteen forty seven, at seventy six years old
of a heart attack. The obituaries did not call him
a defender of womanhood. They called him simple, the slayer
(37:01):
of Stanford White, and that's how history keeps him. That
is a lover avenging his wife. That is a lunatic
who snapped, but as a violent, obsessive man who believes
his privilege meant permission.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Ooh, isn't that just yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (37:19):
I never heard the story, but you know what, I
looked up Evelyn Nesbit.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yes, I recognize her.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
I gotta like her image or maybe her likeness, because
maybe it wasn't directly her.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
But I've the most beautiful girl in America. That's quite
a title.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, and she was beautiful. But when you picture a
woman from that time, I really do picture her.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
She's your snapshot and your brain, Yeah, snapshot because I've
seen Yes, you recognize her, Oh my gosh, sixteen amazing.
But yeah, I love how stories and seems like corruption
and money just the story oldest time, Wow, and just entitlement.
(38:05):
The players change, the money changes hands, but the story
doesn't seem to get.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
The power, you know, powerful men with money and.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
No consequences to horrendous things they can make better or
make right or just taking on her and then oh
my gosh, can you imagine that freaking honeymoon you know
for him? Tell me again what he did to you?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Yeah, I know, I'd be like Jesus, It's like, I
don't want to tell you again.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, why do you keep going to the bathroom? And
I keep hearing at some point get out of here, Harry.
I think you're help in the situation.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
You deviant, They go, I say, they go, Well, Sheannon,
that was a great story, and I am so glad
I got to hear it, because, like you said, it's a.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Tale as old as time. I want to sing that
from Beauty to Beat Time right.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
So corrupt, it's yeah, in possession and who the hell
are you? Kind of entitlement that's where's this coming from?
So my pleasure. I was so intrigued about it myself.
I loved composing it.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
So and I would just like to remind everyone before
we go to hit the subscriber follow button on whatever
app you're listening to. We have a website that you
can visit, Crimesanconsequences dot com. There's also a patreon. We
have a patreon. It's patreon dot com slash t NT
(39:42):
crimes and on our patreon you can get an additional
weekly episode. You can also subscribe through the Apple podcast app.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
So, Shannon, Yes, until next time.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Until next time, I will see you and I love you.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
I love you to have an in Florida me, my
gr
This episode maintained content of a graphic nature, including descriptions
of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hi. I'm Shannon. Hi I'm Tanya, and we are Crimes
and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast. Hey Shannon, Hello, Hello, Hello,
how are you, Tanya. I'm doing great.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I would like to just give a little shout out
to a new listener that we have. Her name is Rose,
and she works with my husband, and she said she
loves us. He loves your laugh, she loves our story telling.
And I just wanted to say, hello, Rose.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hey, Rose, I'm so glad you're with us. Yes, pass
us around like a nice blunt, a wonderfully packed blunt.
So how is your week, my friend?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Oh, you know it's been okay. They have changed some
of my job duties out.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh I remember you were telling me this.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Now I feel about it yet. It started, but we
were told yesterday, me and the other attorneys that I
work with on my team. So we'll see, We'll see
how it goes. I don't know how to feel about it.
Like I said, maybe it'll be a good thing. So
I'm gonna try and keep a positive attitude about it.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I love that. Yeah, you know you have to. I'm good.
You know, a little guy was not feeling too well
the other day, so oh then I wasn't feeling too well.
But everyone's doing good and we're ready for Halloween. We
carved pumpkins. Well, I have to do that tomorrow, Tanya.
I have not got pumpkins in years, Heldbrook, you know,
(02:12):
a quarter of a century. I haven't gone to a
pumpkin patch in about twenty five years. And this is
not an endorsement, but I went to Shrams off of
twenty five and they have a farm and it's, oh
my gosh, there's selection of pumpkins. I dropped nice money
on some gorgeous, good pumpkins than my family. You know.
We have a carving contest and a painting contest. You
(02:35):
submit and then we have people vote, and yes, so
it was so it was just so freaking awesome, and
I'm glad. I'm at a point in my life where
I can appreciate things now. You guys, I can't encourage
you enough. Make it to fifty five and then keep
going because you are gonna feel so much more in
touch with yourself.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
But I'm lunking in my fifties. I just don't give
a fuck, thank you, And it's anything I don't be
how I look. Yes, Like there's a lady on Instagram
she's like in the I Do Not Care Club. Have
you've seen her videos?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Oh? I do follow the club.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I don't care if you don't like it when
I show up in my pajama pants, this is what
you're getting.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You are going to need to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
You're gonna have to deal with it. So I agree
for I Do Not Care Club. You're a menopozal and
metopausal women.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I remember when I had turned forty. One of my
clients I was doing nails, she had just turned fifty
and I was telling her just how I was kind
of like Milestonia dealing with turning forty. And she's like, oh,
she goes. My birthday was just in February. Wait till
you turn fifty you will not care. And I thought,
did you hear a word I said about how I'm
dealing and grappling with forty and you're telling.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Me fifty fifty fifty fifty?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
But she was right, She is so right. You don't
get it till you get here.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
So yeah, because I don't care what people think about
them preach, they can fucking keep off a short peer
or whatever is whatever Grandpa used to say, Yeah, whatever
Grandpa used to say.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So anyway, what do you got for us today?
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I got a good story about money and about crime
and about believing that you're the sword of the Lord. Ooh.
I wonder if I should make a T shirt about that.
I could design something and put it in our and
our Sword of the Lord, and then put the the
(04:39):
story that I'm about to tell you. So you're all right, well, Tanya,
when you're born into money, the law doesn't speak to
you the same way. It bows, It negotiates, it apologizes
for the inconvenience. And in the late eighteen hundreds, on
the edge of Pittsburgh's industrial empire, that was the word
(05:00):
the Thaw family built for themselves. Steel money, railroad money,
coal money, money so deep it didn't just change what
you could buy, it changed what you could get away with.
And this is where our story begins, not on the
rooftop in New York City with a gunshot, not in
a courtroom, but in a house where a little boy
(05:23):
was raised to believe he was important enough to kill
for his pride. This is the life and damage of
Harry Kendall Thaw, the millionaire who shot an architect in
front of hundreds of witnesses and still walked out of
the court without a murder conviction. He was called insane,
(05:44):
he was called romantic, he was called righteous, and he
wasn't any of those things. He was dangerous. This is
the story. This is the slighted millionaire. Harry Kendall Thaw
was born February twelfth, eighteen seventy one, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania,
what's now Pittsburgh. It's like, I think if they call
(06:06):
it North Side Pittsburgh. He was the child of the
Gilded Age, and that phrase really mattered back then. Gilded
didn't mean golden, it meant covered in gold, pretty on
the outside, rotting underneath. His father, William Thaw Senior, had
money that made other men nervous railroads, coal, steel shipping.
(06:30):
He wasn't new money. He was threat level money, the
kind of man who didn't just buy land, he bought leverage.
And Harry's mother, Mary Sibbet Copley Thaw was just as
formidable in a different way, hard, pious, possessive. She believed
two things, very deeply, that God had chosen her family
(06:52):
to sit above everyone else, and that Harry was hers.
Now this becomes important later. The thought house was impressive, ornate,
crowded with servants, filled with guilt, mirrors, and carved furniture,
but emotionally it was cold. Even as a child, Harry
was described as nervous, unmanageable, unsettling. He didn't just misbehave.
(07:18):
He tested how far he could go. At five years old,
he reportedly locked a housemaid in a pantry because she
told him no. At eight, he hurled a heavy inkwell
at a tutor's head so hard it split the man's scalp.
When confronted, he didn't seem upset, he seemed amused. Teachers
would later write that he couldn't sit still, couldn't tolerate criticism,
(07:42):
and would fly into sudden tantrums that felt out of
proportion to the trigger. We'd have language for that now.
Back then they called him high strung, sometimes erratic. Quietly
in the kitchen. The word was not right, and Mary
hated that word, so instead of consequences, she called him
(08:05):
delicate instead of structure. He was allowed indulgence instead of discipline,
he got protection, and when his father died in eighteen
eighty nine, Harry was set loose, with almost no restraint
left standing. After William Thaw's death, the family fortune was divided,
but let's be clear, divided still meant millions and millions
(08:28):
in eighteen nineties money. Harry's allowance alone, just his allowance
was raised by his mother to about eight thousand dollars
a month. In today's monny, that's like paying your unstable
twenty year old two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
year to stay calm and not embarrass you in public.
For Harry, it didn't buy calm, It bought range. He
(08:51):
tried Princeton, he tried Harvard. He bounced from school to
school like a lit match in a linen closet. Harvard
especially still tell stories about him. He would host what
were basically champagne brunch orgies in rented hotel suites. He'd
hire sex workers, chorus girls, sometimes just board society daughters
(09:13):
who were curious about being bad. For an afternoon, he'd
shower them with jewelry and furs, and then, just as fast,
turned viciously mocking one classmate said, Harry couldn't feel important
unless someone else in the room felt small.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Oh he's one of those guys, Yes.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
One of those guys. He was expelled from Harvard in
eighteen ninety four for quote, conduct unbecoming a gentleman. That's
a Gilded age polite speak for gambling, debts, drugs, violence,
and behavior so predatory people were even afraid to write
it down in minutes. His response to Harvard kicking him out,
(09:55):
he bragged that the school couldn't handle him, not the
other way around. This is the shape of his psychology
from the start. If you reject me, you've wronged me.
And if you've wronged me, I'm entitled to destroy you.
After Harvard, he went to Europe, and the stories from
Europe were almost cartoonishly decadent. Private dinners in Paris, where
(10:18):
he'd hire full military marching bands just to play for
him and a couple of women. He picked up opium
and morphine binges that ended with doctors being bribed not
to report them, Rumors of having women tied up, humiliated, photographed,
paid off, and every time something got close to scandal,
(10:38):
his mother Mary reached for her check book and smoothed
it over. That's important. His mother wasn't oblivious, she wasn't naive.
She was invested in the myth of her son. The
family name had to stay stainless, and she was perfectly
willing to launder blood to keep it that way. She
called him my boy. Well into his thirties, she told
(11:02):
people he was misunderstood. She told lawyers they were to
protect Harry as they would a prince. That's not a metaphor,
that's a quote from her instructions. This was the soil.
Harry Thaw grew in power without consequence, money without ethics,
rage without limits, and all of it wrapped in a
(11:24):
story where he was always always the injured party. Before
the murder, before the trial, before the headlines, there was
a chorus girl, and her name was Evelyn Nesbitt. At
sixteen years old, Evelyn was one of the most famous
faces in New York City. She posed for magazine covers,
(11:44):
department store ads, and theatrical posters. She was so intensely
photographed that illustrators used to say, if you're drawing a
beautiful girl, you're drawing Evelyn, whether you mean to or not.
She was called very publicly the most beautiful girl in America,
and she was a child. At the same time, New
(12:06):
York had another kind of celebrity, Stanford White. Stanford White
was an architect, but architect really doesn't cover it. He
wasn't a contractor. He was the taste maker of Manhattan.
He designed Madison Square Garden, the Washington Square arch mansions
for the Astors, the Vanderbilts. He curated not just buildings,
(12:31):
but lifestyles for the rich people of America. He was
also quietly a predator. When Stanford White wanted a girl,
he didn't chase her down a dark alley. He sent flowers,
He sent invitations, he sent carriages, he sent dinners in
private rooms, and he sent glamour. First he met Evelyn
(12:51):
when she was still a teenager working on stage. He
invited her up to one of his private apartments, a
salon decorated in sad velvet and mirrors, red velvet, specifically
with a literal velvet swing suspended from the ceiling. Reporters
later branded it the red velvet Swing, and that one
(13:12):
detail burned itself into twentieth century scandal culture. That night,
he gave her champagne. She later said she woke up
the next morning without her clothes, disoriented, and he was there.
This was the most important trauma in this entire story,
and it's what Harry would eventually weaponize, because when Harry
(13:35):
Thaw met Evelyn, he walked in already furious. He'd already
heard stories about Stanford White's reputation. He already resented White
for exactly two reasons. One, Stanford White had access to
elite New York social clubs that always found ways to
block Harry Thaw. Money wasn't enough. Taste mattered, and Harry
(13:59):
had without taste. Two, White had touched a girl Harry
wanted to possess. Now, I'm going to say that again,
and I'm going to say it the exact way Harry
believed it. Harry did not see Evelyn as a woman
with her own body and choices. He saw her as
something of his, something spoiled, to use his word, something
(14:22):
to purify. He pursued her like a man trying to
buy redemption gifts, hotels, private travel. He told her he'd
loved her, he would protect her, and he would marry
her and make her respectable. But it never felt protective
to her. It felt like prosecution. He grilled her on
Stanford White. He demanded details. He said he needed to
(14:46):
understand what had been done to her in order to
forgive her. And then when she cried, and she did cry,
when she told him, he would break down, sobbing himself,
and then raise and then beg her. Life with him
was a hostage negotiation from the very beginning. He followed
(15:07):
her to London, to Paris, to backwater towns in between.
At one point she tried to get away from him.
She took work in Europe, quietly thinking distance would dissolve him.
He bought a ticket and showed up where she was staying, shaking, pale, dramatic,
telling her God sent him and that she was the
(15:27):
only pure thing in his life. I'm the only man
who can love you without sin. He told her. That's
not romance, that's pathology. They married on April fourth, nineteen
o five. The papers didn't call it pathological. They called
it a fairy tale, The Millionaire and the chorus girl.
(15:47):
That's not what Evelyn lived. She later said that the
honeymoon was closer to captivity. Harry berated her about men
she'd known. He demanded her sexual history like evidence. He
prayed aloud for her ruined virtue. He slapped her when
he thought she looked at another man too long, and
(16:07):
he would force her to stay in hotel rooms while
he went out in public. She said later, I married
one madman to escape another. That line alone could have
ended the story, but it didn't because Harry wasn't content
just to take Evelyn away from Stanford White. He wanted
to take Stanford White off the map. On June twenty fifth,
(16:30):
nineteen oh six, New York City, Madison Square Garden, not
the Madison Square Garden you know, the original one, the
one Stanford White designed and had a rooftop theater, open
air electric lights glowing over cafe tables and champagne buckets.
The city's elite loved it. Performers, song and dance, reviews
(16:54):
or lost comedy. It was rich people fun. That night's
show was a naughty little review called Mamselle Champagne. It
was light, flirty, silly. The final number was called I
Could Love a Million Girls. Stanford White was there, like
he always was, in his signature white suit and straw hat,
(17:14):
sitting at his usual table. Owner of the room, relaxed.
Harry Thaw was there too, he wasn't relaxed. Witnesses remembered
his eyes first. They said his eyes looked lit from
the inside. He was wearing a long black overcoat in June,
in heat on a rooftop. He refused to take it off.
(17:36):
Evelyn was with him, visibly uncomfortable, trying to read him,
not sure how to stop what she could feel was
already happening. As the final number started, the performers came out.
The crowd leaned forward, men in tuxedos with cigars, women
fanning themselves with programs. Harry stood. He crossed the space
(17:58):
between their tables. He pulled a thirty eight revolver from
his pocket, and without a word to White, he fired
three shots. One hit Stanford White in the face. Blood sprayed.
White's body snapped back, then dropped out of his chair.
The white suit was no longer white. Screams, chaos, men
(18:18):
ducking under tables, women grabbing at pearls, fainting, shouting. Somebody yelled,
my god, he's killed them. Somebody else yelled, it's Harry Thaw.
He shot Stanford White and Harry. Harry didn't run, he
didn't shake, he didn't hide the gun. He lifted the
pistol in the air like he was signaling a referee,
(18:39):
and said, loud enough for witnesses to repeat in sworn statements,
I did it because he ruined my wife. He had
it coming. Then he turned to Evelyn and very calmly
told her, it's all right, dear, I've saved you. Saved her. Yeah, yeah,
as if she had been a problem to solve, you know,
(19:00):
mm hmm. By morning, America new front page every city
Worth mentioning millionaire kills architects. The rush to print was rabid.
Some headlines read like porn, some like pulp novels. One
of them said, a shot that tore the mask off society.
(19:20):
Oh I do love a good title.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I know, I'm like who I'm reading? That would have
made me want to read it.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Ohay, sweat be right up. Because what the public saw
in the moment wasn't just a jealous husband shooting a
love rival. They saw behind the drapes. They saw what
these wealthy men who built their city skylines and their
reputations were also drugging teenage showgirls in velvet rooms and
(19:48):
fighting over them like property. It was moral rot dressed
in opera clothes, and everyone wanted to watch the fallout.
Harry was immediately arrested. He was denied bail, but arrested.
Didn't look like what you're imagining. Welcome to the Tombs.
The Tombs was New York City jail. This gorgeous, suppressive
(20:12):
granite fortress. It was where Thaw was held while he
awaited trial for a first degree murder. And in the Tombs,
Muddy bought comfort. Harry had a brass bed, brought in
his own clothes, a rug, a writing desk, hot meals
delivered from Delmonico's Cigars. It was basically a hotel suite
(20:34):
that locked from the outside.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
It makes me think I think al Capone had something
like that on Alcatraz.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
This decadence. Yes, reporters loved this. They would come in
to interview him and describe him lounging in silk, sipping coffee,
talking about himself like he was the borl center of
the universe. I'm not a criminal, he told a reporter,
I'm a Christian man defending woman who That sentence right
(21:01):
there is what made the trial of the century. Because
Harry wasn't saying I've lost control and I'm sorry. He
was saying I killed him, and you're welcome. This is
so new. January nineteen oh seven, Manhattan Criminal courts building
the line to get into Thaw's trial formed before dawn.
(21:25):
People dressed up to watch a murder trial like it
was opening night at the Metropolitan Opera. Mink stoles, white gloves, corsets,
top hats, society wives sat next to Butcher's shop clerks.
No one wanted to miss this. Harry entered court every
day like it was his entrance, perfectly dressed, fresh haircut.
(21:46):
He'd nod to the gallery as if they were friends
who'd all come to support him. His mother, Mary became
her own character. She was nicknamed the Queen Mother of
Pittsburgh in the papers. She sat directly behind him, staring
down anyone who dared look like they disapproved of her son.
She'd already spent obscene money on his legal team. She
(22:08):
wasn't going to let a jury take him away. The
District Attorney, William Travers Jerome, opened with intent, this was
not a noble act, this was execution. Jerome called Harry
a homicidal egotist, and he said what Harry did was
not chivalry, it was vanity with a gun. But Harry's
(22:28):
team had a different plan. They weren't going to say
he didn't shoot Stanford White. That was impossible. Half of
New York saw it happened. They were going to say, yes,
he killed him, but his mind snapped in that instant.
They called it a brainstorm. Temporary insanity, not insanity like
this man belongs in a cell for life, insanity like
(22:52):
in the heat of defending a woman's honor, his brain
short circuited like a fuse popping and he didn't know
what he was doing. Right. That sounds weak now, but
in nineteen oh seven, it was genius because because you
know what they needed to make it work. They needed Evelyn.
Evelyn Nesbit, not even in her twenties yet, took the
(23:15):
stand in front of a packed courtroom and the entire
nation's attention, and told the story women were never supposed
to say out loud. She told the jury how years
before Stanford White had gotten her drunk, brought her into
that red velvet apartment, let her fall unconscious, and when
she woke up she was bleeding and he was smiling.
(23:37):
In nineteen oh seven, an unmarried woman talking publicly about
being drugged and sexually assaulted by a powerful man was
not just unheard of, it was dangerous. Reporters were literally
trembling to jut every word. Men in the courtroom coughed
into their hands to hide their faces, women openly cried,
(24:00):
and Harry sat there like a saint at his own canonization, pale,
still jaw tight, as if he were hearing this all
for the first time, instead of having demanded those same
details privately and obsessively for years. The defense's message to
the jury was simple, what would you do if a
(24:21):
man violated your young wife? Are you going to punish
Harry Thaw for defending her honor? Prosecution tried to cut
through it. They brought up the honeymoon, the isolation, the control,
the slaps, the screaming sermons he'd give Evelyn about her purity.
They brought up the fact that Evelyn wasn't exactly being defended,
(24:43):
she was being owned. But the public wasn't ready in
nineteen oh seven to understand coercive abuse in a marriage.
They were, however, very ready to cheer a man who
shot a degenerate libertine in defense of a girl. After
forty seven hours of deliberation, the jury came back divided.
(25:03):
Seven wanted to convict him, five wanted to acquit hung
jury mistrial. The newspapers called it proof that chivalry wasn't dead.
It wasn't chivalry, it was theater, and the star had
just bought himself an encore. The second trial began in
nineteen oh eight, and this time Harry's lawyers dropped the pretense.
(25:25):
They didn't call him a hero. They called them sick.
They brought in alienists what we call psychiatrists today to
talk about family history, emotional disturbance, moral insanity. That's a
real phrase from the era, moral insanity meaning you know
the difference between right and wrong, but you would lack
(25:46):
the internal breaks to care. One doctor testified that Harry
suffered homicidal mania triggered by moral shock. This is where
the phrase are you making this up as you go along?
Pops in my head, but loosely translated, he went temporarily
insane because a bad man hurt a good girl and
(26:09):
this noble boy's brain couldn't take it. That's what it meant.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Good defense, not bad nineteen oh seven.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yes, the prosecution tried to drag the frame back to
earth by bringing people in the prosecution tried to drag
the frame back to earth by bringing in people who
had seen Harry off stage, servants, hotel staff girls. One
maid said Harry wants beat a woman with a riding
crop for smiling at another gentleman. Another claimed he shot
(26:39):
at electric bulbs in a hotel lobby just to watch
them shatter and frighten people. There were whispers, very quiet,
never fully committed under oath because of Mary's legal reach
about Harry being violent towards animals, that he would lash
out at anything small in living when he felt mocked
or ignored. That tells you a lot. The jury didn't
(27:01):
love them, but they did something more dangerous than love.
They excused him. Verdict not guilty by reason of insanity.
No prison, no gallows, instead confinement to Madawan State Hospital
for the criminally insane. Now, if you're picturing a padded
cell and electroshock wiped that, Mattawan for Harry Thaw was
(27:24):
not punishment, It was upgraded captivity. He arrived in a
tailored suit with monogram luggage. He tipped attendance. He brought
in rugs and oil paintings and had roast dinners delivered.
He smoked cigars. In bed and wrote letters to the
newspapers about quote, the nobility of my act. One of
the orderlies called him, bitterly the asylum King, and Harry
(27:47):
liked that because for Harry it was never enough to
be alive and unhanged. He needed to be adored. He
needed to be special. He needed the world to believe
that God, the law, and society had all silently agreed. Yes, Harry,
you are the righteous instrument here. Wow, that is talk
(28:09):
about the world on your shoulders here, no kidding. But
the doctors who had to live with him, they wrote
something different in their notes. The nurses said he had
rages and that he issued threats, that he called himself chosen.
One wrote he believes Heaven has made him its sword.
Another wrote, he mistakes entitlement for morality. That is Harry,
(28:32):
though in one line entitlement disguised as morality. August nineteen thirteen,
front page everywhere, Harry Thaw escapes from insane asylum. It
sounded made up, It wasn't. He bribed an attendant, he
put on a chauffeur's coat. He just walked out of Mattawan.
(28:52):
A car was waiting, and he was driven north into Canada.
He checked into a hotel in Montreal under the fake
name mister ht Randolph, tipped like royalty and ordered champagne
like nothing at all was unusual. He was captured days
later in Sherbrooke, Quebec. When Canadian authorities entered his suite,
Harry was reportedly at the piano playing the star spangled banner.
(29:16):
They told the theater of it all, you know, I
do like drama sometimes. They told him he was under arrest.
He didn't beg He smart and said you're late. I
was beginning to think you'd forgotten me. Reporters loved it.
They reprinted that line in papers across the US and Canada.
(29:39):
He fought extradition, claimed Canada had no right to send
him back because he was a quote gentleman, unlawfully held quote.
That was his angle always he was not a criminal.
I am not a criminal. I am mistreated. Eventually he
was returned to New York underguard, with a crowd waiting
to jeer and sheer in almost equal parts. Some people
(30:02):
actually shouted we love you Harry, as if he were
a matinee idol who'd just been gone too long, and
backing custody security tightened and he lost some privileges, but
not in the belief, not the delusion. And interviews he
doubled down quote I'm not insane, i am misunderstood. The
(30:23):
public perception started to flip here. He was no longer
the romantic avenger. He was drifting toward what we now
call celebrity, criminal, famous for being famous, interviewed because he
was outrageous, And when he finally maneuvered his way out, declared,
restored to sanity, and walked free in nineteen fifteen. He
(30:44):
didn't return quietly to private life. He escalated it. By
the time psychiatrists tried to summarize Harry Thaw, they kept
returning to the same word insult. Harry didn't just hate
being rejected. He experienced rejection as an attack that required retaliation.
You told him no, you humiliated him, You embarrassed him,
(31:07):
then you endangered him. Someone else had something he wanted access,
a woman, respect, and to Harry, that was theft. By
the time psychiatrists tried to summarize Harry Thaw, they kept
returning to the same word insult. Harry didn't just hate
being rejected. He experienced rejection as an attack that required retaliation.
(31:30):
You told him no, You humiliate him, You embarrassed him,
you endangered him. Someone else had something he wanted access,
a woman, respect, And to Harry, that was theft, and
that's why Stanford White had to die. In Harry's mind,
White didn't just sleep with Evelyn. White humiliated Harry by
(31:51):
beating him at his own game, taste, influence, acceptance. Harry
could buy women, drugs, hotel floors, or orchestras, but he
couldn't buy respect in certain rooms. Stanford White could, and
that dug into him like a thorn that tunneled under
his skin and never stopped moving. One of the psychiatrists
(32:12):
who testified in his trial, doctor Britton Evans, wrote afterward,
Thaw's mind is divided between delusion and entitlement, an unstable
balance that collapses when his pride is threatened. So let's
talk about that balance. On one side, delusion, Harry really
honestly believed he'd been chosen by God, morality, decency, pick
(32:34):
your word, to cleanse Evelyn's life. He saw himself as
the champion of ruined womanhood, as if women were objects
that existed to be graded and defended like property lines.
And on the other sign his entitlement. Harry could not
process being told he was wraw. Ever, he didn't accept
this promise. He didn't believe other people had the authority
(32:57):
to judge him. He would rather burn the system than
lose within it. That combination is one of the most
dangerous psychological cocktails we've seen in violent men. Righteousness plus
ego plus no breaks. He used Evelyn's trauma to justify
his violence. He called his rage honor, and he called
(33:17):
his control protection. It's classic abuser reframing. And I want
to say this clearly, Evelyn Nesbit was not saved by
Harry Saw. She was turned into evidence. He took her
worst pain, put it on stage, and he used it
to walk free. This is also the first time in
American mass media history that a woman's rape testimony was
(33:41):
weaponized in a courtroom to excuse a man's homicide of
another man, not in secret, not whispered, but splashed on
front pages nationwide. So that's the legacy, that's the scar.
And Harry loved every second of it. He wasn't ashamed,
he was proud and famously said years after, under the
(34:02):
same circumstances, I'd kill him again. That's not insanity, that's conviction.
So now we go to the part of the story
people don't like to talk about, because, after all, the theater,
after the Trial of the Century, after the escape from
Mattawan and the declaration that he was restored to sanity,
Harry Thal walks out in nineteen fifteen, thinking he's invincible.
(34:26):
He bought a mansion in Pittsburgh, resumed his decadent habits
and through lavish parties again old money, new jazz, same demons.
And then in nineteen sixteen, he takes a nineteen year
old boy named Fred Gump Junior to a New York
hotel under the pretense of helping him break into show business.
What happened next is ugly. The boy later testified that
(34:49):
Harry locked him in a room, beat him with a whip,
forced him to pose naked, and threatened him if he screamed.
When that boy escaped, bruised and bleeding, it finally land
in papers again, Thaw again, millionaire madmen assaults boy. When
police came for him, Harry tried to kill himself. He
shot himself in the head, or tried to. The bullet
(35:12):
grazed his skull, and he lived. Of course, he lived,
he was sent again to an asylum, this time not
the Gentleman's Wing. This time they were done pretending he
was charming. He stayed under lock with fewer luxuries, and
he stayed there for years eight years. He eventually got
out in nineteen twenty four, and this time the glow
(35:32):
was gone. The country had moved on Prohibition, jazz, bootleggers,
organized crime. America had new villains. By then, Harry Thaw
was old scandal, a relic. He retired to an estate
in Virginia. He patrolled his land at night with a gun.
He slept with a weapon in reach. He became paranoid,
(35:53):
convinced enemies were after him. He wrote screeds about morality
and the corruption of women. He insisted publicly that murdering
Stanford White had been a public service. In nineteen twenty six,
he even self published a book called The Trader, where
he rewrote himself as a tragic hero and painted Stanford
White as a demonic corruptor. Almost no one bought it. Meanwhile,
(36:20):
Evelyn Nesbitt, the girl at the center of this storm.
The girl dragged into the stand and turned into exhibit a.
She spent her later years working small clubs, taking stage
jobs when she could get them, teaching dance classes. But
she was alive. That's not the same as being unscarred.
When she was asked much later in life whether she
(36:40):
forgave Harry Thaw, she answered, like this, forgive You don't
forgive a hurricane, you survive it. Harry Thaw died in
Miami in nineteen forty seven, at seventy six years old
of a heart attack. The obituaries did not call him
a defender of womanhood. They called him simple, the slayer
(37:01):
of Stanford White, and that's how history keeps him. That
is a lover avenging his wife. That is a lunatic
who snapped, but as a violent, obsessive man who believes
his privilege meant permission.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Ooh, isn't that just yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (37:19):
I never heard the story, but you know what, I
looked up Evelyn Nesbit.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yes, I recognize her.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
I gotta like her image or maybe her likeness, because
maybe it wasn't directly her.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
But I've the most beautiful girl in America. That's quite
a title.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, and she was beautiful. But when you picture a
woman from that time, I really do picture her.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
She's your snapshot and your brain, Yeah, snapshot because I've
seen Yes, you recognize her, Oh my gosh, sixteen amazing.
But yeah, I love how stories and seems like corruption
and money just the story oldest time, Wow, and just entitlement.
(38:05):
The players change, the money changes hands, but the story
doesn't seem to get.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
The power, you know, powerful men with money and.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
No consequences to horrendous things they can make better or
make right or just taking on her and then oh
my gosh, can you imagine that freaking honeymoon you know
for him? Tell me again what he did to you?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Yeah, I know, I'd be like Jesus, It's like, I
don't want to tell you again.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, why do you keep going to the bathroom? And
I keep hearing at some point get out of here, Harry.
I think you're help in the situation.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
You deviant, They go, I say, they go, Well, Sheannon,
that was a great story, and I am so glad
I got to hear it, because, like you said, it's a.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Tale as old as time. I want to sing that
from Beauty to Beat Time right.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
So corrupt, it's yeah, in possession and who the hell
are you? Kind of entitlement that's where's this coming from?
So my pleasure. I was so intrigued about it myself.
I loved composing it.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
So and I would just like to remind everyone before
we go to hit the subscriber follow button on whatever
app you're listening to. We have a website that you
can visit, Crimesanconsequences dot com. There's also a patreon. We
have a patreon. It's patreon dot com slash t NT
(39:42):
crimes and on our patreon you can get an additional
weekly episode. You can also subscribe through the Apple podcast app.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
So, Shannon, Yes, until next time.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Until next time, I will see you and I love you.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
I love you to have an in Florida me, my
gr
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