THAWS BID FOR LIBERTY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVI, Issue 196, 19 August 1912, Page 2

THAWS BID FOR LIBERTY.

FORTUNE TO PROVE SANITY.

NEW YORK, June 27. Harry K. Thaw, the millionaire who murdered Stanford White, is once again trying to prove that he has regained his reason, if he ever really lost it. He seeks' to be liberated from the Matteawan State Asylum for the Insane; where he has been confined since February, 1908, when the second jary acquitted him of the murder of White on the ground that ho was insane at the time of the shooting. Thaw complains bitterly that he has been obliged to wait for two years for the present hearing/ and declares "even those who have spoken most venomously against me grant me the right of one trial of sanity each year." It is estimated that the young millionaire has already spent about £200,000 in lawyers' fees and a thousand other details connected with the various trials, and each trial costs the taxpayers of the State anything from £6000.. ta £10,000. The present Thaw trial taking place before Mr Justice .Keogh in the County Court House at White Plains, New York State, is very similar to the previous ones, and the testimony is practically a repetition of what ■ has already been said and printed many times before.

The chief attendants in the court are Thaw's Ipyal mother, his sister,his brother Josiah, and Evelyn Nesbit, the homicide's wife. The latter is now a witness against her husband. When being cross-examined by Mr Clarence Shearn, Thaw's chief coTinsel, she suddenly blazed forth with the remark that she did not intend that Thaw should again "hide behind her skirts," as he did, to use her own words, "in his two dirty murder trials." At the time Mr Shearn was evidently trying to draw from the witness the oft-told story of Stanford White's relations with her, arid he put to her the same questions as had been put to her in the murder trials. Thaw himself, subjected to a searching; examination •by Mr William Jerome, appeared at first, says the Telegraph correspondent, to be nervous and dazed. Later he recovered from his cringing attitude,, and he defiantly announced that he did riot think Mr Jerome capable of conducting the inquiry. This gauntlet was nurled at Mr Jerome's feet after persistent efforts

on his part to get Thaw to tell about certain alleged practices of Stanford White to which Thaw objected. Thaw protested that he thought Mr Jerome had gone far enough with questions concerning his relations with the dead man.

| "But you killed him," interrupted !Mr Jerome. I Mr Shearn objected, and the court ' said: "'There is every reason to allow the witness to speak now to show how 'he feels and speaks about this man. i That is what I am here for."

"There is no need talking further ' about these disgusting things." said ■ Thaw.

j [The cable has since informed us ' that the court adjudged Thaw insane, and he therefore remains in the asylum.]