MR. AND MRS. THAW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19390, 27 July 1926, Page 12

MR. AND MRS. THAW.

REUNITED AFTER 20 YEARS.

THE ROCF GARDEN CRIME. AN OLD TRAGEDY RECALLED. Twenty years after the roqf garden crime that shocked two continents and deprived America of her greatest architect, Stanford White, the couple whose love drama was responsible for the crime appear likely to come together again, says a New York message to a London paper, Evelyn Thaw was only a girl of 17 on that June night 20 years ago when her young millionaire husband, Harry Thaw, dashed up to • Madison Square roof garden, and, whipping out hi? revolver, fired at close range into the glistening shirt front of the great architect. "He betrayed my wife," said Thaw; "the world is well rid of a scoundrel."

Mrs. Thaw, the lovely and brilliant young artist's model, whose beauty was the talk of all New York, had herself confessed her relations with Stanford White to her husband, and fought hard for her husband's life during the subsequent trial. It was her evidence, her frank and unveiled recital of her indiscretion—a recital in which she did not spare herself—that served to save her husband from the electric chair. Eighteen years in Custody.

Thaw was sent to a lunatic apylum, from which he escaped nine years later; but ho has spent more than 18 years in all in asylums and gaols, and was freed finally only last year to take his place again in the world he knew and loved. During the long interval that lapsed since the night of the crime Thaw had divorced his wife and repudiated the paternity of her only child, little Russel Thaw, now. grown to manhood and on the verge of embarking on a career as a doctor. Mrs. Thaw took care of the child herself. As she had fought for her husband, so she fought to give the boy a chance. And she succeeded.

There were years of privation. From being the spoilt child of fortune, the wife of one of the richest men in America — for Thaw's fortune ran to 20 millions— Mrs. Thaw was reduced to the depths of poverty. She had to sing and dance for a living. She appeared in cheap cabarets. She went to London. She appeared on the stage at the Hippodrome in "Hullo, Ragtime," in 1913. Her story of her life, her work on the screen, brought her affluence, but there were alternating periods of distress and poverty, during which she was twice driven to attempting suicide, but saved from this fate. The Couple Meet Again. Harry Thaw, when he came back to the world, lived foi a time in retirement, but the lights of Broadway beckoned to him. and ho tired of loneliness. So he went back to that street of flashing signs, of cabarets and pretty women, of hectic gaiety and night life that spreads far into the morning—and then he' met again the beautiful young woman whom he had loved and made his wife.

They met again. They were seen dining together recently at , the Hotel Ambassador in Atlantic City—the man who was 32, nov turned 50, and grey at the temples, with the shadows of care under his dull eyes; she now a woman fast nearing 40, but still beautiful and fascinating. They may be reconciled—who knows? Friends,hope they will. It will help to patch up two broken lives. They may come together, if for nothing else, fo.r the sake of their son, who dined with them on the occasion in question.

A cablegram published on June 16 stated that Harry Thaw and his previous wife intended to remarry.