The Thaw Trial.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXVII, Issue 5086, 21 March 1907, Page 1

The Thaw Trial.

Wife’s Terrible Story. Her Meeting with White. Drugged and Betrayed Before Sixteen. Thaw’s Proposal in Paris. A Heartrending Scene. London, Feb. 8 (via Fremantle). After watting days in empanelling a jury, the first real stage of the trial of Harry Thaw for the murder of Stanford White, which is enthralling America, and indeed the civilised world, commenced on February 4.

The prosecution announced its intention to prove that the crime was cruel, deliberate, premeditated, and malicious. The case for the prosecution only lasted two hours. It contained nothing but what has already been disclosed. Intense interest was aroused when Mr Gleason, discarding tho plea of unwritten law, based his defence on a brain lesion which made Thaw believe his act one of Divine justice, also on hereditary insanity. The first witness was Dr Wiley, Superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. He was made an exhibition of as an expert, being reduced by Mr Jerome’s drastic cross-examination to a lamentable condition of uncertainty, besides betraying strange ignorance of many forms of mental disease and modern tests of insanity. His breakdown created so much alarm that next day the chief conduct of the defence was entrusted to Mr Delmas, the second counsel, who soon changed the current of opinion by eliciting from Boorman, the doorkeeper at the Madison Square Garden Theatre, that in 1903, when Evelyn Nesbitt was playing in "The Girl from Dixie,” White had threatened to shoot Thaw because he called for and drove off with Nesbitt in an automobile.

Much of the most sensational evidence was given on the 7th, when Mrs Evelyn Thaw stepped into the witness box, dressed in a plain blue frock, with a white turn-down collar, and a velvet hat. She looked the veriest schoolgirl, very fragile, but braced op for the terrible ordeal. The tale told by this witness in a calm, collected, and simple fashion, even as regards the hideous details, stamped this trial, apart from other circumstances, as the most noteworthy in all the annals of New York criminal cases. Never was there any trace of hesitation or self consciousness—only

a schoolgirl’s eager anxiety to comply with the wishes of her interlocutor. The stillness of the court denoted the convincing impression created by this story. Mrs Thaw’s Story. Born on Christmas Day, 1884, she was only 16 years and a few months old when Stanford White sought her acquaintance through the medium of a girl friend. The process of seduction was calculated, cool, and deliberate. After deliberate refusals White gained her presence at small dinner parties in his private rooms in the tower of the Madison-square Garden. The girl’s apprehension as the doors opened of themselves and her sense of loneliness in ascending the high structure touched the mind. White’s gift of clothes, his luxurious apartments, his seizure of the chance afforded by the mother’s absence in Pittsburg to lure the girl by herself to the tower, sounded the death of infancy. Mrs Thaw narrated how in 1901 a theatre call girl friend named Edna Goodrich asked her to attend a luncheon party given by White. Her mother first refused, but when Goodrich said nice society people would be there consented) Instead of driving, as expected, to’ the Waldorf Hotel, the cab proceeded to a dingy-looking house out of 264thstreet. Evelyn Nesbitt hesitated to enter, but the girl friend said, “ Come along.” They entered a pretty room on the third flight, and saw a very big and very ugly man, who proved to be White. After luncheon they went with two other girls into a room where there was a white velvet swing, in which White pushed them under, and their feet crashed through a large Japanese umbrella fixed in the ceiling. This, said witness, was fun. Then White offered Mrs Nesbitt and her daughter free dentistry. He sent the girl handsome clothes, invited her to luncheons and parties where all was quite proper, White telling Evelyn to go ahead and have a nice time. He gave the mother money to visit Pittsburg, declaring he would take care of the daughter. So she went. "Next day,” deposed Mrs Thaw, " White sent a carriage for me.

I went into a studio in East 22ndstreet to have photos taken. White was there. White told me to put on a very gorgeous kimono, and I had many photos taken. I was very tired, and when all was over he sent for some food, but would only give me one glass of champagne. He then sent me home. Next night White sent a cab for me after the theatre, and I went to the 246th-street house. When I got there, there was no one present but White himself. I asked him where the party was, and he sad, “ What do you think ? They’ve turned us down.” I said, “ Oh, I am sorry. Now there will be no party," but he said, “We will eat alone,” and we did.

The Betrayal. After supper White went out for a few minutes. When he came back I said, “ It is time for me to go home,” but he said there was a part of the house I have never seen, and he took me to see it. One room was a bedroom with mirrors all round the walls. He told mo to sit down, poured out a glass of champagne, which he made me drink. It might have been a minute or two later when something began pounding in my ears, and the whole |world seemed to go round Then everything got black. When I awoke all my clothes had been pulled off. I sat up, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed. There were mirrors all round the room and on the ceiling. White told me to keep still. I do not remember how I got dressed or how I got home. When I did I sat up all night. Next time I saw White he made me swear that I would never tell my mother.” The Court gasped with horror as the beautiful girl with a baby fuce disclosed the terrible tale of her betrayal. Long before she arrived at the climax of the tragic story Thaw, with his brow sweating in agony, thrust his fingers into both his ears and buried his face in his handkerchief. Sobbing audibly and struggling to prevent her voice from breaking, she proceeded with her narrative, thus : —“ When I recovered my senses White was beside me. I began to scream. He jumped up and covered me with the big kimono. There were mirrors everywhere—on the ceiling, on the floor, on every wall. I screamed,

and White bogged me to be quiet. He knelt and kissed the hem of the kimono, and said he could not help it, I was so young, beautiful, and slim. Some of the girls at the theatre, he said, were foolish, and talked, but I must keep quiet. Women in society, he added, were clever, and knew how never to be found out. I must be jolly clever, and he would always bo good to me. All night he kept talking like that.” By this time there was not a dry eye in court. The witness pressed her wrists in a desperato effort to maintain her composure. Thaw’s Proposal of Marriage.

Resuming, witness told how she was sent to school in New Jersey in 1903 by White. She became ill, and had to submit to an operation, the nature of which the doctors did not tell her. Thaw came to see her at the hospital, and said she should be taken abroad to recuperate. She went to Paris with her mother and Thaw, and there Thaw made his first proposal of marriage, in 1903. She refused, but in reply to his question admitted that the reason was because of White. Then she told him all.

“What was the effect,” asked counsel, “on Thaw when you told him this ?”—“ It was terrible.” “ What did he do ?”—“ He sobbed, and walked up and down the floor. It was not crying, it was sobbing. He knelt down beside me and picked up the edge of my skirt and kissed it.”

Continuing, she said : “He stayed there all night, and we just sat and talked, and later he said my mamma had been very foolish, and should have l known better than to let rne go around I with a married man. He asked me if I had ever told mamma, and I said ' No.’ He said that like a great many other people, mamma thought White 1 was a great and good man. He said he loved me, and that any decent person would know it was not my fault. Two months later he came to me again, and asked me to marry him He said he considered me as good and pure as if I had never met White. I replied, * Harry, I can’t marry you; Tam a ruined girl. Your friends and White will sneer at you. Soon I will return to the stage and earn my own living.’ He told me I must not believe that society women were loose. If I would marry him he would see that I was not harmed again. If I would not marry him his life would be ruined. Struggle with Poverty. Later witness told a piteous story of her mother’s struggle with poverty; how they often lived for days on biscuits. Then Dana Gibson painted her picture, and she posed to artists for 18 dollars a week. When she first applied for an engagement to the Floradora Theatrical Company the manager refused, saying he did not keep a baby farm. When she cried he relented and gave her a position in the chorus. Late in 1901 she first met Thaw, who offered to send her to school and have her voice trained. This was refused, and later White !

sent her to school. Witness narrated how she tried to discontinue the acquaintance with Thaw. “He came to me and said ‘ What is the matter ? Why don’t you want to see me any more ?’ 1 told him I heard certain things about him, and I did not care to see him ary more. He thereupon a«krd me what I had heard. I said : ' I have been told you took a girl put her in a bath tub, and poured scalding water on her.’ I also told him I beard he took morphine, and that he had tied girls to bedposts and had beaten them.” '• Did you tell Thaw who had told you these stores ?” “ Not at first, but later, I told him it was my friend White.” » What did Thaw do ?” 11 He shook his head sadly, and said, ‘ Poor little Evelyn ; I see they have been making a fool of you.’ I told him White had shown me papers in a suit in whioh a girl had made these charges against Thaw, and that they told me the suit hadjbeen withdrawn." “ What did Thaw do ?’’ 11 On leaving he kissed my hand, and he said he did not care what I did; I Bhould always be his 1 little angel.” “ Did he often call you his ‘ little angel ?’ ” “ Nearly always." Thaw’s Letters. Several undated letters written by Thaw were put in. One said : Miss W. would give all she possessed if she could be sent to school by me instead of by him. She should never have remained on the stage so long, and if they had listened to me she would not have. It resulted in her name being falsely connected with two others besides that blackguard’s. Poor girl 1 she was poisoned when she was 15 and a quarter years old. Remember, I die, my property will all go to my wife, but in the event of her death it must not go to her relatives, Her wretched mother must not receive anything. I would provide for her brother, however. Poor girl I if I die, she may not live to be 21." In another letter, dated November 18, 1903, Thaw says :—"I know she can thank me for any faith, human or Divine, she has.”