White on Verge of Arrest When Shot.
REV. ANTHONY COMSTOCK, THE FAMOUS REFORMER, TOLD HOW HARRY THAW HAD
HIRED HIM TO GATHER EVIDENCE AGAINST ARCHITECT--PROOF OF ORGIES IN
MIRRORED DEN FOUND BY DETECTIVES--HARRY WANTED TO PREVENT THE MAN
FROM SEIZING IN HIS CLUTCHES OTHER YOUNG AND INNOCENT GIRLS LIKE
EVELYN NESBIT--CASE OF CHILD ONLY 15 YEARS OLD LIKE MRS.
THAW’S--HUSBAND MADE DESPERATE--ATTORNEY DELMAS TELLS HOW EVELYN’S
STORY SHOCKED HIM--GREATER DISCLOSURES AHEAD.
Another blow to the prosecution, almost as great as that dealt by Evelyn
in her testimony, came when Jerome learned that Thaw held in reserve the
startling story of Stanford White’s entire past, and was ready to
produce it at any moment. Anthony Comstock, famous head of the Society
for the Prevention of Crime, had the documents. Mr. Comstock prepared a
statement for the defense, part of which is substantially as follows:
“I know that much of what Mrs. Harry Thaw has stated on the witness
stand is true. I know that Stanford White’s den in the tower of Madison
Square garden was arranged as she described it, and that it was the
scene of revelries. I know of at least one specific instance. And what
I know I learned after I had been given the first clews by Harry Kendall
Thaw himself.
“My first knowledge of this case dates from the summer of 1905--about a
year before the killing, I should say. One afternoon a tall,
well-dressed, well-bred young man came to me in my office in the Temple
Bar building. He seemed to be laboring under excitement, and it was
evident that he was desperately in earnest. He opened the conversation
by asking me if I were interested in the suppression of vice. Then he
wanted to know if my society gave special attention to the arrest and
punishment of men who preyed upon young girls. I told him that we did.
He jumped up abruptly, said he would see me again, and left without
telling me his name. At the door he stopped long enough to say he would
see me again.
“A few days later he came back, still laboring under strong emotion. He
then introduced himself. As nearly as I can recall he said:
“‘I am Harry Kendall Thaw of Pittsburg. I want to tell you of a man who
has betrayed more young girls than any other man in New York. He is
particularly given to pursuing the young girls of the stage. It is a
debt which society owes to itself to halt him now, before he brings
shame and sorrow to any more victims.’
“That in effect was his statement,” continued Mr. Comstock, “although
of course I asked him a great deal more of the matter. He left after
securing my promise to investigate. He agreed to pay the cost of looking
into the case. He at once mailed me a check of sufficient size to defray
the necessary expenses, and subsequently wrote me several times upon the
subject of White, asking each time what progress we were making.
“Our investigation confirmed to a great degree what Thaw had told me.
Our detectives were astounded at what they discovered. We worked hard
and I learned a great deal, but of all cases these are the hardest to
prove under the rules of evidence, and before risking an arrest I
determined to catch White.
“I learned that his rooms in the tower were as Mrs. Evelyn Thaw had
described them in the trial. Two of our detectives endeavored to hire
rooms in the same tower in order to watch his goings and comings. The
deal was almost completed when one of the detectives made a bungle.
Something which he said or did gave the alarm to the janitor, and,
although we were on the waiting list for a long time, and although
several times apartments in the tower were vacant, we were never able to
secure a suite or a single room.
“We were still vainly trying to arrange a trap for White from which
there would be no escape when he dismantled his room in the tower.
“I learned positively of one case of White’s conduct to a girl only 15
years old almost identically as Mrs. Evelyn Thaw describes her own case,
but the girl was in the chorus of a road company, and we could not reach
her and make a witness of her. We got evidence of other things--things
that convince me that what Harry Thaw’s wife now swears is true. I
believe in her story and base that belief upon what I know of the man.
“The last time I saw Harry Thaw was only two or three weeks before he
shot White. He appeared to be in a desperate state--like a man who is
well-nigh frantic. He said to me wildly: ‘You must keep on, you must
stop this man, he must be stopped now--at once.”
The defense, on the same day that it secured the Rev. Mr. Comstock’s
statement, made another sensational discovery. It obtained proof that
the day after the shooting of White, the police searched the studio of
White and discovered evidence that showed that Evelyn Nesbit was not the
only young girl who had been lured into the Madison Square Garden
mirrored-room within a few months.
In the room “with mirrors to left and to right, in the ceiling and on
the floor,” in securely locked drawers built into the walls, the police
found this evidence. That such a den of vice could have existed in the
very heart of the great metropolis seems well nigh incredible. That
such practices could have been known by men of social standing, and
without protest, is past belief.
Speaking after this discovery, Attorney Delmas was confident of the
acquittal of Thaw.
“Before we put Evelyn on the stand,” he said, “I heard her story but
once. There was no rehearsal no attempt at dramatic play.”
“The story as she told it in court was not half as dramatic as it was
when she told it to me during our preparation of the case.
“Only once in my life have I been so touched with emotion as I was when
Evelyn Nesbit first told me her story. That was at the burial of my
father.
“As I sat there as a lawyer listening to the girl narrating the story of
what she had suffered at the hands of Stanford White, the tears welled
into my eyes and I fairly sobbed.
“She told me then that when she awoke and found Stanford White was alone
with her in that mirrored bedroom he seemed to her like a big gorilla.
“His hair was disheveled, and the look in his face was like an animal.
‘I screamed with terror,’ she told me. She added many details, which, if
she had told the jury, there would have been no need on her part to
produce further evidence--as we had not rehearsed our part, I depended
simply on her memory as to facts. The presence of the crowded courtroom
disconcerted her to the extent that she omitted some of the most
revolting features of that fatal night.”
[Illustration: EVELYN NESBIT, AS “THE SUNBONNET CHILD”
Picture taken just before she met Stanford White.]