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this episode picks up from our last episode episode 91 The It Girl if you haven't listened to that one yet you may
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want to go back and listen to them in order this story contains references to sexual
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violence and may not be appropriate for everyone please use discretion for a brief time it seemed like maybe
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this was going to be okay and then of course he starts coming into her room at night and saying tell me again what
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Stanford white did to you tell me just and she realized that part of the reason why he married her was because he wanted
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to relive this experience over and over again about white he was so obsessed with him
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Harry thaw was having Stanford white followed and Sanford white knew he was being followed
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each man collected incriminating materials about the other but the truth is both men had committed
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rape against a minor punishable by a minimum sentence of 10 years if one were to come forward to accuse
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the other who would potentially incriminate himself it was a standoff Harry thaw encouraged Anthony Comstock
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and his Society for the suppression of Vice to look closely at Stanford White's relationships with young chorus girls
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Harry claimed that he personally had approached many many mothers and warned them to keep their daughters away from
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Stanford White it was becoming clear that his obsession with bringing down Stanford white wasn't
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just about protecting The Virginity of young girls we continue the story with Hofstra
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Professor Paula uriburu Harry wanted to be you know a member of the clubs that white had built and
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designed and was a member of and because he had been sort of blackballed from all
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of them he blamed white you know for that and New York City Manhattan was whites town you know so the second best
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thing he could do was to marry this woman who had who had such an intimate relationship with white and then he
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could sort of keep feeding this Obsession of his which was so so dark and so crazy
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because Stanford White had paid to have Evelyn's teeth fixed to make them perfect Harry thaw sent her back to a
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dentist to undo it and make them imperfect again he made Evelyn promise that if she ever
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saw Stanford white even by coincidence in passing that she would report it to him he told her to call him the Beast or
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just the bee Evelyn had imagined that she and Harry would travel and she'd get to see the
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world but in reality they spent most nights at home with his family in Pittsburgh who she described as in
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artistic one year into their marriage Harry announced that he and Evelyn would go to
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Europe on June 25th 1906 they traveled from Pittsburgh to New York where they would
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spend the night before boarding a ship to cross the ocean Harry says oh guess what uh we're going
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to dinner tonight and we're going to the theater he wanted to see a musical called Mademoiselle champagne which was
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showing at Madison Square Garden Stanford white Madison Square Garden they had dinner first Harry was behaving
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strangely he was wearing a long black overcoat he was drinking a lot and quickly just as they were finishing
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their meal who comes walking in with Stanford white with his son Evelyn saw him right away but somehow Harry did not
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she tried to act completely normal and keep Harry from turning around Stanford white and his son went outside
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to the restaurant's Terrace and then Evelyn realized that she might get in trouble if she didn't tell Harry
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she wrote on a piece of paper the bee was here but has left Harry read the note and then he ordered
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champagne left a large tip and he and Evelyn went to Madison Square Garden when they first get there before the
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show starts Evelyn looks and much to her uh relief Stanford white is not in his usual seat because he was the designer
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the creator of the garden and so he had his own special seat but he was not there which he was happy about because
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she imagined some sort of really ugly confrontation between the two of them if it ever happened and she really didn't
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didn't want that experience so the show starts and and uh it was extremely hard it was ridiculously unseasonably hot and
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Harry was wearing this big heavy black overcoat and Evelyn said to him aren't you hot and he said no I'm fine I'm fine
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the show was almost over and Stanford White's table was still empty sadly the elevator doors open in the garden which
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is this beautiful rooftop theater and suddenly who gets out of the elevator but Stanford White
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some people in the audience applauded for him as he crossed the theater and took his seat near the stage
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he was there to see a young chorus girl he had been pursuing she was new to New York and he described her as looking
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like a little Peach Evelyn asked Harry and their friends if they could leave so Evelyn gets up and
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then she and the two friends and Harry ostensibly are walking towards the elevator when she turns and sees that
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Harry is not with her she she's trying to see where he could possibly be and Harry was you know a few
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hundred yards away walked up to White and Point Blank shoots him from about a foot away three bullets one in the teeth
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one behind his left eye and one in the shoulder in front of 900 people he died instantly in the building he
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designed and put on the map in the middle of a song called I could love a million girls
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people thought it was part of the show some members of the orchestra were confused and continued to play their
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instruments Harry reportedly said I did it because he ruined my wife and a New York fireman actually stepped
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forward and asked him to give up the gun which he did and smiling and uh was taken away then to the police station in
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the tenderloin area um and Evelyn says my God Harry what have you done and he says I've saved you
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and I've saved the girls you know the young women of New York and Harry thought he was doing some sort of you
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know he thought he was a knight in shining armor the New York Tribune quoted a cab driver is saying I always
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thought that fella would be killed sooner or later but I thought it would be a father that would do it not a
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husband I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music] [Music] Harry thaw was arrested and held without
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bail the district attorney told the New York Times I have no hesitation in saying I
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never knew of a more deliberate murder Evelyn was mostly described by the papers as just very pretty
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one paper described her as looking like a baby deer another said her head quote sat on her faultless throat as a lily on
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its stem and that her mouth was made of rumpled rose petals I don't think Evelyn ever thought that
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Harry had the courage or whatever term you want to use to to do anything that drastic with white I think she might
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have worried that there was going to be some sort of you know ugly scene some sort of you know verbal uh scene but I
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don't think she ever thought that he would have the nerve to shoot white but he did
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after that night mom was all champagne was a huge hit not because people wanted to watch the show which was apparently
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quite bad but because they wanted to see the scene of the crime you had Thomas Edison rushes to get a version of the
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murder the rooftop murder into the Nickelodeon's like two weeks later there's you could go to the Nickelodeon
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and see the reenactment of this murder it's uh in this Edison film and then the thaw family
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commissions their own film and then you had the newspapers there were something like 28 newspapers in New York alone The
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Herald the journal The Daily News you know the the list of newspapers goes on and it was front page news for two years
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and of course despite the fact that fog was the Killer and white was the victim the face of the murder trial was Evelyn
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because she was going to be a witness a star witness and she was you know she was the center of it all
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Harry thaw and his mother made her testify their defense strategy was unusual the
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lawyers wanted to argue Not Guilty by reason of insanity but the family was adamantly against that
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and so they came up with a compromise Harry's attorney described it as the quote species of insanity which makes
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every American man believe the honor of his wife is sacred he called it dementia
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Americana for it to work the jury had to be able to put themselves in Harry's shoes and
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to be disgusted by Stanford white for that to happen Evelyn had to take the stand and testify that Stanford white
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raped her she didn't have a choice Mrs thaw controlled her finances put a roof over her head and warned her that
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if she didn't do this Harry would die in the electric chair Evelyn testified for several days
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speaking in excruciating detail the district attorney William Travers Jerome bragged to reporters that he
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couldn't wait to cross-examine her that he would quote tear her limb from limb and exhibit the interesting remains
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triumphantly he showed the jury a photo of Evelyn on a Bearskin rug wearing a kimono he asked
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why she'd accepted so much money and so many gifts from Stanford white he asked why she attended his notoriously wild
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parties if he was such a monster the trial testimony was printed in newspapers it was so shocking that
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President Roosevelt tried to have it suppressed he said the full disgusting particulars were preventing people from
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concentrating at work keep in mind this is still this is 1906 1907 and uh people are not talking about
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sex much less getting on the stand and talking about riding naked on a swing and riding naked on Stanford White's
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shoulders and and photo shoots and having to wake up in this mirrored bed so all this was just incredibly
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incredibly salacious no one had ever heard anything like this before and the thought strategy was it didn't even
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matter if what they said what was said was true or not it was just the fact that Evelyn said it to Harry and that
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made him crazy so they called it a brainstorm Harry's mother paid several alienists
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the precursors to psychiatrists exorbitant sums of money to explain to the jury how it was possible for Harry
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to be perfectly sane before and after this temporary brainstorm that compelled him to defend his wife's honor so that
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was their strategy and it worked because amazingly even though he shot white and cold blood in front of
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a 900 plus people uh with Witnesses and everything else it was a hung jury the district attorney couldn't believe
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it and vowed to have a second trial which happened a year later in the course of you know a year between that
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trial and the second one where they have to go with the insanity plea it's almost
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like everything broke open and suddenly it's the modern world people are the the
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public are not going to be fooled by this mask of you know the knight in shining armor or any of that any of that
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old stuff you know the old Victorian morality clearly is out the window and so uh was really quite amazing
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[Music] in the first trial Harry thaw's defense attorney had created a picture of Evelyn
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Nesbitt being rescued from the predatory Stanford white by her honorable and doting husband Harry thaw a story about
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chivalry not murder but by the second trial reporters had gotten their hands on all kinds of
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personal details and so the narrative wasn't so simple it was clear at that point because of the incredible media
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coverage that it was very clear that um none of the people in the in the in the center of this tragedy neither Evelyn
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nor white nor thaw was exactly what they had been initially depicted as and as more and more details came out about the
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various relationships and particularly about Harry's Behavior his defense attorneys approached Harry's mother and
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said listen unless you want your son to die in the electric chair you're going to we're gonna have to let us go with
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the insanity defense because that was what the first lawyers wanted to do and Mrs mother thought said absolutely not
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even though Insanity she had a brother who was institutionalized and there was some evidence of other mental problems
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in the family she did not want that coming out so too much has come out about Harry's Behavior if you don't let
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us go with this defense he will go to the electric chair and so they went with the insanity defense and he was
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acquitted by reason of insanity and sent up to Matawan to the state Institution for the criminally insane in Upstate New
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York and that's how the second trial ended while Harry was at Matawan he paid people to follow Evelyn his mother
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helped with this collecting the reports about what she did and who she saw and briefing Harry
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in 1910 Evelyn got pregnant she said the pregnancy was the result of a conjugal visit she'd had with Harry he
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said that wasn't true she wrote I'd been through Flames to save the life of the man who is now
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repudiated me I'm sure that the thaw family promised her that they would take care of her but mother thought had no
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love for Evelyn in fact she hated the fact that her son had married so beneath him having married this chorus girl and
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so once Harry is incarcerated he's no longer in charge of his finances mother thought is and she put Evelyn on a very
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short leash in fact according to everything that Evelyn said she had to keep going up to Matawan to beg Harry to
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beg his mother to give her even just enough money to pay for the rent for the apartment she was living in and so she
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sort of stuck it out as the devoted wife I guess you could say for a couple of years and then it became clear that the
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whole family that this nothing she was never going to get any money nor were they going to give her anything to
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even help her to live so Harry in the meantime is stuck in the insane asylum who's ranting and raving
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about that he's not insane and he's trying to figure out a way out of this Evelyn
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began to testify against Harry at his sanity hearings saying he was too dangerous to be let out Harry filed for
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divorce he was eventually released from Matawan and in 1917 the New York Times reported
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that he'd been arrested again this time for kidnapping and whipping a teenage boy nearly to death
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Harry thaw had groomed the boy for almost a year writing him letters promising him a job and then one night
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he rented a suite in a hotel in Philadelphia and all the rooms around it to make sure that no one could hear the
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boy shouting for help while he was beaten and whipped the boy managed to escape and told his
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parents Harry was sent to a Pennsylvania Asylum he was released seven years later and
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continued to be accused of beating and whipping Showgirls until he died after their divorce Evelyn with her
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young son tried to go back to work she now is looking at herself and her reputation in Ruins she's known as the
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girl in the red velvet swing which he still is she decides to try to have a career in
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Vaudeville she was criticized for performing papers reported that she was capitalizing on her Fame from the murder
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trials she performed in cabarets in Greenwich Village she walked around with a pet boa
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constrictor named baby in the 30s at the lowest point in her life she said that the tragedy wasn't that Stanford white
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died it was that I lived but then if you fast forward to the point where she becomes in the 1955 she's the consultant
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for the film version of her life the girl on the red velvet swing with Joan Collins cinemascope lays bear the most
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scandalous true life love drama of the century a story unique in the annals of crime and passion
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so now she's sort of again resurrected and becomes the feature in Life magazine and there's pictures of her posing with
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the Charles Dana Gibson image of her so um it's a really really interesting multifaceted story and I think the
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legacy is it's the first really great True Crime of the certainly of the 20th century I mean every every decade has
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its crime of the century but this was really the first modern one in terms of the media coverage in terms of the press
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in terms of the what the rich and the powerful were doing behind closed doors in terms of exploitation of the young
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girls and the just young people working trying to work coming into the city from
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the rural areas I mean it really covers every aspect of of American culture and illuminated all the dark corners and uh
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which sadly uh still exists nothing has changed in terms of the currencies of power that were in play Then in terms of
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the rich and the powerful the people with money a who can pay off people and keep their secrets and so it's just it's
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just a fascinating cultural Moment In addition to the fact that Evelyn herself was really the first
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to me she was the first modern woman [Music] Evelyn Nesbitt spent the rest of her
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life in California with her son and his family and finally after a life of being the
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Muse for so many other artists she became a working artist in her own right a Sculptor
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[Music] foreign [Music] Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob Byers Matilda urfelino is our intern
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Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at this
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criminal.com where you can learn more about Evelyn Nesbitt and Paula uribiru's Book American Eve
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and we've got some very rare photographs from Harry thaw's trial there a trial that was closed to cameras but Boston
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Globe photographer E.E Bond snuck a special camera into the courtroom no one could see it because it was hidden in
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his vest and operated with a Watch chain thanks to our friends at the Boston Public Library for allowing us to share
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them you can find all of that at this iscriminal.com criminal is recorded in the studios of
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North Carolina public radio wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia from PRX a collection of the best
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podcasts around special thanks to adzerk for providing their ad serving platform to radiotopia
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I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music] radio [Music]