The Roswell daily record. [volume] (Roswell, N.M.) 1903-current, 1906-11-26

tragic news that Harry Thaw haC
! slain Stanford White. The setting OF
the fatal attack had been the Madi
son Square. Roof Garden, where the
first night performance az a sum
mer musical show known as mile
Champagne was being given. The
place was gay in flowers and multi
colored electric lights and was
tnronged with a f~ashionably dressed
audience. On the stage a man was
singing, 81 Could Love a Thousand
Girls" when suddenly above the
music the pistol shots rang out. The
music ceased, the chorus girls and
actors upon the stage were terror
stricken, men and women in the aud
fence dropped their glasses upon the
tables before them. In the stiffness
a man was heard to say:
you ruined my life, d you,
and now I've got you"
Stanford White lay dead at the
table where he had been sitting; Har-
~ Thaw, in evening dress, stood
with a smoking pistol in hand. His
wife VINO had seen him fire the fatal
shot was led screaming away from
the spot and Thaw was arrested. He
made no attempt to escape.
White as vice president of the
Madison Square Garden Company,
was the architect of that famous
structure in whose tower he had al
ways maintained a studio. 1t was in
this tower nat Thaw had charged
time and time again since his ar
rest hat White entertained young
ONE at the gayest of parties. Thaw
said he had frequently complained of
these studio parties to the Society
for the Prevention of Vice, and it
a been stated on authority that
this Society had made several inves-
LEGATIONS, prior DO the roof garden
tragedy.
1t has been brought out since the
shooting III White befriended Eve
lyn Nesbit and her mother when the
young woman first was brought to this
city to enter the studios as a model.
Letters which passed between White
and the mother of the girl have been
published and may play an important
part in the trial. There have been
reports that White sought the girls
society after her marriage to Thaw,
but this mas been admitted by nei-
Their side and SO far as they could do
so, counsel for both sides have clos
ed the mouths Of the most important
witnesses.
Thaw has sought his justification
in the words he uttered to his vic
tim On the night of the tragedy. He
has claimed that under the ''unwrit-
ten law no jury could convict him
of having taken the life of 9TH man
who had traduced mis- life in her in
nocent girlhood.' To these accusa-
tons by Thaw the friends of Stan
ford White, many of them Influential
men of the community, have declared
the architects interest in the girl was
purely of fatherly character. They
said he had assisted many young wo-
men to make place for themselves
in the world and that he was no more
deeply interested in Miss Nesbit than
ne had been in a number of others
about whom no breath of scandal has
been uttered.
1t has been constantly stated that
the Thaw case would never come to
trial and that the mysteries of it's
many intricate phases would never
be exposed to the light of the public's
gaze, this conjecture being a basis
on h report that a plea of insanity
might be entered and accepted.
This probability, however, it is now
said, is past. Harry Thaw has him
self stood in the way of any sucn plea
1t is asserted that in his refusal to
give assent to the insanity plea he
hoe hoAn Ifo c41- zr1nr0rtnd lu hic
wife, who it is also generally reported
has constantly urged her husband to
take some action against White. Mrs.
Tnaw has been a daily visitor to the
Tombs prison and Mrs. William
-Thaw, who was recalled from Europe
when the tragedy occurred has also
been a frequent caller. There have
been many family conferences and
many stormy interviews in the young
mans cell, his resentment being
SHOWN every time the suggestion of
insanity has een offered
Il prefer death in the electric chair
to a life in an insane asylum" the
prisoner is credited with saying.
Lewis D%alafield, of the counsel to
the Thaw family, was first called into
the case. He engaged Judge w. NJ.
K Olcott, of the firm of which former
Governor Frank S. Black, is a mem
Der. They had hardly been in the
case a mont when young Thaw at
ter an interview in the Tombs dis
missed them. He called to mis- aid
Clifford w. Hartridge, a lawyer VINO
had been his friend for years Now
that the trial is approaching he has
called into the case Dolphin Michael
Delmas. n of the most noted crimi-
nal lawyers of the west, wno has
come on from San Francisco to New