For some reason, Nesbit finally agreed to marry Thaw in 1905 after he “forgave” her for being raped, and about a year later, they went to see a play at Madison Square Garden’s rooftop theater. Tragically, White had the same idea. Thaw apparently saw White in the audience, and, after his vision went all Kill Bill, hesitantly approached White and then super unhesitantly shot him in the head, screaming either “You ruined my life,” or “You ruined my wife,” according to various witnesses. It was basically the same thing, as far as Thaw was concerned.
To the news media, which had long salivated over the “degeneracy of the so-called higher classes,” it was like someone had dropped a basket of kittens into their laps. Finally, they had not only the most damning possible proof of that “degeneracy” but scores of witnesses willing to speak to it. Within hours, they’d descended upon everybody whose cousin’s friend’s grocer was there and everywhere Stanford White had so much as used the toilet, looking for info. By the next morning, the New York Times had lovingly reported exactly how White’s body “tumbled from the chair” and “fell to the floor” in a “great pool of blood” while the audience, first believing the incident to be part of the show, slowly realized the horror of the situation. By the next week, two movies had been made about the incident, one financed by Thaw’s own family and another by Thomas Edison, because why not throw him in here?
The Washington Times/Library of Congress
After Thaw was arrested, which was immediately because he didn’t even try to get away with it, and the case began to move along, both sides played the media against each other. They quickly zeroed in on White as the villain of the story because few people wanted to defend him after the whole rape thing came out, and the ones who did insisted he had merely “admired a beautiful woman as he admired every other beautiful thing God has given us.” Even in 1906, that kind of thing didn’t go over well. Even church leaders were quoted as saying that White basically got what he deserved. Others decried Nesbit as a harlot who “was sold to one man and later sold herself to another” because this was still 1906.
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