Holy Rollers: Murder and Madness in Oregon's Love Cult

by

T. McCracken and Robert B. Blodgett

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Part 2

Like [Miss XXX], Evelyn Nesbit first met her paramour when she was a teenager. It was in 1901 when she was sixteen and in the chorus of the musical Florodora. She was a beauty with an oval face, copper curls, hazel eyes, a voluptuous mouth, and a splendid figure, one of the girls that Gibson men in gray cutaways and top hats asked: "Tell me, pretty maiden, Are there any more at home like you?" To which the girls demurely replied: "There are a few, kind sir, but simple girls, and proper too."

White befriended not only Evelyn, but her mother too. When Evelyn's mother went to visit friends in Pittsburgh, White offered to care for Evelyn. "You may leave her with me in perfect safety," he assured her mother. But as soon as White was alone with Evelyn in his house, he seduced her after giving her champagne.

During Harry Thaw's trial Evelyn testified that she had "told Harry" about this seduction. As in [Mr. XXX's] trial, having a witness testify to telling the defendant a story was the only way of getting the murder victim's foul deeds before the jury. It was not hearsay because it was not offered as evidence of White's seductions, but as evidence of Harry's state of mind when he killed White.

"He [White] came to me and told me to finish my champagne [Evelyn said], which I did, and I don't know whether it was a minute after or two minutes after, but a pounding began in my ears, then the whole room seemed to go around. . . .

"Then I woke up, all my clothes were pulled off of me, and I was in bed. I sat up in the bed, and started to scream. Mr. White was there nude. . . . There were mirrors all around the bed. There were mirrors on the side of the wall and on top. Then I screamed, and he came over and asked me to please keep quiet, that I must not make so much noise. He said, "It is all over, it is all over." Then I screamed, "Oh, no!" . . .

"He said that everything was all right. . . . He said everybody did those things; that all people were doing those things, that that is all people were for, all they lived for. . . . And then I looked at him and said, Does everybody you know do these things? And he said, "Yes." And the first thing I could think of was the Florodora sextet. I asked him if the sextet did these things. He sat down and started to laugh, and laughed and laughed and laughed."

Evelyn testified that after she had "told Harry" this story, it preyed on his mind constantly until, in an insane "brainstorm," he decided to kill White.

"No jury on earth will send me to the chair, no matter what I have done or what I have been, for killing the man who defamed my wife," Harry said. "That is the unwritten law made by men themselves, and upon its virtue I will stake my life."

Harry Thaw, thirty-four, hoped to be viewed as a hero, as [Mr. XXX] was. On the surface, their cases seemed similar. Both of them had killed men who had committed reprehensible acts--Harry a man who had done "those things" with most of the Florodora sextet, and [Mr. XXX] a man who had done "those things" with most of Corvallis's Salvation Army garrison.

But Harry Thaw was never viewed as a hero, for he was almost as vile as his victim. Harry, son of William Thaw, a nouveau riche Pittsburgh railroad and coke magnate, had been in one notorious escapade after another before this. His studies at Harvard focused almost solely on the finer points of poker, and he had once lost $40,000 in a single game. On another occasion he threw a party in Paris at which his guests were the city's leading whores.

When his father died, Harry was given an allowance of $200 a month until such time as he showed himself responsible enough to handle his $5 million share of a $40 million estate. His doting mother, however, enabled him to resume the playboy life he had enjoyed by upping his allowance to $80,000 a year.

Before their marriage, Harry traveled with Evelyn through Europe. After their travels, Evelyn went to a celebrated shady lawyer, Abe Hummel, and swore out an affidavit about Harry mistreating her in a castle he rented in Austria: "The said Thaw said he wished to tell me something, and asked me to step into my bedroom [Evelyn said in her affidavit]. I entered the room, when the said Thaw, without any provocation, grasped me by the throat and tore the bathrobe from my body, leaving me entirely nude except for my slippers. I saw by his face that the said Thaw was in a terrific, excited condition, and I was terrorized. His eyes were glaring and he had in his right hand a cowhide whip. He seized hold of me and threw me on the bed. I was powerless and attempted to scream, but the said Thaw placed his fingers in my mouth and tried to choke me. He then without any provocation, and without the slightest reason, began to inflict on me several severe and violent blows with the cowhide whip. So brutally did he assault me that my skin was cut and bruised. I besought him to desist, but he refused. I was so exhausted that I shouted and cried. He stopped every minute or so to rest, and then renewed his attack upon me, which he continued for about seven minutes.

"He acted like a demented man. I was absolutely in fear of my life. . . . "