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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Split Personality - A Myth Or a Reality?

!±8± Split Personality - A Myth Or a Reality?

Introduction

In this world of todays', there are a lot of implausible diseases; one of them is the disease of human's mind, which is called as split-personality disorder. Not many people around the world believe if this disease really exists or not, or they rather think that the person is acting.

I was on my way from Bangalore, India to Mumbai, India and during the journey I was just chatting with the person sitting next to me and during the process of our conversation we begin to discuss on "Split Personalities".

I distinctly remember that when I was in college, I had one very good friend of mine and his name was Mr. T. Kiran Kumar. The uniqueness of our relation was our compatibility and depth of understanding. Whether we were with kids, or classmates or elderly people or uneducated people or females or highly intellectuals, hardly mattered; how we might behave, was entirely based on the type of group that we were part of. Believe me or not but our attitude, approach, behavior, and our way to react to a given situation was based on the type of group we were into. Does that imply that we were having split personalities? If that is the case then every one of us are having split personalities. We behave differently with our family members, with our friends, our spouse, and unknown people, right?

Let's see.

Let us understand the term "Split Personality".

Definition of Split Personality: "A relatively rare dissociative disorder in which the usual integrity of the personality breaks down and two or more independent personalities emerge".

Explanation: There is no category or phenomenon in psychiatry called split personality. The term is commonly used in popular language to indicate an ambiguous or radically and spectacularly alternating type of behavior of the "Jekyll and Hyde" type. It is often bewildered with the medical illness of schizophrenia because the etymology of the latter (from the Greek schizein, to split + phren, mind) suggests, misleadingly, that schizophrenia is a type of split personality. In schizophrenia, however, the splitting is within one single personality as the individual's thoughts, feelings and emotions are seriously and confusingly disconnected from each other in a chaotic and random fashion. Schizophrenic individuals, far from having split or multiple personalities, actually have a great struggle maintaining the coherence and integrity of even a single self.

Before proceeding further let's try and understand as what we mean by term "Personality".

HUMAN PERSONALITY

There are three distinct meanings for the term "personality," two of them general and popular and the third technical and philosophical. The first and most general meaning is that personality is the sum of the characteristics, which make up physical and mental being. These include appearance, manners, habits, tastes and moral character. The second meaning emphasizes the characteristics that distinguish one person from another. The two meanings overlap or merge into each other, as the first considers all characteristics pertaining to the individual, without comparing him with others, while the second sees the same facts in relation to the outside world and fixes attention mainly upon the features that distinguish the subject from his fellows. This second meaning is equivalent to individuality. It represents a widely prevalent conception of the term.

But the third meaning is the most important, and is the only conception of any value to the psychic researcher and the philosopher or psychologist. This conception of personality is concerned only with mental characteristics; it makes no distinction between common and specific marks. In fact it connotes mental processes rather than fixed qualities. The capacity for having mental states, or the fact of having them, constitutes personality for the psychologist and the philosopher. Personality is thus the stream of consciousness, regardless of the question whether any special state is constant or casual, essential or unessential. Physical marks will have no place in this conception, unless they may serve as symbols of mental states. It abstracts from them and denotes only the stream of mental phenomena.

This third meaning is so radically different from the other two that it gives rise to perpetual misunderstandings between the philosopher and the public. These misunderstandings arise particularly in the discussion of survival after death. The layman with his conception of personality looks for physical phenomena of some kind to illustrate or prove it. Consequently, if interested in psychic phenomena at all, he prefers materialization, which best satisfies his conception of personality. He cannot take the point of view of the psychologist or the philosopher, who neglects these purely sensory characteristics, and fixes his attention on mental states as the proper conception of the personality, which may survive. Materialization would supply the very characteristics, which the layman fixes upon to represent personality. But precisely the fact that mental states are not presented to sense, leads the philosopher to conceive of immortality as possible.

If the layman's conception were correct the philosopher and psychologist would deny the possibility of survival with entire confidence, as a necessary implication of bodily dissolution. The day could be saved only by the doctrine of a "spiritual body," an It astral body," or an "ethereal organism," supposedly a replica of the physical organism in its spatial and other characteristics. These represent personality after the manner or analogy of the physical body. The real spirit may indeed have a transcendental bodily form; but the stream of consciousness remains the same whether there is any "spiritual body" or "ethereal organism" or not. This is the fundamental element in all conceptions of spiritual reality. It is not necessary to decide the question of a "spiritual body" or "ethereal organism" as the condition of believing in the existence of spirits. That is another and perhaps a secondary problem. What we need to know is, whether the stream of consciousness survives, whether the personal memory continues, not how it continues. The fact of survival is to be considered first and the condition of it afterwards.

Historical Review of "Split Personality"

Possible cases of split personality have been reported in the medical literature since the early 19th century, and the condition was formally defined in the first years of the 20th. But until recently it was considered extremely rare--fewer than 200 cases were described before 1980. The diagnosis became much more common in the 80s for several reasons. One was the phenomenal popularity of Flora Schreiber's 1973 book Sybil, which told of a woman with 16 personalities. Stories of "multiples," fictionalized or otherwise, were nothing new--The Three Faces of Eve dates from 1954, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" from way back in 1886--but Sybil made a crucial innovation, introducing the idea that multiple personalities stemmed from trauma during early childhood. Around the same time, child protection advocates and feminists began arguing that child abuse, especially sexual abuse, occurred far more often than previously supposed. And in the late 70s, in a phenomenon thought to be linked to the resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, reports of so-called satanic ritual abuse first captured the public's imagination.

Presented with, on one hand, allegations of an unrecognized epidemic of crimes against innocents and, on the other, a simple mechanism to explain why their troubled patients couldn't remember any abuse (i.e., the personality divides in order to shield itself from horrific memories), a small but devoted group of therapists began diagnosing multiple personality disorder with alarming frequency--more than 20,000 cases had been reported by 1990. Under the influence of hypnosis and other techniques, subjects reported dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of "alters" whose behavior, age, sex, language, and occasionally species differed from that of their everyday personas. Alters were coaxed into revealing bloodcurdling stories of abuse by family members, or of sacrificing their own babies to shadowy cults. One prominent multiple personality specialists claimed that the satanic network programmed alters into its victims, which it could then trigger to act in certain ways by sending them color-coded flowers.

By the early 1990s it began to dawn on rational folk just how preposterous the whole business was. Having investigated more than 12,000 accusations over four years, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Illinois at Chicago determined that not a single case of satanic ritual abuse had been substantiated. A 1992 FBI study arrived at the same conclusion: overeager therapists had planted horror stories in the minds of their patients. In 1998 psychologist Robert Rieber made a convincing case, based on an analysis of audiotapes, that even the famous Sybil had confabulated her multiple personalities at the insistence of her therapist. The bubble burst, and diagnoses of multiple personalities subsided.

Some real Life Examples of Split Personalities

Case-1

The first patient is a man named William S. Milligan, he was caught by the charge of rape in Ohio at 1977. As police and the psychologists examined him, they found the unbelievable fact that he had several personalities. Here are the first ten personalities they found. In The Minds of Billy Milligan;

1. The first personality is the main personality, Billy, twenty-seven years old, blue eyes, brown hair.

2. The second personality is Arthur, twenty-two years old, British. This personality and the next one are the keeper of the "Spot", where they can have the control of the body, or become themselves open to the outer world through the body of Billy.

3. The third personality is Leigen, twenty-three years old, Yugoslav, who knows how to fight and can use gun and other dangerous stuff, controls the hate.

4. Fourth personality is Allen, eighteen years old, talkative, only one who smoke and right handed.

5. Fifth personality is Tommy, sixteen years old, knows how to unlock chains or handcuffs, and the specialist of the electricity.

6. Sixth personality is Danny, fourteen years old, always scared to something especially man, blond hair, blue eyes.

7. Seventh personality is David, eight years old, controls pain, red-brown hair blue eyes.

8. Eighth personality is Christine, three years old, cannot talk, blond hair, female.

9. Ninth personality is Christopher, thirteen years old, brother of Christine.

10. For the last tenth personality, Adarana, nineteen years old, quiet, lesbian, female.

Those were the main ten personalities of the William S. Milligan. As if you wonder how they know their outlooks, William Milligan, Billy has a hobby of painting, or some of the personalities do. Therefore, they draw each other on the painting and that is how they get to know their outlooks.

Case-2

The woman's name is Claudia Ellen Yascow. She was arrested by the charge of killing four people, which they found later that she was not the suspect. However, it was not unnecessary for the police to think that she was the suspect, because she had information of the scene that cannot be known unless the person has been there. Even though the information was confusing and messy because of her mental disease, police believed her and thought that she was the suspect, for she knew even where the pot and other little detail was at when the crime occurred. She was caught once but let go after few month with the check of psychologist that she has a incubation type of split minds, and the lie detector found her answer to the question that she was not at the scene when the crime happened showed what she said is true, "No, I did not."

Her trouble is brought up mainly because of her mental disease, incubation type of split mind. Claudia is different, as she can always be herself even she is in a great pressure, but she will be losing a collect criterion to judge what kind of situation she is in. For example, when she was caught in jail, she truly thought that she was in a middle of movie taking and she was playing her rolls of main heroine. "Suddenly she put the smile on her face and said 'I never thought that I could have a great chance like this,' She leaned her head on the wall.'I've always thought of having a chance to do a big act like a big actress. I do have some experience of acting in few films as a supporting player, but if I play this murderess act, maybe I can be very famous.' Dye stared at her and asked, 'You think we are making a film right now?' She slapped his hand softly, smiling, 'Oh Dye, you have seen all those cameras at the corridor and those of TV's. I hope I can have a deal with a lot of money coming in, you know it is kind of hard to act.'

As you can see above, by the shock she got from been captured by police, her mind had made an escape way from pain by believing that all the stuff going is an act and not a real deal. This is very close to what Billy has done to himself; only the difference is that fortunately, Claudia was not getting shocked when she was before teenager, but after she became an adult. I think that this is the reason why she was quite right in condition even though she had some mental problems since she was fourteen and had been looked after by a psychologist. Her case is still, with a great trouble, that in such a hard circumstance like in the police office, she would be nervous and will not be able to say what she really wants to.

As she says in Unveiling Claudia, "If I am lying to you right now, that is anything but my will. She is telling the truth here that her mind is trying to protect herself by not telling the truth about the matter, and she cannot help it. It is rather an act of her instinct, to let the shock coming above her because of telling and remembering the truth softer in order to not breakdown for it.

This has been appearing in the way of making the book. As she was making the confession about the murder, she always kept telling a one big story with half lie and half-truth. As you will find later that the truth was such a hard one that it was too much for her to remember it and telling it to the person who you met one or two years ago. This can be seen in Unveiling Claudia, " 'Claudia, I don't know what I should believe in you.' She put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eye. 'I'm sorry Dan. I do trust you more than before. But not enough.'" This conversation was held more than two years past after they have met, and as you can see that she is very careful about telling the truth and that is why she kept telling lie, or something that she believed it was a truth and unfortunately it was not. Although she is always careful about telling the truth, she is always an easy person to make believe. If someone tells her that she has a superstitious power, she believes it and so on. This has prevented her from stopping the murder, because she had known that the real suspects of the case had planned to proceed the crime week before the murder. However, she was busy and also her weak mind was scared with the pressure what if she tell it to the victim and the what if the suspects would know about it and come after her? In the way of her mind escaping from the reality, she started to believe that it was an oracle, and she could not stop the crime. This story was one of the reason she was arrested once by the story told by her friend that she knew that the crime is going the happen a week before, and the truth was different.

The shocking truth was told on the end, and it was shocking enough for her mind to look for some escape way. On the night when crime has occurred, she was forced to go to the place with a gay, right after the murder had happened. The man was gay but he had a gun in his hand and she could not refuse to go there with him. Their car came in front of the house just in time when two suspects where killing the victim, and after they had gone away, they went to the house's garage where there was a one dead body of a man and one body of woman laying on the floor. Claudia was forced to put her hand into the dead woman's genitals and find a bag of drugs. Now, this is a real hard and sick experience for the twenty-six years old woman, or any other person in the world. She was shocked and her mind could not stand it and she has lost her memories in order to prevent the breakdown.

After few days she found herself knowing about that crime but could not find out why she knows so much about it. She shared that story with police and they misjudged her as a criminal and put her in jail.

What they have to say

Article analysis by Joshua Burke

"My father is a metal health counselor here in the US. He has seen only 2 multiple personality disorders in his 20+ years of private practice. In both cases patients were former participants in covens. One was a willing participant and the other was supposedly the unwilling offspring of a "breeder" program.

Neither my father nor I are generally prone to believe such things for the very reasons that you put forth in your article but never-the-less both patients exhibited classic multiple personality disorder symptomology. In the case of the unwilling participant he came to the conclusion that the majority of the damage to her psyche had been done by a previous therapist, when he met with the therapist and watched him work with her he was then certain that this was the case... Perhaps this fits with your theory of therapists putting ideas into people's heads.

Unfortunately, this leaves a difficult problem to solve... Whether or not the problem is caused by a therapist or by some other external force, what is to be done with these people? Regardless of *how* they got that way they still deserve to be whole persons who will probably require further therapy... The *cause* of multiple personality disorder is not so important to determine for these patients as healing is.

The process used by my father in his therapy sessions is called re-integration where the personalities are not taught how to *co-exist* but rather how to re-integrate with the main persona or the core identified "true self" as discovered in therapy. This re-integration can be very simple or complicated depending on the strength of a particular personality.

For instance, if a person has one major alternate and several minor ones the minor ones would be integrated first before the major etc. The difficulty arises because for each personality present there is a tremendous loss of individuality for each one and in each case this loss of an individual "persona" is often felt as a grief or loss of a friend for the true self. As each personality is re-integrated the true self becomes more in tune with its own emotions and feels this grief more keenly. For this reason it is important to take things slowly and to address only personalities that emerge rather than force anything.

In many cases a person's sense of self may be so buried under all of these layers of 'others' that finding the true self may be the most difficult part of the therapeutic process. Often this self is so weak and lacking in will that it presents as a smaller, other personality. It takes caring, sensitivity and insight to help these people since this true self is often a very young child.

It might sound strange and eerie and it is... The problem with your argument of is it all in their head is that of course it is... Does that make it any less real for the people who suffer from it? It is very similar to people who experience vivid hallucinations, are those things real? No. Do they cause them grief and pain? Yes".

Stay in touch and yes, do take care of your good self because you are precious.

Regards,


Split Personality - A Myth Or a Reality?

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Thursday, October 20, 2011

Harry Thaw - The Man Who Murdered Sanford White

!±8± Harry Thaw - The Man Who Murdered Sanford White

This story would be a tragic one if it didn't involve two men who were undoubtedly creeps. Illustrious creeps, but creeps nevertheless. One was a world-famous architect, and the other a rich scion, from an even richer family. There are no nice guys here, and the girl in the middle, although considered the most beautiful woman of her time, and one of artist Charles Dana Gibson's famous "Gibson Girls," was no lily-white lassie herself.

So why do we care? Simply because it was the most deliciously decadent murder story of the early 20th Century.

On June 25, 1906, it was high society's night out. It was the opening of the new musical Mamzelle Champagne, on the outdoor roof garden of Madison Square Garden, which at the time was bounded by Fifth and Madison Avenues, and 26th and 27th Streets. The structure, which included an amphitheater on the ground floor, was designed by world-famed architect Stanford White. In fact, White had a front row table, in which he sat by himself, to enjoy the show, which was not going over too well with the crowd, since people were milling about from table to table, kibitzing, instead of paying attention to the show.

Suddenly, the audience heard three loud shots. At first, they thought it was a part of the show. But when they saw White topple to the floor, his head encased in a pool of blood, they knew the theatrical scene was for real.

Harry Kendall Thaw, a spoiled, rich punk, had casually walked over to White, pulled out a pistol from beneath his long black coat, and plugged White three times: twice in the shoulder and once through his brain. After he fired his final shot, Thaw screamed at White, "You deserved this! You ruined my wife!"

Seeming to be not in any particular hurry, Thaw casually pointed the gun up over his head and strode to the elevator. Thaw took the elevator down and met his wife, the beautiful actress Evelyn Nesbit, in the lobby by the elevator. Mamzelle Champagne being the awful spectacle that it was, Thaw and Nesbit had left with another couple moments before the shooting. Nesbit did not realize her husband did not ride down the elevator with her. Nesbit heard the shots, and a few seconds later, when her husband strode out of the elevator holding a smoking gun, she screamed at him, "Good God Harry, what have you done?"

Back on the rooftop garden, the stage manager was trying to sort out exactly what had transpired. He jumped on a table and shouted to the orchestra, "Keep on playing! And bring out the chorus!"

The musicians, actors and actresses, dumbfounded over a real live murder being perpetrated right in front of their eyes, sat, or stood dumbfounded. A doctor, who was in attendance, rushed to White's body. White's face was disfigured from the powder burns. Still, the doctor announced with certainty that White was indeed dead.

Down in the lobby, a firemen in attendance wrestled the gun away from Thaw, who did not offer any resistance. Moments later, a policeman arrived and immediately arrested Thaw. The policeman brought Thaw to the nearest police station, which was located in the Tenderloin District, an area known for its gambling, prostitution, and various other crimes, both violent and nonviolent. When Thaw arrived at the police station, he identified himself as John Smith, a student at 18 Lafayette Square in Philadelphia.

The desk sergeant asked Thaw, "Why did you do this?"

Thaw seemed disinterested. "I can't say why," he said.

By this time, several news reporters, who were familiar with Thaw, had followed him to the police station, and identified him to the police by his real name. Thaw immediately clammed up and refused to say another word, unless he was represented by an attorney.

The following day, the killing of Sanford White was on the front page of every newspaper in New York City. The New York Times, usually staid and proper, ran this blaring headline.

THAW MURDERS SANFORD WHITE!
Shoots him on the Madison Square Garden rooftop
ABOUT EVELYN NESBIT
"You ruined my wife," he cries and fires.
AUDIENCE IN PANIC
Chairs and tables overturned in a wild scramble For the Exits

Stanford White, who was born in 1853, was the most famous architect of this time. White was a partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, for which he designed houses and mansions for the rich and famous. White also designed the upscale gated community Seagate in Brooklyn. Besides designing Madison Square Garden, White designed the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, the New York Herald Building, the First Bowery Savings Bank (at the Bowery and Grand Street), and the Washington Square Arch. The final two White achievements are still standing to this day.

However, White, despite his exalted status, was a quirky man, who had several fetishes, some bordering on illegality. Even though he was married, White was a man-about-town, who courted several young ladies, some of them young enough to be his daughter. It was his encounter with a 16-year-old Evelyn Nesbit that was the cause of his demise.

Evelyn Nesbit was born Florence Evelyn Nesbit on Christmas Day 1884, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Her father was a struggling lawyer, who died in 1893, leaving his wife and daughter in considerable debt. Even at a young age, Nesbit was a stunning beauty. She began modeling in Pittsburgh, but she and her mother decided it was best she moved to New York City, to enhance her career. Almost immediately Nesbit was a hot New York City model. She modeled for such famous photographers as Frederick S. Church, Herbert Morgan, Gertrude Kasebier, Carl Blenner, and Rudolf Eickemeyer.

Nesbit's beauty was such, newspaperman Irvin S. Cobb describe Nesbit as having, "The slim, quick grace of a fawn, a head that sat on her flawless throat like a lily on its stem, eyes that were the color of blue-brown pansies and the size of half dollars, a mouth made of rumbled rose petals."

In 1901, Nesbit met White for the first time. Nesbit and a girlfriend, who was accompanied by another man, were invited to have lunch at White's apartment on W. 24th Street. Shortly after they finished their meal, her girlfriend's male companion left. White then invited the two girls to an upstairs room, where he kept a red velvet swing. Like a father doting on his two young children, White gave both the girls a turn on his swing, gleefully pushing them back and forth, until their legs almost touched the ceiling.

"He had a big Japanese umbrella on the ceiling," Nesbit said. "So when he swung us very high up in the air, our feet past through the umbrella."

White became very smitten with Nesbit. Using her mother as a chaperon, White dated Nesbit quite often. At the time, White was the perfect gentleman, and he tried to make sure Nesbit had every advantage, as she pursued her career in modeling, and in acting.

However, everything changed when Nesbit's mother decided to visit friends in Pittsburgh. White was so magnanimous, he even paid for Nesbit's mother's trip. By this time, Nesbit had gotten a bit part in a play called Floridora. On the second night that her mother was gone, White sent Nesbit a note at the theater, inviting her to a party at his apartment on 24th Street. When Nesbit arrived at White's apartment, she was surprised no one else was there.

"The others have turned us down," White told Nesbit.

"Then he poured me a glass of champagne," Nesbit said at Thaw's trial. "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."

Nesbit lost consciousness, and when she awoke, she was lying in bed, naked. The room, in which the bed was located, was completely mirrored, even on the ceilings.

"I started to scream," Nesbit said. "Mr. White tried to quiet me. I don't remember how I got my clothes on, or how I went home, but he took me home. Then he went away and left me. I sat up all night."

The following day, White visited Nesbit at her apartment. He found her there in an almost hypnotic state, just staring out the window.

"Why don't you look at me, child," White said.

"Because I can't," she said.

White told Nesbit not to worry. "Everyone does those things," he told her. White also told Nesbit her fellow starlets in Floradoa all were involved in sexual escapades with assorted men. White told Nesbit the most important thing was not to be found out. He made Nesbit promise not to say anything to her mother about what had transpired in his apartment the night before.

Harry Thaw was born in Pittsburgh, in February of 1871, the son of coal and railroad baron William Thaw. As a child, Thaw shuttled in and out of several schools. He was an insolent child, considered by this teaches not to be very bright, and a troublemaker. Yet, because he was the son of William Thaw, Harry Thaw was admitted into the University of Pittsburgh, supposedly to study law. However, Thaw was not much of a college student, so his father used his influence to get him transferred to Harvard University. At Harvard, Thaw did little more than drink, carouse with the ladies, and play night-long poker games.

Thaw left Harvard without a degree, and he became an expert in getting into trouble. It was about this time that Thaw began his systematic drug use. Thaw consumed large amounts of cocaine and heroin, and it was rumored that Thaw was heavy into "speedballing," which was the process of injecting a combination of cocaine and heroin into a vein. High as a kite, Thaw once rode a horse into a New York City nightclub, from which he had been banned. Adding to his reputation of being an out-of-control lunatic, Thaw also drove a car through a display window of a department store, lost ,000 in a single poker game, drank a full bottle of the narcotic laudanum, and hosted a decadent party in Paris, where the majority of his guests were the top whores in town. The tab for this party was said to be over ,000.

When Thaw's father passed away, Thaw was dismayed to discover, that even though he was left million of his father's million estate, it was stipulated in the senior Thaw's will that his son would only get an allowance of two hundred dollars a month. This small allowance would continue until Thaw showed he was responsible enough to handle such a large sum of inheritance money.

In 1905, Thaw became smitten with Nesbit. Thaw courted Nesbit with much enthusiasm, and when White found out about Thaw and Nesbit, he warned Nesbit to stay away from Thaw; telling her that Thaw was an erratic and dangerous man. White knew that Thaw maintained a New York City apartment in a brothel. White also knew that Thaw would entice young girls into his apartment, then he would whip them in a bizarre sex routine, that left the girls in conditions that would sometimes require hospitalization.

However, Thaw could not be discouraged from pursuing Nesbit. He repeatedly begged Nesbit to marry him, and she consistently refused. While they were on a cruise together, Thaw became outraged when Nesbit again refused to marry him. In an act of a madman, Thaw whipped Nesbit like he did the other young girls in his New York City apartment. During this whipping, Nesbit confessed to Thaw about the manner in which he had lost her virginity to White. Thaw said he still loved her and wanted to marry her anyway. Despite the fact that Thaw had whipped her, and was certainly not of sound mind, Nesbit married Thaw on April 4, 1905.

After they were married, Thaw maintained an extreme hatred for Sanford White. So contemptuous of White because of what White had done to Nesbit, Thaw forbade his wife to even mention the name "Sanford White." Thaw insisted that Nesbit refer to White as, "The Bastard" or "The Beast." Yet, Nesbit, more often than not, simply referred to White as "B."

While Thaw was in prison awaiting trial for the murder of White, Thaw's mother, known in the newspapers as "Mother Thaw," was in England visiting her daughter, the Countess of Yarmouth. Upon hearing of her son's predicament, Mother Thaw announced that she was going back to the United States to help her son. "I am prepared to pay one million dollars to save my son's life," Mother Thaw told the press.

Part of Mother Thaw's strategy was to use her considerable wealth to orchestrate a campaign in the press to discredit Sanford White. Suddenly, several newspapers began writing exposés on White, portraying him as a tyrannical abuser of young girls. Mother Thaw went so far as to hire a press agent to generate newspaper publicity detrimental to White, and favorable to her son.

One particular story, Mother Thaw paid the press to print, was extremely damaging to White's credibility, decency, and honor (if he had any to start with). It seemed White had become infatuated with a 15-year-old girl named Susie Johnson. White had met Johnson at a wild party, at which Johnson had sprung from a large cake, almost totally naked. That night, White fed Johnson enough champagne to render her quite drunk. When Johnson became so inebriated she was barely conscious, White took Johnson back to his apartment, and he did to her, what he had done to Evelyn Nesbit. Soon after, White banished Johnson from his apartment, and threw her out into the street, totally broke. As White pushed Johnson out his front door, he told Johnson, "Girls, if you are poor, stay in the safe factory, or in the kitchen."

Johnson lasted eight years hustling on the streets, before she died at the age of 23, and was buried in a pauper's grave.

In order to influence the New York City potential jury pool, Mother Thaw hired a playwright to write a play almost identical to the circumstances surrounding Harry Thaw, Sanford White, and Evelyn Nesbit. The play featured three characters named Harold Daw, Emeline Daw, and Stanford Black. In the final scene of the play, Harold Daw proclaimed from his cell in the Tombs Prison, "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. That is the unwritten law made by men themselves, and upon its virtue I will stake my life."

Mother Thaw's money even made it into the hands of Rev. Charles A. Eaton, who had John D Rockefeller as one of his parishioners. Rev. Eaton made an impassioned speech to his congregation defending Thaw's actions. Rev. Eaton said, "It would be a good thing if there was a little more shooting in cases like this."

While Thaw was in prison, his mother spread enough money around so that Thaw could enjoy extravagances no other prisoners in the Tombs were allowed. Instead of eating the standard prison grub, Thaw had all his meals delivered from Delmonico's, a downtown restaurant, which was considered the finest eatery of its time. While other prisoners dressed in standard prison garb, Thaw was allowed to wear the finest clothes, including silk shirts and silk ties.

Thaw's first trial for the murder of Sanford White commenced on January 21, 1907. Mother Thaw hired the illustrious California trial lawyer Delpin Delmas to represent her son. District Attorney William Travers Jerome, the uncle of Winston Churchill, prosecuted the case for the state.

Jerome told the jury in his opening statement, "With all his millions, Thaw is a fiend. In the conduct of this trial, I shall prove that no matter how rich a man is, he can't get away with murder in New York County!"

The sensationalism of the trial was so extreme, tickets to the trial were scalped at 0. More than 80 world-famous artists and writers flocked to the courtroom to see if maybe they could benefit by either writing a book, or making a movie about the sordid affair.

The defense's shining hour was when Evelyn Nesbit took the stand in defense of her husband. Rumors had it that Mother Thaw enticed Nesbit to testify by promising Nesbit that her son would agree to a divorce. Mother Thaw also promised Nesbit one million dollar after the trial, but Nesbit never received one penny of that money.

On the stand, Nesbit told of the bizarre sexual behavior of Sanford White. Nesbit said that White made her wear little girl's dresses when she came to his apartment. Nesbit also told the jury the manner in which she lost her virginity to White, and that White had plied her with champagne, in order to render her unconscious, so that he could have his way with her.

The prosecution countered Nesbit's words by eliciting testimony from a leading toxicologist, Dr. Rudolph Witthaus. Dr. Witthaus said that Nesbit's story about how White had gotten her drunk in order to take advantage of her, did not hold water, because no drug known to science would have worked as rapidly as Nesbitt said that champagne did to render her unconscious.

Although a group of psychiatrists declared Thaw to be totally sane, during the trial Thaw acted erratically, by constantly crying like a baby, and flying into rages, in which his eyes bugged out, and his face turned nearly purple.

In his final summation, Delmas told the jury that his client, when he shot Sanford White, had been consumed by "Dementia Americana, a form of insanity which makes every home sacred, makes a man believed that his wife is sacred. Whoever strains the virtual life has forfeited the protection of human laws, and must look to the internal justice and mercy of God."

Attorney Delmas had done such a remarkable job, the jury was not able to come to a unanimous verdict. It was revealed later that seven jurors had wanted to convict Thaw on a first-degree murder charge, while five jurors decided on a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. However, at Thaw's second trial, in January of 1908, the jury unanimously voted Thaw not guilty by reason of insanity.

Still, the verdict of not guilty did not set Thaw free from prison. Thaw was declared criminally insane and imprisoned for life at Matteawan, New York. In August 17, 1913, Thaw escaped, and with a limousine waiting for him outside the asylum, Thaw fled to Canada, where he took refuge.

While Thaw was on the run, Nesbit, obviously angry at the fact she had been not paid the one million dollars she was promised by Mother Thaw, made an announcement to the press.

She said, "Harry Thaw has turned out to be a degenerate scoundrel. He hid behind my skirts through two trials and I won't stand for it again. I won't let lawyers throw any more mud at me."

Soon afterwards, Nesbit signed a contract to appear in a vaudeville show, at a salary of 00 a week.

In September, 1913, the United States government forced the Canadian Minister of Justice to return Thaw to the United States. Thaw faced a third trial in 1915. Bolstered by a cadre of the best lawyers money could buy, Thaw was found to be sane, and the jury found him not guilty of all charges.

Back on the streets, Thaw went back to his old evil ways. Eighteen months after he was released from prison, Thaw was arrested for kidnapping and whipping Frederick Gump. At his trial, Thaw was again declared insane. Yet, before Thaw went back into the asylum, he gave Nesbit her promised divorce. Nesbit spent the next decade appearing in vaudeville, occasional movies, and as a dancer in nightclubs throughout New York City.

In 1924, after seven years in the asylum, Thaw was finally declared sane, and was released from prison. Thaw spent the rest of his life in and out of lucidity. Thaw died on February 22, 1947, at the age of 76, of a heart attack in Miami, Florida. Thaw left a mere ,000 of his vast fortune to Evelyn Nesbit.

Nesbitt, beset by alcohol addiction, morphine addiction, and several suicide attempts, somehow lasted until January 17, 1967, when she died at the age of 82. Nesbit served as a technical advisor on the 1955 movie "The Girl In the Red Velvet Swing," which was loosely based on her life story.

Marilyn Monroe was originally scheduled to play Evelyn Nesbit, but ultimately, she refused to play the part, which then went to Joan Collins. Ray Milland played Sanford White, and Farley Granger played Henry Thaw.


Harry Thaw - The Man Who Murdered Sanford White

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