“Trial of the century” - it’s a short and snappy phrase that grabs people’s attention. That’s probably why the press has relied on it whenever dealing with a high-profile court case to drum up as much interest as possible for a juicy story that dominates the headlines.

Hey, even we here at Biographics haven’t shied away from using that old adage when describing some of the stories we’ve covered such as the trial of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for the murder of Virginia Rappe or the trial of Dr. Sam Sheppard who stood accused of killing his wife.

But today we’re going back even further, to one of the first-ever cases to earn the moniker of “trial of the century” and, to this day, still one of the most intriguing and shocking - the 1906 murder of renowned American architect Stanford White at the hands of mentally-unstable playboy Harry Thaw, ostensibly to protect the honor of his wife, famed supermodel Evelyn Nesbit.

So what made this case so compelling? One contemporary reporter listed all the qualities of this murder scandal that gripped the nation:

"You see, it had in it wealth, degeneracy, rich old wasters, delectable young chorus girls and adolescent artists' models; the behind-the-scenes of Theatredom and the Underworld, and the Great White Way. . . the abnormal pastimes and weird orgies of overly aesthetic artists and jaded debauchees…"

This is the story of a love triangle that ended in murder and became front-page news all over the country as America waited to find out with bated breath what fate would befall Harry Thaw, the killer playboy.

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Further Reading:
Paula Uruburu - American Eve

Benjamin Atwell - The Great Harry Thaw Case

Gerald Langford - The Murder of Stanford White

Crime Library - https://web.archive.org/web/20121007084604/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/white/1.html

Library of Congress - https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-stanford-white-murder

PBS - https://web.archive.org/web/20160318043417/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/century/sfeature/sf_interview.html

NYTimes archive - https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/02/23/171350602.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0