The Mad Sculptor (44 page)

www.haroldschechter.com

Notes

Prologue: 268 East 52nd Street, New York City

1
.
New York Journal
, March 29, 1937, p. 8.

2
. Box 21, Folder 10, Papers of Fredric Wertham, 1818–1936, Library of Congress Rare Books and Special Collections Division.

Chapter 1. Dead End

1
. William B. Aitken,
Distinguished Families in America, Descended from Wilhelmus Beekman and Jan Thomasse Van Dyke
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons/The Knickerbocker Press, 1912), pp. 3–4, 118–120.

2
. Steven Gaines,
The Sky’s the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan
(New York: Little, Brown, 2005), p. 112.

3
. Charles Lockwood,
Manhattan Moves Uptown: An Illustrated History
(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976), p. 248. Blackwell’s Island would undergo several name changes, first to Welfare Island, then to Roosevelt Island.

4
. For an excellent description of the neighborhood’s transformation, see Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and Thomas Mellins,
New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism Between The Two World Wars
(New York: Rizzoli, 1987), pp. 431–433. Also, see Federal Writers’ Project,
New York City Guide: A Comprehensive Guide to the Five Boroughs of the Metropolois—Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Richmond—Prepared by the Ferderal Writers’ Project of the Work Progress Administration in New York City
(New York: Random House, 1939), pp. 226–228.

5
. Sidney Kingsley,
Dead End: A Play in Three Acts
(New York: Random House, 1936), pp. 11–13.

6
. Jay Maeder, “The Dead End Kids East Side Story,”
New York Daily News
, March 4, 1999, p. 31.

Chapter 2. Vera and Fritz

1
.
New York Post
, November 14, 1935, p. 1;
New York Daily Mirror
, November 22, 1935, p. 3, and November 20, 1935, p. 1;
New York Daily News
, November 13, 1935, p. 3;
New York Post
, November 16, 1935, p. 1.

2
.
New York Daily News
, November 13, 1935, pp. 3 and 5;
New York Times
, November 13, 1935, p. 1;
New York Post
, November 12, 1935, pp. 1 and 4, and March 25, 1936, pp. 1 and 9; Quentin Reynolds,
Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1950), pp. 211–214.

3
.
New York Daily Mirror
, November 13, 1935, p. 5; Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 216.

4
. Dorothy Kilgallen,
Murder One
(New York: Random House, 1967), pp. 70–72.

5
.
New York Daily News
, November 14, 1935, pp. 3 and 12;
New York Times
, November 14, 1935, p. 4.

6
.
New York Daily News
, November 13, 1935, p. 3.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Fifty years after the Gebhardt murder, the supermarket tabloid
Weekly World News
recalled the case in a piece that perfectly captured the sensationalistic tone of the original coverage. See “Blonde Gets Off Scot-free for Blowing Away Her Nazi Loverboy,”
Weekly World News
, July 30, 1985, p. 44.

9
. Reynolds,
Courtroom
, pp. 215–216;
New York Times
, November 13, 1935, p 3.

10
.
New York Daily Mirror
, November 13, 1935, p. 1; “Blonde Gets Off,” p. 44.

11
.
New York Daily News
, November 14, 1935, pp. 3 and 18; November 15, 1935, pp. 3 and 6; and November 16, 1935, pp. 3 and 5.

12
.
New York Times
, November 15, 1935, p. 13; Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 214.

13
. The family name was originally Lebeau. According to an oft-repeated anecdote, Samuel’s father, Isaac, was advised by a friend that he would fare better in the New World if he Americanized his name, a change he could make by simply spelling it “Leibow” and adding “itz.” See Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 20, and Robert Leibowitz,
The Defender: The Life and Career of Samuel S. Leibowitz, 1893–1933
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981), p. 2.

14
. Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 22; Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas,
People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History
(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), p. 161.

15
. Klebanow and Jonas,
People’s Lawyers
, p. 161; Fred D. Pasley,
Not Guilty: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), p. 68.

16
. Klebanow and Jonas,
People’s Lawyers
, p. 162.

17
. Alva Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,”
The New Yorker
, June 4, 1932, p. 22.

18
. Leibowitz,
The Defender
, pp. 105–106.

19
. John R. Vile,
Great American Lawyers: An Encyclopedia, Vol. I
(Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2001), p. 461.

20
. Pasley,
Not Guilty
, pp. 134, 141, 145, 151;
The New Yorker
, June 4, 1932, p. 21.

21
. Klebanow and Jonas,
People’s Lawyers
, p. 183; Reynolds,
Courtroom
, pp. 292–293.

22
. Klebanow and Jonas,
People’s Lawyers
, p. 185.

23
. Ibid., p. 196; Jim Fisher,
The Lindbergh Case
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), pp. 403–408.

24
.
New York Daily Mirror
, November 30, 1936, p. 3.

25
. Ibid. Also, see
New York Times
, November 30, 1935, p. 32.

26
.
New York Daily Mirror
, March 28, 1936, p. 3.

27
.
New York Post
, March 20, 1936, p. 3, and March 21, 1936, p. 3;
New York Daily Mirror
, March 21, 1936, p. 3. Leibowitz did not conceal his disappointment when, that very night, French’s ailing mother died and he was forced to withdraw.

28
.
New York Times
, March 24, 1936, p. 3; Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 219.

29
. Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 222.

30
.
New York Post
, March 26, 1936, p. 3; Kilgallen,
Murder One
, p. 77.

31
.
New York Post
, March 28, 1936, p. 3;
New York Daily Mirror
, March 31, 1936, p. 3.

32
.
New York Times
, March 28, 1936, p. 3; Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 224; Kilgallen,
Murder One
, p. 78.

33
. Kilgallen,
Murder One
, p. 81;
New York Post
, March 26, 1936, p. 3.

34
.
New York Daily News
, November 13, 1935, p. 8;
New York Daily Mirror
, March 28, 1936, p. 6.

35
.
New York Post
, March 26, 1936, p. 1; Kilgallen,
Murder One
, p. 82.

36
.
New York Daily Mirror
, March 28, 1936, p. 3.

37
. Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 227.

38
.
New York Post
, March 28, 1936, p. 3.

39
. Quoted by Kilgallen,
Murder One
, pp. 85–86.

40
.
New York Daily Mirror
, March 28, 1936, p. 3.

41
.
New York Post
, March 26, 1936, p. 1.

42
.
New York Post
, March 31, 1936, p. 2; Reynolds,
Courtroom
, p. 238; Kilgallen,
Murder One
, p. 92.

43
.
New York Journal-American
, April 2, 1936, p. 11; Kilgallen,
Murder One
, p. 106.

44
.
New York Journal-American
, April 2, 1936, pp. 1 and 11.

45
.
New York Daily News
, April 4, 1936, pp. 2 and 3;
New York Times
, April 4, 1936, p. 1. The acquittal was not only a personal triumph for Leibowitz but a confirmation of what recent research into cognitive science has shown: that “lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who lay out ‘the facts of the case.’ ” See Drew Westen, “What Happened to Obama?,”
New York Times Sunday Review
, August 7, 2011, p. 6.

46
.
New York Daily News
, April 4, 1936, p. 1.

47
.
New York Daily News
, April 5, 1936, pp. 3 and 4;
New York Post
, April 5, 1936, p. 1;
New York Daily Mirror
, April 5, 1936, pp. 3 and 4.

48
.
New York Daily Mirror
, April 6, 1936, p. 3.

Chapter 3. “Beauty Slain in Bathtub”

1
. James Farber, “Murder Victim Won Honors as Student,”
New York Daily News
, April 11, 1936, p. 3; “Obituary Notes: Nancy Evans Titterton,”
Publishers Weekly
, April 18, 1936, p. 1614.

2
.
New York Post
, April 11, 1936, p. 3.

3
. “Lewis H. Titterton” in
Current Biography: Who’s New and Why 1943
, ed. Maxine Block (New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1944), pp. 768–770; “Woman Writer Slain in Home,”
New York Daily News
, April 11, 1936, p. 3.

4
. Eight months after Nancy Titterton’s murder, “I Shall Decline My Head” was anthologized—along with stories by such masters of the form as Isak Dinesen, Anton Chekhov, Henry James, Isaac Babel, and Katherine Anne Porter—in
A Book of Contemporary Short Stories
(New York: Macmillan, 1936), edited by Professor Dorothy Brewster of Columbia University.

5
. Joseph Faurot, “The Inside Story of New York’s Bathtub Slaying,”
Official Detective Stories
, July 1936, p. 7.

6
.
New York Post
, April 14, 1936, p. 1;
New York Daily Mirror
, April 13, 1936, pp. 3 and 6;
New York Times
, April 11, 1936, pp. 3.

7
.
New York Daily News
, April 22, 1936, pp. 3 and 11;
New York Times
, May 26, 1936, p. 45.

8
.
New York Post
, April 21, 1936, p. 4.

9
.
New York Daily News
, April 12, 1936, p. 4;
New York Times
, April 11, 1936, p. 1, and April 22, 1936, pp. 1 and 12; Faurot, “New York’s Bathtub Slaying,” p. 4.

10
. Faurot, “New York’s Bathtub Slaying,” pp. 4–5; Colin Evans,
Blood on the Table: The Greatest Cases of New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner
(New York: Berkley Books, 2008), pp. 69–71.

11
.
New York Daily News
, April 22, 1936, p. 6.

12
. See
New York Daily News
, April 11, 1936, p. 4, and
New York Times
, April 11, 1936, p. 4.

13
.
New York Daily News
, April 11, 1936, p. 3, and April 12, 1936, p. 34.

14
.
New York Post
, April 11, 1936, p. 3;
New York Daily Mirror
, April 11, 1936, p. 3;
New York Daily News
, April 15, 1936, p. 3.

15
.
New York Daily News
, April 16, 1936, p. 7;
New York Post
, April 16, 1936, p. 9.

16
.
New York Daily Mirror
, April 15, 1936, p. 1; April 17, 1936, p. 1; and April 18, 1936, p. 1.

17
. Susan Lowndes, ed.,
Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911–1947
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1971), p. 138.

18
. Edward Sefton Porter,
Conscience of the Court
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 175.

19
.
New York Daily Mirror
, April 13, 1936, p. 3; April 14, 1936, p. 12; and April 16, 1936, p. 30. Faurot, “New York’s Bathtub Slaying,” p. 7.
New York Daily News
, April 13, 1936, p. 6.

20
.
New York Daily Mirror
, April 14, 1936, p. 12;
New York Daily News
, April 14, 1936, p. 3. Though Simon turned out to be wrong about the Titterton case, his conjecture perfectly describes a killer who would gain nationwide notoriety several decades later: the Boston Strangler.

21
.
New York Daily Mirror
, April 16, 1936, p. 30, and April 18, 1936, pp. 3 and 5.

22
.
New York Daily Mirror
, April 12, 1936, p. 6;
New York Daily News
, April 12, 1936, p. 4.

23
.
New York Daily News
, April 14, 1936, p. 5.

24
.
New York Times
, April 17, 1937, p. 44;
New York Daily Mirror
, April 21, 1936, p. 3.

25
.
New York Times
, April 19, 1936, p. E11, and April 26, 1985, p. 35;
New York Post
, April 25, 1936, p. 12;
New York Daily News
, April 14, 1936, p. 5. For a fascinating look at Gettler’s career, see Deborah Blum,
The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
(New York: The Penguin Press, 2010).

26
. Evans,
Blood on the Table
, p. 85; Faurot, “New York’s Bathtub Slaying,” p. 43.